Jason Kenney - Math Check For A Genius

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!

Jason Kenney - Is that MY pizza?

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!

Another bull shit snore fest. Yaaaaawwwwnnnnnn!!!

The Western Canadian Barley Teaser Rate

"a reasonable person's beliefs change according to the state of the persons knowledge."
Irving M. Copi, Carl Cohen, Introduction to Logic, 8th edition, p. 462

The Oracle of Ottawa does not know shit about farming! But he does know that although people may not always need oil and gas, they will always have to eat! People have always chided the Oracle of Ottawa for the "risk" he takes when picking and buying his own stocks... but when the Oracle of Ottawa contemplates the Western Canadian farmer planting his section in the springtime (One section = 640 acres = 1 square mile?) he realizes what risk is really all about! There have been times when the Western oil and gas producers have said "Let the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark!" But for the life of him, the Oracle of Ottawa cannot find a reference of any Western Canadian farmer ever saying " Let the Easterners starve in the dark!".

Real Power...

As stated in many earlier posts to this humble blog, the Oracle of Ottawa gets very nervous and alarmed when he see's venerable Canadian institutions come under attack and assault. The latest instance was just last week when the precedent was set by the Conservative government of employing "Final offer arbitration"
in the solution of large labour disputes. Totally irresponsible talk of changes to the Canadian Senate is absolute red meat to the base at home, but in reality, it is a reckless play with the fires of chaos. Another institution that has come under attack is the Canadian Wheat Board. Now even to an Ontario city slicker, this is scary talk.

More powerful than nuclear weapons?

When the Oracle of Ottawa hears the likes of Ezra Levant pinging off of the CWB on Sun News TV, you have to start to worry. Who is who lobbying for now? When you have a Prime Minister saying that Canada is going to be a "world power" and then threaten to close down the CWB you got to start wondering about imbalances on axis three and four... Canada is a G8 country. There is no way that we can field a million man army in the field like India or China can. But we can decide who gets to eat! That is more powerful then all the armies in the world! During the cold war this power of the grain bin allowed Canada to punch way beyond its reach. Why would we abolish the one true lever we as a nation  have in geopolitical world power?

Heavens knows there are a few irritants with the CWB. And these problems are very repairable. But the guy in southern Alberta that can truck his barley to a mill in the States and get "more" money is a compelling story. But what about the guy in the northern parts of the western provinces? Will that "teaser" barley price still stand up when the CWB is gone and you have to deal with Cargill, ADM, and Monsanto? Will it really? I doubt it!

Canadian Wheat Board, A global brand!

But you western farmers can prove this to yourself. Call your provincial MLA and ask him/her if the western provinces can buy or rather assume the CWB from the Federal government? They want to get rid of it don't they? Now call your Federal member of Parliament and ask the same question... Well go ahead... No answer, that is strange... Beware the the Barley Teaser Rate!

 
What else would you close with? All the best to the farmers out west.