The First Great Debate Hush

The reason you get into politics is because you don't want to be governed by people less good than yourself.
Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Press Scrum, December 14, 1978

At Day Four of the Canadian 2015 Federal Election all is quiet on the hustings. All 338 of them. The party planes and buses are parked and under going mini bar refills, and visual maintenance checks. The arduous chore of chipping off the gum of journalists, fart catchers, spin doctors and handlers assorted, from under the seats will continue deep into the night. And of course, all Conservative vehicles will get two coats of F'Breeze... 

Justin Trudeau - working up the debate face...

It is quieter in the political news cycle then the main street of Fort MacMurray with oil at 45.00 dollars a barrel. It is debate prep day. Now the first Canadian political debate is on the same day and I believe the same time as the first Republican candidates debate in the United States! Now we all know that Steve Harper won't be able to compete with Donald Trump! Now Dear Reader, you know why he has chosen to show up for this debate.

I don't have to tell you who the snake is do I?


The Oracle of Ottawa does not put much hold or value on candidates debates. They are now so scripted and over spun that it is much more fun to watch paint dry. Although I am looking forward to the clips of Liz May tearing huge strips of flesh off of Harper, as she does every chance she gets. And Angry Tom Mulcair will get some shit kicking in for sure, as he always does. Which all means in the end that Justin Trudeau won't be able to get a word in edge wise. All he has to do is look handsome and Prime Ministerial.
 

 
It is being widely reported in the old style vulgar commercial media that the Trudeau campaign is off to a roaring start, as the Oracle of Ottawa demonstrated in earlier posts. The minions of the 'Harper Government' have already started the Dead Babies mailing campaign. It is really early this election. They must be really anxious out West. And the Oracle of Ottawa predicts that the Trudeau train will continue to gain speed at an ever increasing rate...and is not likely to jump the tracks or dump any toxic cargo.... 

Stephen Harper Starts Job Search

Virtue and wisdom in their perfect purity, are ideas.
Immanuel Kant, Critique Of Pure Reason, First Edition-1781, p. 319

We all knew in Ottawa that the next election was going to very awkward, to say the least, for ole Steve Harper of the 'Harper Government'. The whole front row has long since bailed and unlike the past, there were no more willing people to step up. Well actually, there are so many bodies under the ideological bus that the rubber is no longer physically able to touch the road. And yes, it smells pretty bad too.

No caption required....

But all these first campaign stops are really weird, they are all in industrial settings, with the nearly great man getting his hands on, as best as his ten thumbs will allow. The warm bodies in the background look as if they have been unwillingly rounded up, and you can see it on their faces quiet easily, they are not amused. The whole thing has the atmosphere of a wake of some distant relative that you never really knew very well, but lunch might be served....It seems that the Prime Minister is using these last days to scope out future job opportunities, and making announcements that will make his transition to civilian life somewhat easier.
 

 I did not believe at first when I heard it, but the rumor in Ottawa is that Mrs. Harper has already rented the largest U-Haul van she could get and by Sunday morning last, she had it all hand loaded and ready to go back to Calgary. It is hidden away behind 24 Sussex Drive, not to upset the neighbors...

 Now contrast this to the first Justin Trudeau stops. Damn! They are packed. You can actually tell that the people really want to be there, to be part of history. Some young females seem to be having "overheating" issues standing so close to the comely Next One. (See video below..at 1:39) And the Oracle of Ottawa must admit, that when he see's the young Justin Trudeau in full flight, it makes the Oracle of Ottawa feel so many years younger, and brings back very many memories of the first Just Society that was sired by his father.

 Although it is only day three of the 2015 campaign you can already see who the winner is going to be. Not even the Oracle of Ottawa thought it would jell up so quickly. And the NDP, what the hell are they on? Where are the supporters? Where is the excitement? And so it goes. 

The Blossomng Of Justin Trudeau

We see things around us change, arise and pass away; they or their condition, must therefore have a cause.
Immanuel Kant, Critique Of Pure Reason, First Edition-1781, p. 330

Politics is a lot like pure bred horse racing or world class track and field. You can pretty much tell the outcome of the event by the mysterious quality of what horse handicappers call form. And the election that was kicked off yesterday for Canada's 42 Parliament is and will be further truth and confirmation of the mystery of form.

Justin Trudeau - Hits The Ground Running.

It was while watching the At Issue Panel on Sunday night that the Oracle of Ottawa heard the best news of the year so far. The word has gotten out that the young Justin had a drag out, no holds barred,
flat out brawl with the spin doctors and the fart catchers. Justin won. The fart catchers and spin doctors are locked up in a room, in a basement, somewhere in Ottawa, until the end of the election. The Oracle of Ottawa has been convinced that spread among the little bastards in short pants were several planted spies from the PMO of the evil 'Harper Government'.

The end results are included in the above news footage, just as the Oracle of Ottawa saw it in his secure bunker, somewhere in Ottawa South. Gone was the girlish choirboy vocal fry. Justin Trudeau's balls have finally dropped! Everything is possible now, anything can be won, everything will be done. And he took questions, not just five questions, with no supplementals, Justin answered all their questions until there were no more questions... The Oracle of Ottawa can't help but observe that the young Justin has the natural stump knack, he just really loves it, Thoughts of Obama and Clinton could not be escaped.

Meanwhile, several hours earlier, Angry Tom Mulcair held the weirdest campaign launch that the Oracle of Ottawa has ever witnessed in his life so far. There is no video of it on You Tube 24 hours latter. There were no questions at all, even worse than Harper!! Everyone in Ottawa was scratching their heads and asking "What the fuck was that?".  The more I watch this opportunistic actor the more I am beginning to worry about the actual future of the NDP at the Federal level. It was the most Stalinist political event the Oracle of Ottawa has ever observed in his life.

Last and least is a video clip from the evil ole Steve Harper of the soon to be defunct ' Harper Government'. It was all so creepy and eerie that the Oracle of Ottawa was convinced that Darth Vader himself would appear through the doors at any moment. There were five pre vented questions allowed, with no supplementals. What kind of democracy do you call that? You can tell from the body language that Harper just hates campaigning. You should look at his first appearance in Mount Royal latter in the day. He is afraid of the people. He is thinking and greatly afraid that someone will actually know what he has truly in store for the ordinary Canadians and that they will suddenly turn on him and string him up while the security helps with the noose! He apparently has that dream a lot...  

At the time of this writing it is only Day 2 of the great marathon. Justin Trudeau was really kicking up the excitement in Steve Harper's Calgary riding! Angry Tom Mulcair was no where to be found. NDP officials stated that he was preparing for the Thursday debate. The Oracle of Ottawa has heard the rumor that he is actually at Stornaway in an induced coma, under going a Geritol drip to get him on his feet for Thursday....The campaign continues.

'Harper Government' - The Twilight Of Less

Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time with out annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness.
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, p. 3

Well Dear Reader, it has been nearly ten years since the start of the right wing revolution in Canada. And it has been utter proof that you can not run a G7 economy on right wing platitudes of fifty words or less. The works of Strauss, Friedman, Hayek, and Ann Rand have been proven in actual daily use to be only the ingredients of a train wreck, worse than Leninist-Marxist communism.  

Justin Trudeau - Young sexy and viral doesn't need money...

At the time of this writing, Dutch disease has settled upon the land of Canada. The oil patch is in total melt down mode, and there will be no relief in the far future, let alone the near future. The NDP actually won an astounding landslide majority in Alberta only a few weeks ago. So it was with wonderment that the Oracle of Ottawa woke up to the news that old frail Steve Harper was visiting the GG to dissolve Parliament and set the nation of Canada into the longest political campaign since 1872. Steve Harper might have the money, but he certainly does not have the jam to last out a 78 day campaign. 

For someone so confident in their prospects, it is all very curious indeed.  And the first question fielded by that Trotskyite - Terry Milewski of the CBC; wondered why the 'Harper Government' had felt impulsed to hit up the Canadian taxpayer for a sum that may hit 400-500 million! Now all Canadians know why the 'Harper Government' destroyed the "per vote subsidy"! There was no way the Conservative Party of Canada could steal from it!

Yes Dear Reader, it is indeed the twilight of less. And most intelligent Canadians are finally starting to realize it. Canada's place in the world over the last ten years is much less. We have less privacy. We have less security of personal liberty. We have less wealth. We have less job security. We have much less social security net. We have less retirement to look forward to. We have much less optimism of and in the future. 

The Oracle of Ottawa can't tell you how it is all going to turn out. But he will call one event for absolute sure. The political landscape of Canada on the morning of October 20th 2015 will be very much different then it was on October 19th 2015, and all the money in the world will not have prevented it from happening.

Carbon Tax And Credit - The Age Of Geothermal

No. Some mathematician has said that the enjoyment lies in the search for truth, not in the finding it.
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Part Two, Section Fourteen, Constance Garnett translation

One thing that the Oracle of Ottawa is most certain of is that Canada has a lot of rocks. We have more rocks than oil, more rocks then the Arabs have sand, and more rocks then the Asians have rice. We have white rocks, black rocks and rocks in between that are every shade, hue, and pattern. We have hot rocks and cold rocks, soft rocks and hard rocks.  Come to think of it we have more rocks than trees and Canada has trees up the ass.

Geothermal - The Next Big Thing?

It is most ironical that the line that the 'Harper Government' mocked the young Justin Trudeau the most over was his promise for a carbon tax and credit system if he ever formed government in October 2015. Well here we are only a few short months away and oil has tanked to under fifty dollars a barrel. And if the Americans cut a deal with the Iranians, all bets will be off, oil could scrape under ten dollars a barrel! Well so much for peak production and that it is all down hill from here...

It seems that it is even catching on out west. The oil industry is begging for a carbon tax and credit system. It is most likely that someone actually checked out the facts and rediscovered that Canada is a potential geothermal powerhouse of the world. And they know that this is a good ride of business, just ask anyone from Iceland! Those oil wildcatters never throw anything away, and that includes the memories of those many hot holes that never finished out to oil producers. Why sometimes the temperatures were in the hundreds of degrees.

When you come to think of it, geothermal and oil would go great together as a concurrent ongoing business model. When the oil price tanks, you could just go and work those hot holes, and it would be a great way to us up some of that stranded gas. You know a cogen turbine with geothermal assist. Plus the carbon credits of carbon free geothermal would certainly please the unit holders at dividend payout days! There could be a whole new industrial paradigm in the creation here...

Where Is The Monument To The Victims Of Capitalism?

I'm beginning to weary of fruitlessly championing the truth, and sometimes I am quite unhinged by it.
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Part 1, Section Thirty Two, Constance Garnett Translation.

It doesn't happen often in Ottawa that an issue arises where every level of government rises up in an uproar, but that is exactly what happened when the 'Harper Government' announced the building of the Victims of Communism monument, at a site that was reserved for the new Supreme Court Building, located at the most prime location in downtown Ottawa. This was no doubt done to celebrate the 'Harper Government's many successes pleading before this august body.

 

proposed victims of communism monument...

The local burg(h)ers of Ottawa would be even more alarmed if they did their research a little deeper and discovered that the said monument stands to raise a ton of cash far in excess of its initial costs. There has been no report from the 'Harper Government' where the said hoped for excesses are going to go.. As always in Ottawa if there is even the semblance of smoke you can be utterly certain that at some point there will be fire. You see Dear Reader, if you are so inclined to celebrate the memory of a long gone "loved ones" misfortune of running into communism, you can have the loved ones name inscribed on the above mentioned monster, or rather monument, for a very small fee, not un-adjacent to one thousand dollars! Why just do the math! The sky is the limit!

 Now in Canada there has been very many social systems in vogue over the many years that Canada has been a Colony and later as a nation state. The first system that was found in use by Native Canadians was the tribal system. Then the French brought feudalism, that had a hell of a run from 1600 until well into the beginning of the 20th century! Along the way we also experimented with indentured labor and even slavery, just like in the United States! But the hands down winner was of course the best worst system of good old capitalism. And in the early days it was rabid tooth and claw, right out of Das Kapital as written by Karl Marx.

You had the lumber barons, the rail barrens, the press barons, and of course you had the mighty banking barons. And they have nearly all carried on into the kinder and gentler world of today, many of them such as say the Bank of Nova Scotia in there unbroken histories... But we never tried communism in Canada at all, not even once, that the Oracle of Ottawa is aware of. So The Oracle of Ottawa thought that it would be probably much more fitting to have a monument to The Victims Of Capitalism.  

 It as all tentative so far, but I have some basic ideas for the monuments basic design. In the center would be a huge hand cast in Pyrex Glass holding a very real steel double edge dagger! The glass hand would signify Adam Smith's Invisible Hand, but the real reality would be the 100 foot long dagger! Get it? When you play around in capitalism the invisible hand is bound to get you right in the back, even if you do every thing right...

Then, of course, we must high light the wonderful upside of capitalism in its unregulated glory, just like the 'Harper Government' pushes. How about this? We would have cast in bronze two young girls sorting medical linen waste, just like in the 19th century. Of course these children never got to be teenagers, let alone get into the ages of the double digits. Isn't the invisible hand awesome?

Then to one side we could have the tribute to the great bankers of the world. Such as that one old house in Europe that used to loan money to one country and with their underwriting fees would make a loan to the enemy of the first customer! Why, the first classic two fer! Then with the profits from the gouging interest rates of all the customers, you could sell both sides arms and create a virtuous cycle of misery and death. Yes Sir! Capitalism, how awesome is that? The 'Harper Government' should know this story very well, They are very close friends with the bankers that bought their own state in the Middle East.... 

Still They Come

All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Part 1, Section Eleven. Constance Garnett Translation (of course..)

At the time of this writing, the 'umble blog has over 116,000 hits, my G+ page has 1,268,461 hits, and a new blog that I have started recently entitled The Progress Impaired Cosmologist has the awesome number of 156 hits! People are not very interested in life, the universe, and everything...

Justin Trudeau whips out his cowboy...

The last posting of Sunday October 26, 2014 left me very depressed, in that the level of public discourse had reached all time lows in Canada. And then there was the realization, later, that as I contemplated posting again, that all my original intentions at the beginning of The Economy Of Media have been realized! Sun News Network is long gone, off the air, all my favorite members of the 'Harper Government' are dead or gone back to the rocks that they crawled out from under. And it looks like the young Justin Trudeau is going to peak last, and indeed be the next Canadian Prime Minister. And of course when that happens the economy and the budget will take care of itself, just like the young Justin said.

I have spent the rest time wisely, and the Oracle of Ottawa has learned many valuable and deep things. The main one being that the writing is never over, the work is never done, and if it is, death or something worse is soon to come. As the Oracle of Ottawa sat awe struck by the news that Albertan's voted in an NDP government, and the latest announcement of the bailing of yet another high profile minion of the 'Harper Government', the Oracle of Ottawa has come to realize the utter and extreme power of the blog, and the powerful concept of the quietly planted meme. It is not about the hits, it is about who reads.

The fact of the realization of the passing of Bill C-51 certainly frightened the Oracle of Ottawa, for about five seconds, until it quickly dawned upon the Oracle of Ottawa that you can have all the laws of the Universe on the books, but if you keep cutting all the security budgets, there is at the end of the last days of the 'Harper Government' not much chance that there will be anyone left to pay me a visit..., let alone monitor my awesome missives.

There will be many interesting issues that will be brought under the close scrutiny of the Oracle of Ottawa in this next wave, stay tuned to one of the "vehicles".