Politics is a game of friends. Jean Chretein, Straight From the Heart, p. 23
It is a great comfort to the Oracle of Ottawa that there exists in the province of Ontario dumber municipal voters than the pathetic rubes in Ottawa. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that there would be a Mayor of Toronto that would make His Worship Larry O'Brien look like Cardinal Richelieu! But not only did that come true, Rob Ford brought his brother Doug Ford Jr! Who by chance or circumstance is an elected councilor!
All the red meat righties of Toronto are still convinced that this combination would be unbeatable. Well not so fast...
His Worship - Rob Ford....
The Oracle of Ottawa has learned from his daily scan of the Globe and Mail web page that the Brothers Ford may have picked up a challenging force in the form of one Margaret Atwood, a great Canadian and not failing to mention, one of Ottawas most famous daughters. Perhaps it would be wise for the staff of Mayor Ford and/or Councilor Ford to have a little sit down with Krista Erickson on the subject and fallout of mouthing off in a disrespectful manner to and or about Canadian icons. The fact that Maggy has over 85,000 Twitter followers is something that can not be lightly disregarded.
Margaret Atwood - A Great Canadian
This KPMG study is something that council in the future should erect some rules against. I wonder what a Swiss Cooperative knows about Toronto? Surely there recommendations have the best and most honourable interests of all Torontonians at heart. One must ponder the future fallout of all these recent events. To all the right-wingers that thought a vote for Mr. Ford was like sticking it in a Liberals eye, do you realize that the costs for this will far outweigh all the miserable nickels and dimes that the Brothers Ford are going to "save" you and the cost of the damage to the image of Toronto to the world? Soon the tourist traffic will start to fall off. Then your world city rankings will be soon to follow. Why, look at all the money you saved!
In a nutshell, souls are certain, bodies are doubtful, so the soul is distinct from the body. Simon Blackburn, Think, p. 29
After today the oracle of Ottawa has to wonder if Pierre Berton was totally correct in putting forward the idea that 1967 was the last good year in Canada. Although The Oracle of Ottawa was just a kid back then, he still remembers the 1960's very well. Upon much reflection, especially as of late, it was this period of time that caught the Canadian ideal and dream perfectly. Everything and most every one was going forward. The possibilities and the realization that they were real and would be obtained seemed to have a hold on every one of all generations. Things would incrementally continue to improve at an ever increasing rate. Why, at the coming of the 21st century, hardly anyone would be working five days a week! The retirement age would surely be 55! And it was a given shared among one and all adults that dying from cancer would be only a memory of which us youngsters would be the last generation to have even heard of such a thing.
How the hell did we fuck it up? Well after much thought and reflection I have come to the conclusion that what did us in was the lowering of corporate tax rates. Back when I was a kid the corporate tax rate was 40%. For the life of me I can not recall one corporation leaving Canada for greener pastures for the reason that Canadian taxes were to high. As we gradually lowered the rates we gave the dream and our futures away. It was a slow gradual process. Now the Oracle of Ottawa is watching the next generation really get the shaft!
These kids have been so brainwashed by the marketers and the fart catchers the Oracle fears they are like the dream lost forever. This sure is hell not the Canada I hoped to grow old in. And today the only hope we really had, has in the words of an Alberta rancher "gone a downer" on us. Lets face it the Conservatives will now have full reign on the agenda. All of the old Canada that we have ever known will soon be gone. The Senate is history, The Governor General will be replaced by the position (elected?) of Head Greeter! Welcome y'all, welcome to Canada, do you need a shopping cart? Mind the Mounty on his horse...
Boethius - The Consolation of Philosophy
Yes I have to admit old Jack Layton really floored me today. He didn't have to open his mouth. I have seen this all before. If there is a pool any where, and I am sure there is, put me down for aggressive lymphoma. What I can not understand is how a guy that lived like a boy scout all his life could come down with this shit!
The one person in my lifetime that looked just like this and sounded just like Jack sounded today was an ex-airborne, diesel mechanic, two pack a day smok'in, two fisted drinking jovial guy who I still miss and think about often. We all knew it wouldn't end good, it was all just a question of when.
All we can do now is push on and hope for the best.
Tack the sails for home,
in the hope of a relaxed and deserved rest...
A tune from the days when Jack was seeing all of Canada...
But if nothing does as well as something which nothing can be said, it vanishes. Simon Blackburn, Think, p. 173
Oh! The plans of mice and Conservatives! The fart catchers and spin doctors worked so hard on the arrangements. A perfect venue was picked, and the minister had just shaved, so there would be no five o'clock shadow for at least forty five minutes! Yes Sir! The Right Dubious member from Calgary Southeast was ready to drop a total bombshell! The folks at home must have red meat! Preferably 60 day aged Black Angus beef! And it must somehow still be dripping of the very life essence of some poor left leaning shmucks, no doubt from Central Canada, frog or bloke makes no difference!
But alas, the good minister was eclipsed by breaking news. Yet, Sun News TV stuck to the Cowboy Rules and rode for the brand! Giving the poor thing a few moments of pity time! Hurry up speak faster, everyone wants to watch The Murdoch Show! Well even for Jason Kenney, it didn't take long for him to tell the cameras, that there are 1,800 people in Canada that should not be in Canada and by golly gosh darn we are going to catch the evil doers and banish them to wander in the desert of the Alberta Badlands. Membership to the bulrush club optional! Ignore all burning bushes! It is no doubt another leaking pipeline! The Oracle of Ottawa was totally bewildered. The message was...? But it got better!
Eat ME Jason - Ya know you wanna!
It was a double bill today! The slippery, but not yet totally slimy Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews, with a face that looks like a vagina with handle-bars, put down a double barrel blast that fifty suspected war criminals were possibly in Canada and that the pictures and names would be released on a Canadian Government web site. So that the peers of the tribal refugees could lynch their more successful neighbours and have an easy out to get away with the whole thing! An election promise is an election promise!
The West Wants In...
But alas! The reality is nowhere near the hype! Last year Canada accepted 250,000 new Canadians. Lets say that the average for the last ten years has been 200,000. Now do the math. Eighteen hundred divided by two million, times one 'undred gives an answer of : ) 0.09%! That means the civil servants that Jason and Tony "Two Tier" want to fire and contract out, get the selection process correct 99.91% of the time! You would think a guy that hung around with Jesuits at the University of San Francisco could figure this out. But Jason Kenney was so smart they couldn't teach him a damn thing!
The Oracle of Ottawa saw the first images of the Oslo blast on the BBC and felt strange and weird right away. While my wife and Sun News TV were screaming "Those damn Muslims!" The Oracle of Ottawa held his tongue, the fingerprints of an Islamic attack were missing, it all wasn't right! The perfect placement of the device and the missing follow up detonations, made the Oracle of Ottawa very nervous.. This is somebody else, this is different, but who? Why?
The Oracle of Ottawa warned about upcoming strange things to come in a post to this blog entitled "President Obama Caps bin Laden..., at the time of writing I had no idea that it would all get so outrageously vicious. The sheer veracity of it all is simply stunning! The weirdness I predicted was already acting itself out, when the 2011 Bilderberg Group meeting was, from all reports, very scarce in leaders of state! No one from the Canadian government or the Canadian central bank attended. Our fearless leader who never misses a Bilderberg Group hoedown held a Conservative Party Convention on the same weekend! Don't you think it is weird that all the government types skipped this years meeting? Why it all reminds the Oracle of Ottawa of a certain ethnic group that did not report to the World Trade Center towers on 9/11! Is that a wicked coincidence or what? All the "truthers" will be in a frenzy now, and rightly so!
What bothers the Oracle of Ottawa the most is that he has very pleasant memories of Norway from his wild and misspent but highly coveted youth, of which a goodly part was spent in the Canadian Navy way back in the 1980's! It was the good ship HMCS Fraser that got me to Norway. We got ashore in Bergen and Hammerfest. When the Norwegian Prime Minister appeared with a statement on the BBC that Norway is a very special place, well, it is not another case of a politician just blowing smoke! Norway is a paradise! Of all the countries that I have been to, Norway is what I would like Canada to copy! To this very day I will argue that it is the Norwegian system for me, to anyone who will listen! Ahhh! The answer has just presented itself!
Bergen, Norway - True! Norway is a paradise!!
Ever since the death of bin Laden and the capture of his treasure trove of data in the pile of laptops, hard drives, CD-Roms and countless flash memory sticks, the lads in Langley have been really busy. Among a great many things discovered is the shocking fact that bin Laden had very good connections to the highest cheer leaders of the Global Right Wing Agenda! There was and is no time being wasted! Note how the so called "phone hacking" scandal just seemed to break wide open after Easter! Then the annual Bilderberg Group meeting that no one showed up for... The rape of Greece that did not go at all smooth. The increasing ferocity of the "Arab Spring". It just seemed to this author that the right wing agenda is being foiled at every turn with extremely good information. And we have not even mentioned the slow strangle of the Republicans in the United States. The President seems to have very good and timely intelligence indeed!
So now we can begin to understand why the right wing has gone "all in" on Norway. If you want to really piss a right winger off anywhere in the world let him toss the standard pitch of the benefits of unrestrained capitalism just like the old days of no trade unions, of no social services and on and on... Then they will try to smirk you down by giving you the opportunity argue back. And my Norway argument wins every time! And God do they ever hate to be destroyed by a perfectly sourced example! Their faces go white with rage! The tail is securely fastened between their legs and they are gone in a smoking huff!
Now of course the "agent" that appeared to single handedly shock a great nation with his barbarous acts, acted all alone! Have you heard that one before? A guy that owns a little hobby farm somehow managed to cache up six freaking tons of Ammonium Nitrate! Heads are going to roll here and I say let'em roll! What happened here in Norway was an attack of the Right for the sole attempt and purpose to destroy the one great embarrassing exception to the global right wing conspiracy to reduce us all to the Third World. I would advise all the countries of Scandinavia to be on alert. And the same goes for all the posh members of the European Union. The Right is in its death rattle, and it is going all in.
Motion will however not help unless we have things moving. Simon Blackburn, Think, The World, p. 244
The Oracle of Ottawa was much chagrined at the Business News Network's unexplained multi hour disappearance of the "stock ticker" or "banner" or as commonly known by real stock market freaks; the tape. The hours of adrift were from about 9:00 a.m. to its reappearance just before noon! It is strongly suspected that either Bell Media did not pay the bill to the media supplier or a young insane marketing intern somehow got the keys to the control room, determined to prove that all those numbers at the bottom the screen really took away from all the guests and the marketing power of all the funny and silly penny stock ads! It was of course a total fail.
No Numbers - No Watch!
The only reason a financial network has its own dedicated talking heads, marketed guests and those funny penny stock promotion ads is to provide a soothing drone to one who is only interested in the unfolding of the tape! Those funny numbers at the bottom the screen. The above mentioned other idiots provide no real and / or otherwise useful information and are really only allowed to appear to fill in the top 75% of the unused screen. To ensure a future on the air and the continuation of this "network" it be very wise indeed for all parasites or rather personalities to always keep this rude fact in the highest priority.
It is just another demonstration of the absolute insanity of the marketers grip on media in this part of the world! We have a news channel with no news! (Sun News TV), We have music channels with no music! (Much Music). We have a History Channel that contains practically no history! A science channel with hardly any science. (Discovery Channel) The Oracle of Ottawa could go on but it is all too depressing.
But we do have a mere handful of decent offerings. The much beloved CBC. The highly respected BBC. The ever vital American PBS stations. And CPAC! Whose ratings, I will bet, are such that Bell Media would kill for if only it wasn't so illegal!
The tape is all that matters!
The day that has just passed marked the one hundredth birthday of the great man Marshall McLuhan. Canadians, once, as a nation took great pride in having such people among us. Canada pioneered much of what today is called "old media" and great men like Marshall McLuhan foretold with eerie accuracy the new media of today. But with the advent of the world wide right wing agenda, forced on us by the corporate whores, we now have media that is captive first and foremost to fart catchers and spin doctors and every soul killing flavor of marketing.
This great truth has been molded, shaped and distorted by the evil of the right into what the Oracle of Ottawa has recently grimly discovered; The message now is the appearance of the medium.
Here is a wonderful aspect of Marshall McLuhan that most people don't know about. He was a devout Roman Catholic as much as he could be all his life. And the real shocker, an avid proponent of the Rosary! How weird is that? Listen carefully to this wonderful interview conducted by Father Patrick Peyton.
Paradigms can be asked to show their worth, and some of them do not stand up. Simon Blackwell, Think, Reasoning, p. 231
Have you ever met a retired Foundation Engineer? Didn't think so. It is about as rare as meeting a retired Ottawa firefighter or a retired homicide detective from any where in North America. The main reason in the case of the foundation engineer is the life of never ending stress. Yes, you will make a great living, as long as you can keep your PEO certification and get liability insurance. But just one screw up, usually through no fault of your own, and your whole practice, life, everything will be taken from you, just like a municipal politician that screws up, and gets voted out never to return...
Complex surface foundation Edinburgh
Have you ever taken a walk around the City of Ottawa? Especially downtown? Do you check out the construction sights of all those new high rises and condo towers? It is neat to look down the hole from the street and note the interesting layers of the sand, rock and clay layers isn't it? And isn't it somewhat weird that if you go only a block or two and look down into the hole of another construction site and the geology is almost always totally different? And do you notice those elaborate pilings and tension cables that might ensure the whole hole from sliding into itself? Yes, Dear Reader, a deep tower foundation anywhere in Ottawa is mighty tricky stuff, fraught with worry. You can do a search on Google about foundation collapses in Sandy Hill, but you may not want to upset yourself.
The Big Dig, Boston MA.
Quick now, how many tunnels are there in Ottawa? Right! Not many! Why do you think that is? Back in the halcyon days of the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton the great Andrew Haydon and his most competent staff, all of whom, nearly to a man, were terminated like garbage upon the Conservative "Common Sense Revolution" of Mike Harris, already had a long term Transit Plan for the City of Ottawa way into this century! And, right again, there were no plans for any tunnels. Quite simply because once the core samples were seen it was a no brainer! Gophering around underground in the heart of the old city of Ottawa is totally foolhardy! Just ask anyone who has done something easy like dig a large hole anywhere in this geotechnical nightmare!
Big Dig, a small structual problem, really...
What can possibly go wrong you ask? Where does the Oracle of Ottawa begin? Let us take an easy to reference disaster. Have you ever heard of the Big Dig in Boston? It was a classic half vast project, built on many half vast ideas. It was a total train wreck, please excuse the pun. The Oracle of Ottawa is going to call it now. The so called modified light rail tunnel as proposed for Ottawa has all the makings of the same kind of mega screw up! The depth of the said tunnel has been reduced by over 50% yet the price of its proposed construction was not reduced by 50%. Why do you think that is? Do you think there is information in that? Have you heard any sustained and continued interest by a major Canadian tunnel contractor? Hmmmm...
Well, the good thing is, that when this all heads south there will be many good names and reputations ruined forever. I figure, for over two thirds of the present council it will be the best thing that ever happened for the tax payers and stake holders of any municipality that they will be unable to run for even the elected position of dog catcher in an American southern state!
Ya! But! They had the lowest bid! Got a problem with that? Here is some free tickets to the Chinese Opera...
The scientific world is to be less threatening than was feared. It is to be made safe for human beings. And the way to make it safe is to reflect on the foundations of knowledge. Simon Blackburn, Think, Knowledge, p. 17
The News Gods have been good to the Oracle of Ottawa. As soon as Parliament went on its summer break I thought that in the depths of the summer doldrums I would be down to writing little daily essays on "focus words" randomly selected from the Chicago Manual of Style or esoteric words selected from the Oxford English Dictionary. But alas, the totally unexpected collapse of the world wide right wing has kept the Oracle very busy.
The right wing wacko's take another hit...
I was hoping to catch the utter spectacle of the Murdoch family grilling by a British House of Commons committee. Perhaps there would be some live excerpts on CPAC or the BBC perhaps latter in the day. Little did I expect that it would be on every news network! Save and except Sun News TV! After discovering the hearings on every available network on my cable package I thought I would see how bad a job Sun News could make out of it! I stumbled into the dregs of the "Round Table" with poor Pat Bolland doing his best to rescue Alex Pierson from herself. Poor Pat Bolland! I tuned out when the wacked Alex was going on about breast feeding a doll at the mall??
But alas, even Sun News knew that it had to follow the leaders again in changing the program routine to stop the rating meter from going to zero. The little East Indian real estate agent was clearly miffed and and all but indignant as the elegant and graceful Brian Dunstan was called in to perk up the snore-fest! It was a hoot to watch the body language!The little Anita standing tall, projecting her little puppies like a junior real estate agent getting screwed out of her 1.5% commission on a three way town house sale in the skid-row part of Toronto!
It was a very eventful day all in. The pieing of Rupert Murdoch, the astounding progress of the big budget deal down in Washington, as I predicted, again who has the most to lose from a default? The Republicans! Not the Democrats! And when you got the goods out of the bin Laden cave many opinions will change for ever and for good. Just as I told you earlier Dear Readers. It seems that the Oracle of Ottawa can see several weeks ahead in the "news cycle".
The hoot of the day was to occur latter on Canada Live hosted by the patron of Canadian Arts, Krista Erickson! It was the first time that the bubbly Krista had the look of abject panic as the elegant Brian Dunstan was segmented into her show! But you had to know it was going to happen. I mean management has over 4,000 reasons to seek her replacement! The Oracle of Ottawa is making the call that Miss Krista does not have long to go...
Somewhere in the expanse of Quebec there is an exclusive golf and country club. And a table in the back, in the smoke and low lights there sits the bug-eyed crazy heir and son of a half great Canadian media wanna be empire. He is contemplating the train wreck of the Sun News dream. The nonexistent ratings, the circus of the 4,000 outstanding complaints that will not go away. The CRTC hearings, the threats from the Conservative party establishment, that will soon start to wrench the spokes of the bigger wheel of the above mentioned media empire, all of the other parts of which turn a pretty penny compared to the train wreck that Sun News TV has turned out to be.The rumor is that the plug will be pulled quietly in the second week of August, the dog days of summer, when no one is watching... By Labour Day no one will even remember Sun News TV, it will be like it never even happened.
The visual quality is a little off, but the words are perfect. Enjoy the collapse of the Right Wing global agenda!
The fault is in the system and not in the men. Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, Part 1, Chapter 12, p.140
Great revelations occur to a man that manages to live for over half a century. Especially if he has half a brain and is willing to think for himself. One of the most important lessons that you learn from dangerous periods and binges of self reflection is that all the real money comes not from "working" but from thinking! And the Oracle of Ottawa has learned this early and often and hence is now free to write this blog for many years to come without having to worry about lunch.
How philosophy gets done...
With all the goings on and daily revelations of stupidity and incompetence mixed with out and out corruption it will be amazing if this staggering fuck-pile of a planet will survive this year, let alone 2012! But how did it all come to this? How is that the largest media empire on earth is imploding in reverse to its minor and constituent parts in a mere blink of an eye? How is it that the greatest nation states are collapsing not from attack without, but yet, rot and indifference borne from ignorance from within? How can we allow this to happen to Western Civilization? Hell, and that is only just yesterdays news....
Management is simply applied philosophy! And don't say the Oracle of Ottawa never gave you anything! How well funded was the faculty of philosophy at the school you went to? Are you practising a profession and have never taken even one philosophy course? Or even read one book on why philosophy is important? Are you wondering why your life and career is a mess? Or worse case scenario, are you fearing and otherwise pondering public exposure and legal indictment? Maybe the liberal arts aren't such a joke after all!
When the Oracle of Ottawa watch's his television and reads the news in its various formats, he ponders to himself, did this joker (insert story title here...) ever read Peter Drucker? Or, has this character and / or actor ever read his copy of Druckers Management? It floors the mind to the limit at all the half cocked disaster missiles that are presently in flight and "away" in terminal lock on mode to a disaster of oblivion. Although it makes for great television, especially the "perp walks", all that wreckage that has to be cleaned up really stops us brilliant people from achieving their tasks and agendas.
Since there is no telling in advance where it may lead, reflection can be seen as dangerous. Simon Blackburn, Think, p. 11
You know your getting old when you can remember the days when Air Canada was a posh airline! You know, back in the days of unopened sky's? When there was still first class. When the Canadian Government owned it. And all the repair work was done by the actual airline! When you could get on your flight like boarding a city commuter bus. The happy, contented and well paid employees. All just fond memories now.
Air Canada DC-8 - The good old days....
Today I would just rather stay at home then to fly anywhere. As I watch my television and listen to the stories of grossed out and forever offended travelers, I scratch my head in utter amazement. Mostly amazed that I still have hair and that I am well enough off that I don't have to fly anywhere. Just when you think it couldn't get any worse, it couldn't sink lower, up step the mindless corporate idiots digging a new lower level of hell for the never to end spiral to the bottom. Dante himself would be amazed...
I am of course referring to the Michel Thibodeau court victory of a crummy $12,000 for not being served in French on a flight between Ottawa and Montreal! Geez! You would think that you wouldn't be able to be served in English on that route! Screw the Canadian Constitution! That is all just dead Liberal stuff now! Air Canada is pursuing the new paradigm; Walmart of the skies! Have a nice day! Everything will be fine as long as you speak "white" partner!
dog pound of the sky!
What amazes me the most is the insane value that Air Canada places on $12,000 and yet is ready to risk the loss of 12 to 120 million in future revenue! Does this make any sense at all? Do you really think the high dollar European Union traveler is going to risk flying Air Canada? Hardly! I wonder how many languages are spoken on any Air France flight to any where? I am pretty sure it is way more than just French! But of course I am confusing today with yesterday again. The days when an international airline was considered a posh cosmopolitan business. My bad! The days back when you could rest assured that on any flight leaving the confines of an English speaking province anywhere in Canada you could be pretty confident of being served at the minimum of the Big Four languages. English, French, German and Spanish.
But all the multi-lingual types that used to be standard at Air Canada have moved on to better and greener pastures, like driving a cab...
Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations. Alfred Adler, What Life Should Mean To You (1937), p. 14
The Oracle ofOttawa knows that it is not very "Lefty" and it certainly isn't Christian to have the unmitigated feelings of happiness and glee as one of the contemporary proponents of the the right wing media and overall Bilderberg Group agenda hits the wall at a thousand miles an hour! Every employee, especially the males, who have ever been demeaned and humiliated by such a "jackie" female she bitch has got to be wringing their hands in utter glee! It just doesn't get much better than this.
It will get weirder!
I knew she was in serious trouble, with both tits in the wringer, when I heard a nice gentleman from the New York Times building her up as if he was a paid fart catcher, while on an interview with Charlie Rose mid week last. As soon as he got to the part where "she was like a member of the family" I knew for sure she was toast. When caught in the shit grinder of anything right wing and all fundamentalist, the last thing you want to be is a member of the family! Especially when the eighty year old Daddy has the trophy "China Doll" wife and the eldest son is scoping out his territory for the future! It all tends to get a little too close to the Hamlet thing... The way things are going little Jimmy will be doing her doggy, any time now, over the old mans editing desk!
"Just like family..."
Yes Dear Reader it is just going to get better and better in the days ahead! No doubt, as I write this pensive missive the clever Ms. Brooks is no doubt cleaning out her safe deposit box of the tapes and pictures and all other evidence she has sequestered for this possible rainy day! And then duly transporting her bony ass down to the Main branch of the London Police to cut a deal and immunity from any future criminal charges and indictments. At home and abroad no doubt!
Cow Boy Ethics: Ride For The Brand....
The Shit and Shiites could all hit the heavenly fan next week! Now I hope they show that on the BBC and CPAC in Canada! That will be entertainment. Not to mention the ongoing investigation by the American FBI into alleged self same practices in America. It is damn near like watching a herd of sheep strolling through a mine field. Things just keep "popping up."
Pretty stupid answer for someone that claimed to have attend the Sorbonne!
But the line of thought that I'd been chasing for several days was implicit in the ruins of the old Roman empire, which gradually destroyed itself by substituting the faith in a legion of miraculous words for the strength of armies and the weight of walls. Lewis H. Lapham, Waiting For The Barbarians, Abracadabra, p. 186
I first heard the news in the car, on the local right-wing talk radio station. Andy Haydon got ejected from the Ottawa City Hall Council Chamber! It just happens to be named after him! It is known as "Haydon Hall" by all the old Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton employees that are just hanging on to get to their earliest retirement date... He was addressing council on the day of the big vote to approve an insane light rail / tunnel
system... Old Andy knows there is all kinds of fishiness going on here. He just can't prove it. On the six o'clock news, I watched the clip of him calling Mayor Jim Watson and / or his staff members liars! And old Andy did not apologize. Classic Andy.
Now Dear Reader all you have to do is ask someone that knows about such things and they will tell you that are only one or two companies in Canada that could take on a project like this. Aecon and SNC Lavalin. Also another company that could handle the job is Acres Construction out in British Columbia. You can see some of their local work up in Arnprior, Ontario. Where they did the Madawaska River bridge and the Arnprior hydro dam. There work stands up great to the test of time. But alas...
The Oracle of Ottawa is going to make a prediction. And it is an ugly one. One that has been lobbied long, serious and hard, and on the street of the Ottawa underground it is considered a LOCK! The contract will be "sole source" and it (has?) will be won by an unknown company out of China! Now sole source means that the Chinese outfit will run the project after its completion. No union will be involved. Doctor Ho foot insole Kiosks every 100 feet in the stations. Minimum wage peasants every where! And they won't be from Ottawa!
You really should listen to Andy!
Forget about all those pretty pictures you saw today. This will be roughly what the Ottawa Light rail system will look like as built. No? Well then go and get a denial from "Gentleman Jim".
Unlike every other nation in the world, the United States defines itself as a hypothesis and constitutes itself as an argument. Lewis H. Lapham, Waiting For The Barbarians, Time Lines, p. 64
What else do "We the people" have left to lose? There is no more middle class. Civil liberties are only a mere shadow of the past. We have all been harvested by various financial institutions deemed too big to fail. All there is to look forward to is a minimum wage job at Walmart, that is, if we don't deal away minimum wage legislation in this most recent "crisis". So you have to come to realize that this latest bit of right-wing intransigence is really just the kill shot to the head of what remains of the American Dream.
"I have so had it with the Republicans!"
What the President seems to not realize is that by showing good faith, patience, and benevolence, he is playing directly into the hands of the right wing playbook! This is the standard operating procedure of the Bilderberg Group controlled right wing! Just ask anyone who has dealt with "Human Resources" at any big modern employer! They count on your good character to exploit you! They make all the demands and you are required to submit to them. When you expect a little reciprocation this is when the kick to the head comes in the form of the second wave of even more insane demands, this is what passes as negotiation today. I can only hope that the President gets wise and starts to see through the game plan.
President Obama has to break the moron Right Wing for ever. He has to humiliate them so bad and destroy them so completely that they will never be a threat to the peace and order of the United States and the rest of the free world ever again! The right must be shown how important government is. With the Social Security checks a little adrift it will be amazing how quickly and how bad the Teas Party numbers will drop! Bubba has to learn who is the boss. Just like Donald Trump learned that Hawaii is a State!
The President has to handle the Republican Party like Osama bin Laden! You have to get them where they live! Ask your self dear citizen, who has the most to lose after August 2nd, if America "defaults" and loses a knick or two off the old credit rating? Is it going to be Main Street or Wall Street? That's right! It will be the money grubbing, next dollar at any cost, bottom feeding, soul destroying, pocket raping, pin stripped clad, knee crawling cock-sucker!
Hard ball at home would be very welcome in Canada!
For all the ordinary people of the United States and all the ordinary people of the civilized world the inconvenience will be minor and short lived. Why, hell, my portfolio was down over 40% in 2008! And I got it all back and way more, thank you Valeant! But the effect on the American ruling class elite will be fatal and forever! And at the end of the day it will be all to the Greater Good!
What the President should do is create a set of full and complete demands. Borrow every page from the play book of Abraham Lincoln through to FDR! For desert, throw in all the demands of Hunter S. Thompson for good and reliable measure! And then add all the requirements that he knows he will need for the new America. The America that our fathers dreamed of and tell the Republicans to come back in agreement on August 14, 2011.
The old, tired, cowboy crap is over. There is no more unexploited frontier. You will not be allowed to be a robber baron. That is yesterday and it is over forever! Adjust.
What America has to do now is realize that it has one inexhaustible resource that will carry it through all the future that it can conceive of, harvestable forever. The unrealized potential of all its citizens!!
You never have to chase a Republican! They will screw up perfectly by themselves every time!
It may be true that we cannot detect occasions of illusion and error at a glance. That is what makes them illusions. Simon Blackburn, Think, Knowledge, p. 23-24
One of the best viewing choices offered in the basic cable television packages by Rogers Communications to the viewers in Ottawa, Ontario is WPBS from upstate New York. Those of us of the "Lefty" bent really enjoy our Masterpiece Theater, Frontline and especially Charlie Rose. But for some reason, the Oracle of Ottawa just can't comprehend, it seems that Rogers has a real "thing" against WPBS. They tried desperately to remove WPBS from the package under the subterfuge that the over the air signal was not of the quality that Rogers had randomly set. Then there was that big public uprising that raised the money to get WPBS the required dedicated fibre optic cable so that Rogers had to relent again and allow WPBS to be seen in the Ottawa area.
"All The Gold"
With the fibre optic feed you would think that the problem of poor reception would be a thing of the analog past. Wrong again. And for the poor tech guys on the American side you can give up the search, the problem is not on your side! About a year or two ago the Oracle of Ottawa had a similar problem with Rogers and the reception of my beloved BBC. The audio track of the feed was delayed just long enough to make the station totally unwatchable. This caused a "service" call by the Oracle of Ottawa to customer service. The Oracle of Ottawa is very ugly when he is pissed! It is never pretty, and for the poor putzen at the receiving end; life changing and un-forgettable.Many things were mentioned. My federal member of Parliament, who was at the time a cabinet minister, my buddy at the CRTC and friends at the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council were lightly mentioned. Result? Lo! And behold! The reception was corrected as I hung up the phone!
The Oracle of Ottawa will let you in on the secret. It is not a technical problem, it is a greed and money problem. It is all about the advertising, and how Rogers can maximize the revenue from said advertising. Shocking isn't it! It all dawned on me recently, well, last night as a matter of fact. I was trying to watch Charlie Rose and there was that break up of the picture and that intermittent lose of the audio feed, that made it just impossible to watch. Then at 12:00 a.m. at the start of Tavis Smiley just before the Walmart commercial, the whole situation rapidly came back to normal! Total coincidence of course! Geez and there are a ton of skanky Walmart stores in Canada, most of them in Ontario, the parts of Ontario that Rogers serves. I mean, how weird is that? Upon reflection, all the shows that I was dying to watch did not have the "right" advertisers! It is just a coincidence, one must not jump to conclusions. The militant right wing is not trying to remove every thing that speaks against it. That of course is just crazy talk. Isn't it?
In closing a few questions for "management" to ponder....
"But I had forgotten about the seven bowls of God's wrath stored in the minds of some unhappier prophets of the reactionary right," Lewis H. Lapham, Waiting For The Barbarians, Dies Irae, p. 133
It grieves the Oracle of Ottawa to no end when another long lived brand bites the dust. When you think of all the things that that the News of the World has been through, and at the end of the day, all the good that it has done, it is a shame that it is a victim of the unrestrained (until now...) right-wing, corporate, Bilderberg Group driven, out of control media nightmare.
And another one bites the dust...
It is just about incomprehensible to contemplate that the News of the World was already an established paper when Karl Marx was writing up the notes for Das Kapital at the British Library Reading Room! That is a hell of a run by any standard. Perhaps in its demise, the News of the World will fulfill it greatest role to its former readership and to the world. That being the first crack in the wall of the so far unbreachable organs of right wing mind control.
Mr. Murdoch will or would be the first to tell us that it is all a global world now. What I am wondering is, is this the way that News Corporation does business every where? It would certainly go a long way to explaining the newly unbeatable dominance in the United States market. Hmmmmm... I wonder how Americans will respond to that? Sort of makes Richard Nixon look like a mere peeping tom...
"much of the writing on the Internet could as easily be posted in spray paint on the side of a bus." Lewis H. Lapham, Waiting For The Barbarians, The Spanish Armadillo, p. 166
The Oracle of Ottawa has an eye for talent. It is not often that one observes a media personality with a presence of an Komla Dumor, the diction of an Alastair Yates, the calm ability to probe of a Charlie Rose and most important, the gravity of a Peter Mansbridge! It is even rarer that this on air personality should appear on the Oracle of Ottawa's radar screen while engaged on a gig at Sun News TV!
Brian Dunstan World Coverage
One has to question the effectiveness of the methods of the human resources staff at the Sun News Network! What failed in the recruitment of the two high fliers that have recently crashed and burned in the most spectacular fashion? Was not enough money payed to the contracted head-hunters? Were the failed candidates not forced through enough hoops and the dozen interviews? How now in hindsight could they have been so bold as to for-go the standard wiring tests and resume checks? Perhaps as an exercise, all the members of the Sun News HR department should prepare all his other peers pink slips! First thing Monday morning! Chop! Chop!
Where Brian should be...
The Oracle of Ottawa has to commend Mr. Dunstan on his poise and bottomless patience of being the only eagle in the presence of a flock of poxed turkeys! It has been a hoot to watch! A lot of ways it is like watching Krista in reverse! The saturated red and blue sets that make the honkies look like dirty vanilla ice cream cones with hair, is for Mr. Dunstan, with his rich full medium complexion, quite flattering indeed! It appears to the Oracle of Ottawa that the sets were designed just for him! It is truly another discovered paradox of unregulated capitalism and free markets that a fill-in personality, hired with the utmost haste and under the most crushing duress, turns out to be the best personality Sun News has! (laugh out loud...)
Brian would be great here also!
Mr. Dunstans presence and obvious leadership skills, which he executes effortlessly, about his much lesser peers is to the Oracle of Ottawa poetry in motion! It is particularly entertaining to the Oracle of Ottawa to watch the ambitious, but sadly untalented lick-spittle male peers grovel in wonder and dread, for the faint hope of basking in the richness of Mr Dunstans sweet dark light. But realizing, alas, that they are only making the big Brian even better looking! Thanks for the contrast honey!
Who knows? The talent is there!
But, alas, it won't last for long... Soon the gifted Mr. Dunstan will be snatched by the CBC or the BBC or maybe even a very nice rich American network affiliate in the southern United States! Say Dallas, or Augusta. The Oracle of Ottawa has no doubt that Mr. Dunstan will go very far indeed! The main reason for this is that Mr. Dunstan does not wanna'be, he knows that he was born to be. Contrary to present management philosophy, the viewers can tell the difference!
As far as the Oracle of Ottawa is concerned, Brian Dunstan is as good as Komla Dumor! And will no doubt have as bright a future.
"Roman society had a history of violence, and artists were no exception. Fights and brawls were frequent in this world. This became the world of Caravaggio." Caravaggio; Exhibition Program...
It was twenty four years ago that I took a really hot French girl to see the Degas exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada for a first date. It was awesome! The show included all the known extant works of Degas! It was simply a once in a lifetime experience that today would be utterly impossible to duplicate in today's unstable world. Last Friday, me and that really hot French girl, still together, after all these years decided to go see the Caravaggio exhibition that is on at the National Gallery until September 11, 2011. These special shows take forever to organize and are simply the best educational, cultural and entertainment value for your dollar anywhere! And with the philistine Conservative Party of Canada in power I thought it doubly prudent to make this show just in case the National Gallery is turned into a Walmart Sam's Club! I wish I was joking here, but with the right wing bible thumping wacko's you just can't never tell....
Much to my surprise (and chagrin) there was a ton of space still left in the under-ground car park, no line-ups at the ticket booth and nearly no one at the exhibition! How can you explain this? Perfect fine art observing conditions! The security guys were pretty burly, but very mild mannered. He took our ticket stubs and pulled open the massive door and motioned us through! This exhibition contains forty works of Caravaggio and a whole wack of his contemporaries! If you have any soul what so ever the grandeur of it all takes your breath away! The patrons of the arts back then loved their art LARGE! Out of the whole exhibition on display there were only about three paintings that would fit correctly into the largest modern house! All the rest require a National Gallery or a freaking Castle! The Oracle of Ottawa just can't start putting into to words the effect this has on a person. But I can assure you with the utmost confidence that seeing these great works of The Old Masters will make you a better citizen of the world and a better human being!
Saint Jerome and the angels... (4 feet high by 6 feet wide!)
It is a real double good day when at an exhibition like this that you get to see something that you always wanted to see and it was totally unexpected! Friday was a double good day! The great painting of Saint Jerome and the angels by Bartolomeo Cavarozzi is also included in this wonderful show! It is a painting that I have always wanted to see. Cavarozzi did not share the darkness of Caravaggio! The contrast is near overwhelming! This huge painting radiates warmth, mercy and humanity like a blast furnace radiates heat. The Oracle of Ottawa found himself unable to tear himself away from this magnificent work of art. How did they get a painting to seem to glow?
Caravaggio - The Sacrifice of Isaac...
The one thing the Oracle of Ottawa has learned is that even the best and most modern digital images do not in any way capture the power and masterful grace of an Old Master painting! Somehow, no matter what, the captured image is always way too dark! The Sacrifice of Isaac was to me the most memorable. The angels face in reality is as radiant as a modern Klieg light! This again is a huge work many feet high by many feet wide! And they are even more imposing when you see them in their original massive frames! I could almost here Abraham; " Say What?" Deliverance is at hand, (the angel), evil is at bay, (the goat or ram), and Isaac has the look on his face that says "when I get my hands untied, I am going to rip your wings off!" You have to see this and soak it up. The look on the faces, especially Abraham is not soon forgotten...
Here in closing is a little video to get you in the mood of Caravaggio. After seeing the great works this is the video that leaves you with the feeling that I am sure you will experience. Don't miss this if you are living in Ottawa and/or visiting Ottawa. To see all these great works in one place for a mere fifteen bucks is an incredible deal! Just think, if even you had all the time and money in the world, and you went to each paintings home gallery, it would take months and hundreds of thousands of dollars! Don't miss it! Support the fine arts and the fine folks, who, at the National Gallery of Canada slave for years in total obsessed dedication to make these events happen!
The Oracle of Ottawa has been following you in the oldvulgar media, and I must commend you on taking your new job as Interim Leader so seriously. I just about fell off my sofa when you mentioned the bit about ridding the Liberal Party of its "feudal elements" And they say that no one reads my blog! I really enjoyed that one! I would also like to commend you and the party for putting off the leadership convention for a couple of years... It will give more time for the next Three Wise Men to rise up, just like Trudeau, Marchand and Chretien did all those years ago. We so need the next ones. My Rosary has been getting heavy traffic as of late. I never thought as a Liberal I would have to resort to divine intervention. But the Oracle of Ottawa is a pragmatic bastard, if he is nothing at all!
Liberals need a lot of this lately!!
As you are no doubt well aware Bob there was that huge surge of new party members just after the last Federal Election. All of us new party members in Ottawa - South are wondering where are party cards are? Why is it that I have the feeling that if I went to the NDP site right now and bought a party card I would have my shiny new NDP membership card in less than five business days? We fear in Ottawa - South that there is a massive Geritol struggle among the remaining hulk of what was once the great Liberal Party. Give it up Bob! You are not going to be Prime Minister! And neither is David McGuinty or any of the other remainders! Assure your place in history by readying the Party for the next Three Wise Men!
But that doesn't mean that you can't have fun with it in the mean time! It amazes me that the Liberal Party has tolerated the abuse of low life hick conservative attack ads? Don't hire a another spin agency! You have the Young Liberals don't you? Geez, the young of today know everything about doing some one up on "social media"! Let 'em loose Bob!
You have got to admit that the front bench of the present government is, all in, the weakest collection of screw ups and misfits that even make the NDP look brilliant! And Bob they did look very brilliant during that last 58 hour debate that you backed the conservatives to stop! By the way the Oracle of Ottawa was not very impressed at all with that. What was wrong, did you guys run out of clean shirts or Geritol??
Candidates:
John Baird: Now, if there was anybody that was in over their head, this is the guy! And proof of that is at You-Tube. Hell it is just sitting there waiting to be deployed! Why allow this petty thug a free ride?
Two Tier Tony: Talk about a wanna'be! He may have a thick skin but all these conservatives have very frail egos, and a real thick electorate! As soon as there boy is not cool any more they will drop him like last weeks Walmart flyer!
Bev Oda: I mean geez, this poor woman is so pathetic, a mere huff and puff and the whole structure would come tumbling down! Do you get the feeling like I do that she doesn't quite add up? You should look into this real close....
Jim Flaherty: How hard can this be? Weee Jimmy... For all intents and purpose the guy is essentially nothing more than an ambulance chaser! Now the angle here is all his bluster about how he favors the free market and Adam Smith ete. etc. Ask him how many stocks he owns! Ask him about what he really thinks about stocks.. The NDP and all of Canada would just love it!
Now there is the start Bob. You are in the House darn near all the time. You would know even better then me were all the weak links are! I know you don't like the principle of the thing and all. But bite the bullet of ethics, do it for Iggy and the future Three Wise Men! Do it for Canada!!
Here is a perfect example Bob! This was put together by a one sole person at home, for fun, for nothing!! Turn loose the Young Liberals! Have contests! Prize winners get aired on national television!! Chop! Chop! of you go Bob!!
All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, Section 1, paragraph 18, lines 12-14
The Oracle of Ottawa had hoped to cover many varied and interesting subjects in this humble blog. But just as soon as I think I can forget about Sun News TV finally, they shock with an even greater travesty then the one that preceded it! Today at 2:57 p.m. another new low was hit.
Canadian Police Memorial
Today was the funeral of Constable Garrett Styles. It was carried on all three Canadian News Networks. Two of these networks did it with the greatest respect. One of these networks did not. There are certain times and occasions in Canada and especially in Ontario when the "bottom line" goes out the window. Premier Dalton McGuinty made time to address the assembled mourners. The under funded "state broadcaster" CBC, and CTV News Net run the whole length of the funeral without commercial interruption. Sun News TV did not. At 2:57p.m. as the casket of the slain officer was being carried down the steps, Sun News TV decided that the running of a two minute Doctor Ho commercial was more important... A quick check between channels indicated the integrity of the other two national news carriers, who stayed with the event coverage.
It's no picnic out there...
At three p.m. sharp it was the standard entrance of the celebrated on air personality Krista Erickson replete in her customary skank party dress, complete with her usual "shits and giggles" demeanor. The only thing that this viewer thought was missing was the street light...A quick check to the other two national carriers indicated that they stayed with the funeral, missing their top of hour advertising points, which this viewer was very impressed by. I just couldn't believe what I saw.
This was the exact two minute commercial run by Sun News TV at 2:57p.m. (E.S.T) as the casket of Constable Garrett Styles was being carried past his Honour Guard. I have no doubt that the "Thin Blue Line" have their own ways of dealing with this incredible diss'.
An empty sack cannot stand upright.
The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, Third Edition, p. 220
Come the time of the biggest long week-end of the summer, the Oracle of Ottawa knows that you have really got to pay attention. You got to pay attention to your TV set, and to your old fashioned mailbox. The time before a big holiday in a democracy now run by fart catchers and spin doctors is the best time to let out the sneaky, slimey news that you hope no one will notice until you actually start acting on it!
HP12C - Irvin Studin doesn't know how to use this?
Well this year is no exception! There were three Canada Day sneak outs this year. The first one was the sale of AECL to SNC Lavalin for a mere 15 million dollars! The Conservative Harper government has given away over 1.5 billion dollars of Canadian tax-payers money to a corporate ho' in Quebec for mere cents on the dollar, with the cover story that the government has no business in the nuclear reactor business! The second sneak out came in my mail box from Ottawa Hydro telling me that if I use electricity on peak hours, (and these hours now being specified by Ottawa Hydro), that that will cost me ten cents per kilowatt hour! But the Ontario McGuinty government recently spent a gizillion dollars installing smart meters to every consumer in Ontario so that "we could take advantage and pay the market rate" for electricity! All I can say is that Premier McGuinty had better call home to his old law firm in Ottawa and tell them to clean off his old desk, cause he is going to need his old job back after election time this fall!
The third attempted sneak out I caught was on Steve Paikins The Agenda on TV Ontario aired on Canada Day eve. It was the interview with Irvin Studin entitled Canada at 100 Million, How do we get there? The studious and stern looking little Irvin was going on about how important it is for Canada to grow to 100 million people by the end of this century! (4:40) He claims to have got this grandiose idea from an (unsourced) quote from Winston Churchill! (First Red Flag...) Now it all gets strange when little Irvin states that to get to 100 million people by the end of this century (89 years to go...) we should start raising our present immigration rate 10-15% starting now! (5:12) The Oracle of Ottawa's bull shit alarm went off in terminal lock-on mode! This sounds like a trial panic "Life Raft" plan for a certain nation state that has recently burned or is in the process of burning all its remaining bridges and is setting the ground work now to transfer its citizenry to a new "host". (Does anybody have any idea which nation state this is?)
People should mind their own business...
Little Irvin states that we in Canada are mere provincials on the world stage (5:20) and that we could be such a "world power" if we just bulked up! Well we are already a G8 Nation! Canada is already a "world power"! We have already won the United Nation award for the best country on Earth more than once! We have more influence then we will ever need! (11:00) Then little Irvin starts getting all fascist about bring in tons of God knows what, as long as they are breathing and forcing them to live in places like Moosonee, Ontario(!) (7:00) for a period of five years! (8:00) The small constitutional problems that this would bring up are not addressed save that it could be sent to the courts! (8:48)
Facts:
At what annual growth rate would Canada have to grow to reach a population of 100 million in 2100 A.D.?
With a starting population of 35 million and 89 years to go Canada would have to grow at an annual rate of: 1.1865% per year! (Conclusion: Slam the Immigration doors shut, we just don't need any of them!)
At a growth rate of 2.00% per year, Canada will reach a population of 100 million in 54 years from now! That is Canada will have 100 million people at 2.00% annual growth in the year 2065!
At a growth rate of 3.00% per year, Canada will reach a population of 100 million in 36 years from now!
That is Canada will have 100 million people at 3.00% annual growth in the year 2047!
Conclusion:
Canada is not week in Demographics! It is only week in arithmetic! Especially the arithmetic of first generation Canadian university professors, who have claimed to have attend the London School of Economics and Oxford University as Rhodes Scholars!! (Now this would be an ideal place for the Conservative government to cut funding, transferring it to artists that can always "do the math"!!)
This is a full copy of the said interview... all times in brackets are taken from this video time signature....as referenced above...
