Excited Delirium

I picked up “The Armageddon Factor” by Marci McDonald several months ago, shortly after it hit the book racks.

For those who are interested in Canadian politics, this is a must read.

McDonald explores many ideas in this book and the central theme that I drew out of her meticulous work is the idea that Canada is being run by a very small group of nihilists and self-righteous Christian propaganda experts.

Besides that, I came to three conclusions as I put the book down:

1. It seems the Harper Conservatives could care less about legislation.
2. Progressives are fucked.
3. Canadians are as blind to Harper as the Jedi were to Palpatine / Darth Sidious.

It Seems The Harper Conservatives Could Care Less About Legislation

In reading this text and observing current events, I now see that Stephen Harper could care less about moving Canada in any direction when it comes to legislation.  Time and time again, the Conservatives have ruined their owned agenda and progress by proroguing government or timing actions so that it would be impossible to make them come to fruition before the end of a session.

All they really seem to want to do is maintain their hold on power while they pack little baby chirping Cons into the halls of federal offices, be they the halls of the Public Service, various commissions, the Senate, any level of judicial positions, all non-government organizations that are funded by the government and so on.

Even if a new progressive wave of political and media authorities get elected into office, the battles will last for decades as they do what they can to push Conservatives out of work and office.  It will prove to be a holy administrative terror that few will be able to erode.

To make matters worse, the media has not held the Conservatives to task on this mediocre legislative program, which means they’re either lazy or in cahoots.

Progressives Are Fucked

I’m sorry, but I have no other way to explain this nicely.

Another more polite way to suggest my opinion is to reflect on the fact that most progressives – by nature or definition of who they are and what they believe in, myself included – are not quite the ‘A-type’ when it comes to personality.

We don’t run newspaper chains, television stations or tight political campaigns.

We run on emotion, reaction and, in many cases, panic.

There is rarely a plan.  There is rarely a vision.  We fall for smokescreens and fail to see the big picture.

We need to learn from the lessons that Marci McDonald clearly spells out in the Armageddon Factor.

Case after case, she clearly identifies the driving interest, the tactics used to gain momentum and the key players involved and how they got things to the point of being some of the most influential organizations in Canada and the rest of North America.

Conservative ‘values’ are tied in to nearly every component of every day life that everyone (including progressives) is influenced by, including the media, judges, education, our communications infrastructure (you can’t have the Internet without selling out to Bell, Telus or Rogers), the military, foreign affairs, the UN and other institutions that affect our day-to-day activities.

Conservatives leverage the fragmentation that exists in every single progressive camp.  They belittle the bickering that goes on and on and on, while they push forward with single messages and memes that dazzle the general public.

If progressives are ever going to get anywhere in this country, we need to start a process of wearing down every politician in this country from the municipal level right up to the Senate.  We need a checklist and/or inventory of people that are available to cross-pollinate educational and investment opportunities.  We desperately need our own media that will tell the general population the truth about Canadian politics and the poison that Stephen Harper brings to the Hill.

Canadians Are Blind

Seriously.  While watching Star Wars III – the one Anakin becomes Darth Vader – the analogy seemed perfect.  For some reason, Canadians have completely blinded themselves to the reality that Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have only one thing in mind when it comes to Canada:  endless domination, despite their smaller numbers.  And that’s just the starting point.

As I’ve already suggested, most of the cause of this blindness is due to taking media messages at face value, but it’s also related to a very consistent and carefully crafted spin job that comes from the PMO every single day.

Apathy is Comfort – Action is Danger

How do we emerge from the mess that surrounds us?

Neither the Liberals nor the NDP have proven that they are capable of referring to a wider base of Canadian citizens to select their leader, nor do they effectively leverage today’s technology to develop a platform or array of positions that all Canadians want to support.

Our institutions have failed us as well and we need to build our own tools, again leveraging today’s technology.  It has to come from the ground up, preferably with our infrastructure.  If not, we’re just riding on the backs of people that will sting us to death when we’re not looking.  We have all kinds of online tools, like wikis, social tools and other platforms but even with aggregators like Progressive Bloggers, we still only seem to capture the hearts and ideas of the passionate and not the average citizen.

Since progressive-minded people represent the majority of Canada’s population, how do we create a tsunami wave of ideology that our politicians simply can’t ignore?

Cote Gauche pretty much nails the central purpose of eliminating the Gun Registry, but I’ll expand on the idea:  this is the tip of the Harper Deregulation iceberg.

It sets precedent and justifies ripping apart every bit of fabric that Canadians have spent the last 143 years knitting together.

By failing to support the Gun Registry, the NDP aren’tfailing their few constituents out in various rural ridings.  They’re failing the basic premise of their core belief structure:  government can and should be an active participant in some aspects of the regular citizen.  I’m not saying it always has to be there, but it serves a purpose.

So go ahead … vote against the registry.  Vote against your belief system.

When you do, maybe you’ll wake up and realize that THIS is why you’re failing in the polls and why current representatives of the NDP have ruined any chance of ever being in control of this country.

I’m calling it:  Jack Layton has jumped the shark.

OK … maybe many others have called it earlier (if even by a few days), but there’s no going back from the mess that Jack Layton has created for himself and I’m going to pile on to that point of view.

Suggesting that the NDP can’t be blamed for the death of the gun registry is akin to saying that your heart doesn’t help your blood flow.

For those of you looking for a solution to the Gun Registry situation, Scott Tribe posts a compromise recommendation for Jack and Michael to consider.

However, I am concerned that Jack will continue to play games with Stevie as opposed to creating real solutions that all Canadians will be proud of.

The image above reminds us that Jack Layton has been working to keep Stephen Harper in power for some time, not just as a result of the gun registry, but ever since he got bluffed by Stephen Harper into making a grab for a few more seats in 2006 and helped defeat Paul Martin’s Liberal government.

(NOTE:  For the record, I am not a Liberal or an NDPer.  I’m lost as far as who I would trust to earn my vote.)

As Jack Layton or members of the NDP continue to prop up the Conservatives, it’s becoming more and more apparent that the ’socialists’ are just henchmen for the Cons.

Failing to differentiate the NDP from the most right-wing organization in Canada is a massive error and will cost the NDP dearly, both in terms of financial and voter support.  Their efforts to find concession will result in the Liberals being seen as Canada’s only progressive option.

Jack Layton needs to stop looking at the Liberals like they’re competition.  Jack Layton needs to start developing a plan for getting rid of the Conservatives, including concerted marketing effort across all opposition parties (including the Green Party) to remind Canadians that coalitions, even including separatists, are OK.

Jack and Michael need to work together to defeat the Conservatives at every turn before the DNA of this country is turned to mush (although it may be too late for that).  They should figure out every possible political angle they can to maximize the number of seats that they can get in the next election, including the removal of candidates in key ridings.

If Jack fails on this, the urban population will dump the dippers in droves and the NDP will be caput.

If the NDP survives this, there should be a leadership review for the NDP, but we know that will be pointless because the NDP is run by the unions and individual members will be shut out.

As such, the NDP is done as a party in Canada.

The Liberals know it and they’re distancing themselves in a big way from the NDP politically and likely in the polls as well.

All of this brings us back to why Stephen Harper will be in control for a very long time.  The Liberals and NDP refuse to play nice and bring the government down.  They are sworn enemies and will do anything to avoid concession, including returning democracy to Canadians.

Because Jack and Mikey won’t be able to play nice, we’ll all be screwed by Stevie.

Avaaz.org has started a petition to encourage the support of Konrad von Finckenstein, head of the CRTC, to prevent ‘Fox News North’ (a subsidiary and entity managed by Quebecor Media Inc) from launching in Canada.

However, please also remember that an effective petition against Fox (and supporting the CRTC) should also include a boycott of Quebecor Media Inc, all subsidiaries and the companies that advertise on their sites.

Please spread the word that Canadians will not tolerate the abuse of media that QMI, Quebecor, Sun Papers, Canoe and other subsidiaries impose on us every day and that they will bury us with if Fox News North goes live in the coming months.

I figured it out.  Canada has its own version of a very uncool, very unpopular Austin Powers.  In fact, I need to correct myself:  we have a version of Dr. Evil (I wish I was good at doing image mockups, but I think you get where I’m going with this).

Stephen Harper has found a time machine and has dropped the entire nation of Canada in the 1950s.

You don’t believe me?

• The Cold War is still going on.  The evil Ruskies are everywhere.  (Is our PM really trying to pick a fight with Russia?  Really?  Does he think we’re all that stupid?  Don’t answer … we are.)
• Everyone is white and Canada belongs to ‘Europeans’.
• McCarthyism is in full swing.  Fear and reprisal are everywhere.  No one can be trusted.  Arrests of ‘terrorists’ are constant, ongoing and ubiquitous.  We will fill jails with those that oppose us.
• Roads and the auto industry are the only things worth saving in this country, but it’s too bad those damn unions are gumming things up.
• There is no “Internet”.  It’s just print and TV and our friends in those media universes will help us ’shape’ our messages to Canadians (just like our friend Goebbels did in the 30s and 40s!)
• We fold the map of time and our political landscape follows Dief the Chief and no one else.  The Liberal domination from the 1960s onwards never happened.
• Women are supposed to be bare-foot and pregnant in the kitchen (or publicly humiliated when they act up a bit).
• GOD is the only religion, dammit.  Everything else is magic and witchcraft (and should be punishable by death, a la Sun editorials).

In the progressive world and for most others, we know this isn’t true, but Stevie and his 15-20% of Canada’s population as minions are stuck in the 50s.

What can we do to move forward?

How do we end Canada’s pain?

I LOVE this!

A Creative Revolution has done a fine job of reminding us who Stevie and the gang work for.

Of particular interest is the note about Faux News, starting around 3 minutes.

Keep the boycott rolling!

Jack Layton just won’t do his job.

Jack won’t whip (or at least kindly ask) his rural MPs to vote against the private member’s bill in the House of Commons.  For more background on this, read my original post.

The rationale is that he won’t whip his fellow MPs into a position that their constituents may not want.  I understand, but will tell you that a good leader won’t have to use ‘whipping’ to convince his MPs that they’re doing the right thing.

However, this won’t happen and it throws the leadership of the NDP into question.

But that’s a longer and more involved issue that we have to return to later.

In the interim, we (you, me and everyone else that cares about safety in Canada) have some work to do.

Below is a full list of NDP MPs that may wind up supporting the private member’s bill and the Conservative effort to dissolve the Gun Registry.

Ask them what makes them smarter about this than the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.

Remind them that for every vote they keep in a rural riding (assuming we have an election tomorrow, which we won’t), they’ll likely lose 10-100 votes in urban areas.

I sure as hell won’t vote for the NDP if this get through!

Here’s a quick list of all of the email addresses so you can copy/paste them to your email:
Allen.Ma@parl.gc.ca, AngusC@parl.gc.ca, Ashton.N@parl.gc.ca, BevinD@parl.gc.ca, Cullen.N@parl.gc.ca, Gravelle.C@parl.gc.ca, Hughes.C@parl.gc.ca, Hyer.B@parl.gc.ca, Maloway.J@parl.gc.ca, Rafferty.J@parl.gc.ca, StoffP@parl.gc.ca, Thibeault.G@parl.gc.ca

And here are the details (remember that calling is much more effective than emailing):

Allen, Malcolm
Welland
T: 905-788-2204
Ottawa: 613-995-0988
Email: Allen.Ma@parl.gc.ca

Angus, Charlie
Timmins/James Bay
T: 705-567-2747
Ottawa: 613-992-2919
Email: AngusC@parl.gc.ca

Ashton, Niki
Churchill
T: 866-785-0522
Ottawa: 613-992-3018
Email: Ashton.N@parl.gc.ca

Bevington, Dennis
Western Arctic
T: 867-873-6995
Ottawa: 613-992-4587
Email: BevinD@parl.gc.ca

Cullen, Nathan
Skeena Bulkley Valley
T: (250) 877-4140
Ottawa: 613 993 6654
Email: Cullen.N@parl.gc.ca

Gravelle, Claude
Nickel Belt
T: 705-897-2222
Ottawa: 613-995-9107
Email: Gravelle.C@parl.gc.ca

Hughes, Carol
Algoma / Manitoulin / Kapuskasing
T: 705-848-8080
Ottawa: 613-996-5376
Email: Hughes.C@parl.gc.ca

Hyer, Bruce
Thunder Bay / Superior North
T: 807-345-1818
Ottawa: 613 996 4792
Email: Hyer.B@parl.gc.ca

Maloway, Jim
Elmwood / Transcona
T: 204-984-2499
Ottawa: 613-995-6339
Email: Maloway.J@parl.gc.ca

Rafferty, John
Thunder Bay / Rainy River
T: 807-623-6000
Ottawa: 613 992 3061
Email: Rafferty.J@parl.gc.ca

Stoffer, Peter
Sackville / Eastern Shore
T: 902-861-2311
Ottawa: 613-995-5822
Email: StoffP@parl.gc.ca

Thibeault, Glenn
Sudbury
T: 705-673-7107
Ottawa: 613-996-8962
Email: Thibeault.G@parl.gc.ca

Call them today.  Tell your friends to call them.  Remind them of the cost to the popularity of the NDP if they fail to support such a simple and basic way to keep our cities safe.

Back in Feb 2009, I wrote ‘Why Can’t We Just Spend Our Way out of the Depression‘, knowing full well that the American and US economy was being supported by smoke and mirrors and little else.

At the core of this article was the rationale that we’re facing a seismic shock in spending, not because of what people’s attitudes are about the economy, but because of a totally different economic issue:  life-cycle planning.

Boomers have always influenced our economic fortunes or issues.  Bananas, oil shocks, market gyrations and soon, market collapse.

Nearly a year later, I followed up with this piece on the US housing crisis.

It finally seems like the mainstream is catching on to this idea.

Wall Street Journal:  Another Threat to the Economy: Boomers Cutting Back

This piece has an excellent chart in it:

For those brilliant no-minds that just dumped billions into the auto industry:  your (and ours) investment will likely be cut in half within the next couple of years because boomers have cut their demand in half.  This makes sense because we’re seeing the steep rise in empty nesters that don’t need two or three SUVs sitting in their lot.  Instead, they’re buying one convertible or Honda Accord (for those that lost their shirts on one of the many manias in the last 30 years).

Any recovery that we’re seeing with car companies will be short-lived.  GM will have to design a marketing strategy other than giving cars away.  Chrysler will have to end ‘employee’ pricing.

A lot of change will happen in the next 10 years and it won’t be pretty.  Pensions will go bust and pensioners will have to take up part-time work at dumps like Wal-Mart of Costco.

The notable increases are with health insurance and drugs.  These companies will likely be one of the only profitable sectors over the next decade, despite the cries of communism coming in the wake of Obama-care.

To pay for everything, all savings will be liquidated and converted to Viagra, Lipitor and a moderately decent nursing home.  Don’t be surprised if the best-selling horror stories are those related to retirement home abuse (or STDs).

US Is Bankrupt …

This one comes to us from Bloomberg.

The US is incapable of paying its bills and there’s suggestion that the situation will be worse than Greece within a few years.

Gerald Calente Video

Believe it or not, Gerald Calente is not the source of my predictions.  One of the people that captured some of these ideas best was David Foot, who wrote Boom Bust Echo a while ago.

Next Steps?

The US administrators will continue to try to bail out industry over the next decade.

Every time they do, they will face an economic wall.  Bailouts require that they print money, printed money = inflation, inflation = dollar deflation, falling dollar = rising commodity prices, rising commodity prices = economic collapse.

This cycle was best recently described by Jeremy Rifkin as an Economic Endgame.

What To Do?

Realistically, there are three things we can do:

1. Stop spending, particularly on stupid wastes like car companies, prisons and military;
2. Start taxing the rich and taxing consumption;
3. Start slashing what corporations can deduct from their taxes.

People like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are smart because they’re getting old and they saw it coming a while ago.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other efforts are great ways to say ‘I’ve made all of this money and I’m going to protect it before the government comes and takes it away’.

Fine … we’ll tax the charities too, especially the religious ones.

As people like me get older, we won’t have the luxury of avoiding the wealthiest in our effort to feed our parents and kids at the same time.

We’re going to lift every rock to find money and we’re going to start at the top.

Jack Layton’s refusal to stand up for the Gun Registry will cost all Canadians.

Unfortunately, Jack Layton is only capable of thinking about his party’s fortunes and preservation of a few rural seats.

Of course, he fails to see that strength and leadership on an issue will win the hearts or urban voters, but he’d rather surrender those seats to the Liberals.

Yesterday’s NDP negotiated with the Liberals to bring us life (ie. the universal Health Care system).

Today’s NDP bring us death.

So … when the Gun Registry dies because Jack Layton refused to act on this (and continues to show favour to Cons rather than negotiate with the more politically aligned Liberals), will Canadians remember this shameful act and refer to gun crime as a “Jack Attack”?

I have to thank Disaffected Lib for this article and commentary related to the UN condemning the Omar Khadr trial.

It is and will be a complete farce.   Using information ’solicited’ while someone is under ‘duress’ is not information.  It’s a tainted plea for mercy.

Allowing a trial to proceed with evidence based on torture is just plain wrong.

If our government had any consideration for the plight of Canadians, they would have brought Khadr back long ago.  But they didn’t and here we are.

There is, however, a glimmer of hope … no matter how small.

As the judge in the trial declared, information obtained by any means of coercion will likely be admissible in this case.  The ‘hope’ is that in order to make this information known, the Khadr defense should insist on seeing exact video for at least 60 minutes prior to and after such evidence was obtained.

This way we’ll know for sure if the information is voluntary or not.

More importantly, the face of torture in the US and American society will be revealed, humiliating Americans and shaming them into the lowest of the low when it comes to respect for basic human dignities and rights.  Everyone around the world will see how Americans are treating people and expose them for being the grandest of hypocrites.

Unfortunately, Khadr may have to become a martyr to prove just how vile and corrupt the American war machine has become.