Justice: Not on the Map Yet

Here's a little known fact for readers outside of British Columbia: BC turns 150 years old this year. In 1858, after enough loyal British subjects had been dropped off to keep the original Coast Salish, Haida, and other First Nations people down and the Americans out, Governor James Douglas proclaimed the Crown Colony of British Columbia. 13 years later, BC would join Confederation, be ignored by the rest of Canada in perpetuity, and leave us to stage such elaborate, big-budget pleas for attention like Expo '86 and the 2010 Winter Olympics. This would be why the Provincial Government doesn't have anything by way of significant funds to commemorate this occasion, save for a few dopey TV spots and this exercise in historical revisionism being touted by Aboriginal Affairs Minister Mike De Jong: renaming the Georgia Strait as The Salish Sea.

For those of you just joining us, the governing BC Liberals have been bending over backwards to secure the support of BC First Nations after their pathetic attempt to resolve any and all outstanding Aboriginal issues in the mail-in referendum of 2002. For those of you scoring at home, this page started his Hibachi with his referendum ballot, and enjoyed a couple of bratwursts with that nice, smoky, tyranny of the majority flavour. Since that time, Aboriginal policy in British Columbia has been front-loaded with all kinds of symbolic gestures, particularly around the upcoming Olympics, and what renaming the Strait is really about is just another way for the Liberals to say they're sorry without actually having to do anything and let them continue to smugly feel good about themselves.

It also appears that the Salish Sea is going to be the only pat on the collective head of BC's First Nations this year: why won't there won't be a Haida Bay or a Nisga'a Mountain put on the map? Simple - the traditional territory of the Coast Salish people is where the Olympics are being staged, and just like how the Tsawwaseen Treaty enabled the government to expand the Roberts Bank Superport, Liberals are all for recognizing the aspirations of Aboriginal Peoples if it means they can get something in return. If Mike De Jong, Gordon Campbell, and the rest of the gang in Victoria want to do something 'historic' for BC First Nations to mark this 150th anniversary, this page can suggest a few things:

-Build actual social housing so that impoverished aboriginal people living in BC's urban areas can live with dignity and turn their lives around.

-Join the lobby to make the Federal Government hurry up with creating a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the fate of aboriginal children who were sent to Residential Schools and never came home.

-Do away with a treaty negotiation process that relies on coercion, bribery, and pitting First Nations against each other.

I'm sure there are other ideas which are more constructive than changing the names on a map. This page encourages readers to share them with the powers that be so that First Nations can experience real positive change rather than just a name change.

Put a lid on it.

No, not a new roof for BC Place, but any last minute spending on a new roof for BC Place. If there's anything that is souring a growing number of Vancouverites on the 2010 Winter Olympics, it's the plethora of 11th hour projects which absolutely, positively have to be done before the Olympic Torch makes its way to the shores of False Creek that were never part of the original Olympic bid. It appears that much of PavCo's rationale for the last minute top-popping is the time tested engineering principle of 'wouldn't it be nice', i.e. to be able to shoot off fireworks at the Games' Opening and Closing and Ceremonies. As the Celebration of Fight...er...Light teaches us every summer, Vancouverites will endure any inconvenience, hardship, or threat to their personal safety for a few minutes of going 'ooooh' and 'aaaah' at all the pretty festive munitions, priorities be damned.

BC Place is not worth the investment, certainly not just for a couple of fireworks shows for the people lucky to have tickets to the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. It is definitely not worth it while Greg Kerfoot waits in the wings to build a new waterfront stadium with his own money to vault his Vancouver Whitecaps into Major League Soccer. The dome is an outdated, overheated, uncomfortable acoustic nightmare which over the past few years has benefited no one but the defensive line of the B.C. Lions, and PavCo wants us to pay even more for it. Any new roof built on such a short timeline will require at least a minimal retrofit of the stadium, which will be performed by contractors at overheated pre-2010 rates.

If BC Place were demolished after the Olympics rather than needlessly dressed up before, the value of the real estate on which it sits would pay for thousands of units of social housing. Unfortunately, the psychotic rush to create the picture postcard perfect Olympic experience will leave Vancouver with only thousands of 'ooohs' and 'aaahs' drifting into the night air for a couple of nights in February 2010.

Park this Stupidity, Again.

The province is looking to raise property taxes in order to make up for abandoning the parking stall tax which was proposed to raise revenues for Translink. For those readers who live in the City of Vancouver, this shouldn't be anything new, it's just like how the NPA raised taxes on homeowners to lower them on their corporate friends. This isn't government run like a business, it's government run by business.

There was nothing wrong with the previous parking tax proposal, and in the wake of the recent Carbon Tax initiative and the Liberals' glacier-like move towards making motorists pay the true cost of driving, it's even more relevant now. Want to encourage the use of public transit? Implement a parking tax stringent enough to get rid of the ludicrous amount of 'free' parking available in the Lower Mainland, filter those people on to the transit system, give them a few weeks to bitch about the service and threaten to vote NDP, and in no time Kevin Falcon and his band of idiots in the Ministry of Transportation will cut their deluded bullsh*t about transportation 'choice' and get serious adequately funding public transit again.

Sure, the parking tax may take a little longer than to simply smack working families with another tax increase, but it goes a lot further to reducing congestion and greenhouse gases, and besides, it's more fair. Driving is the new Smoking, and motorists should be paying the true cost of their filthy activity by subsidizing public transit, not having transit users subsidizing Kevin Falcon's freeway fetish through our property taxes.

McCain turns Cheek, loses Face

Arizona Senator John McCain wrapped up the Republican Presidential nomination last night after trouncing Mike Huckabee in the Texas primary. For those of you scoring at home, Huckabee used two quotes from the Bible in his concession speech and one from baseball Hall-of-Famer George Brett. This page was left wondering what Jesus would do if he was ever caught using too much pine tar on his bat.

That was the good news for McCain. The bad news is that in going over the top as the G.O.P.'s standard-bearer, he now gets the endorsement of President George W. Bush. Oh boy, the stamp of approval from the worst President in American history, and the guy who had no qualms about push-polling South Carolina voters in the 2000 Republican primary about they would feel about McCain's illegitimate child. This isn't kiss and make up, it's kiss and throw up.

As for the Democrats, it appears the nomination tug of war will continue all the way to the Pepsi Center in Denver, after Hilary Clinton's big yank in Ohio. I projected some numbers here using my personal blend of polls and primary results in neighbouring states, and it looks very much like before it's all over, the superdelegates, the Michigan/Florida question, and maybe even the 26 delegates still pledged to John Edwards will all be back in play.

Albertans, Follow Me

This page extends his condolences to the Alberta New Democrats, Revmod Don and anyone else who lives in the province east to us who is progressive enough to grasp that the term 'Progressive' should never be attached to the term 'Conservative'. Progressive Albertans, I feel your pain about yesterday's landslide electoral mugging...er...victory for Ed Stelmach and the Conservatives, but I also feel fortunate to be in British Columbia where I don't have to accept that the Alberta electorate is always right.

Believe it or not, I tend to side with former Calgary Herald editor Catherine Ford, who was fond of saying that 'People elect the governments they deserve'. For some reason Albertans believe that in electing the same party 11 consecutive times, they will get the 'change' so strongly desired in opinion polls prior to and during the 2008 campaign. These people are either hypocrites, woefully naive, or as Ralph Klein liked to refer to them 'severely normal', and in their heavy-handed endorsement of Ed Stelmach's regime, they will get more of the same intransigence, corruption, social engineering and bone-headed right wing ideology, and they will deserve it.

Either way, these people are not worth your efforts, and I realized this a few months after I moved to Vancouver eight years ago. Despite the sinister machinations of Gordon Campbell and the BC Lieberals, I feel much happier living in a province that retains some of the trappings of democracy: fixed election dates, a referendum on changing the electoral system, voter recall, electoral boundaries set by demographic reality, legal protection for gays and lesbians that didn't have to be granted by the Supreme Court of Canada, an Environmental movement influential enough to make our government consider something resembling a carbon tax and a public transit strategy, and a Labour movement strong enough to threaten a General Strike and force that government to stop legislatively bullying front-line health care workers. It's also nice to have provincial elections where both major parties have a chance of winning, and the compassionate, progressive voters on the left who know better than 'let the good times roll' aren't resigned to banging their heads against the wall 30 minutes after the polls close.

As it appears that Alberta's boom will roll on in its familiar, haphazard, troglodyte manner, this page suggests that there is really only one strategy left for anyone who doesn't want to spend the rest of their lives under one-party rule: escape. You cannot save Albertans from themselves because your fates were sealed when the Tories started selling instant memberships to let them directly elect the Premier - legislative elections are a mere, much-ignored formality. That much control over the process makes it like Mexico under the PRI, but without the nice weather or cheap tequila.

Sooner or later, you will reach a point that your rent or housing payments in Calgary or Edmonton will equal the amount you would pay in Vancouver. If you're going to be that out of pocket, why not live somewhere where you can get a decent job, enjoy breathtaking scenery, and participate in a political culture that resembles a functioning democracy?

The 'Straight Talk Express' Turns North

Arizona Senator John McCain, on the verge of clinching the Republican nomination, is slowing down just before the finish line to give Canada a shout-out for enduring NAFTA and sending our young people to put themselves in harm's way for the questionable U.S. client regime in Kabul. This page just isn't feeling the love, and won't be voting for Mr. McCain. Or Mr. Huckabee. Or Mr. Obama. Or Ms. Clinton. Not even marking an 'X' for Ralph Nader. In fact, I'm pretty sure that there will be virtually no Canadians casting ballots for any of the leading (or following) Presidential candidates.

Maybe Mr. McCain wants to fill dead air and talk to people outside of the United States who are a little less aware of his plans to occupy Iraq in perpetuity. Maybe he's just trying to talk about something other than what exactly happened between him and Vicki Iseman. Or maybe, in mistaking Canada for a swing state, the guy just has a problem with his sense of direction, like a lot of other 71-year olds do.

Buy & Sell

Allegations have surfaced that in May of 2005, Conservative Party of Canda officials offered former Independent Surrey North MP Chuck Cadman a $1 million life insurance policy in exchange for his help in taking down the Liberals.

This page says this story is old news. Cadman obviously didn't take the money died a couple of months later, and is remembered by pretty much everyone as a no-nonsense, straight-up crusader in his efforts to reform the criminal justice system. The real question is, what did these guys offer Stephane Dion?

Bully for You, Christy

Today marks Pink Shirt Day in British Columbia, the culmination of a campaign to discourage bullying in the province's schools. This page calls bullsh*t, and challenges any pink shirted-sheeple who don't like it to try and knock the cynical chip on my shoulder.

It's disgusting that even my own Union Local would be sucked in by a feel-good exercise orchestrated by one Christy Clark, who, during her toxic tenure as Education Minister, did more damage to BC's public schools than that kid will do to your son or daughter at the bike racks after school. Maybe bullying wouldn't be such a problem if Clark and her BC Lieberals had put more resources, like counselling and better training for teachers, into the school system to deal with it, instead of trying to beat up the BC Teachers Federation at every turn and turning our public schools into test factories for the Fraser Institute where the top students are skimmed off into private schools. The real problem, as Lisa Moy adeptly explains, isn't bullying but the racism, sexism, class warfare and homophobia which is the ongoing result of the sociopathic dog-eat-dog, kid-eat-kid, winner-take-all society that Christy and the Campbell gang think makes Brutish Columbia The Best Place on Earth (tm).

Clark says "if there's one thing that I could raise my son to be, it would be caring, compassionate person." Does she mean the same privileged infant who had a nanny and custom nursery built for him at the BC Legislature at taxpayers' expense, while NDP MLA Jenny Kwan had to have Grandma look after her baby daughter in an annex office with no running water when the Leg was sitting? For those of you scoring at home, looking out for Number One (or Little One) does not equal caring or compassion. If Sam Sullivan did one thing right in his political career, it happened three years ago when he stopped that selfish, grandstanding, hypocritical b*tch Christy Clark from even getting close to becoming Mayor of Vancouver. Fortunately, all she's been left with is her bully pulpit at CKNW, which means that all any of us have to do to avoid this career political bully is switch stations or turn off the radio.

Can I put shares on my credit card?

VISA is planning an Initial Public Offering. Wow...and this page thought that the dot-com crash and the sub-prime mortage crisis would have made someone think twice about trying to run the American (outside of the State of Nevada) Economy on the notion of Easy Money.

Is it just me, or does anyone else see a problem with putting one of the world's easiest credit sources on the stock market? How are potential VISA shareholders going to see a profit? This page doesn't have anything close to an economics degree, but I can only see two ways: either consumer spending has to increase substantially (which given high oil prices and other economic shocks appears very unlikely in the short term), or somebody has to raise interest rates.

Of course, raising interest rates just makes it harder for working people to pay their mortgages, which in turn makes it harder for them to pay for other things, which leads them to use credit cards more....anybody have a pair of scissors?

Seriously, who gives a #$@! who the winner is?

The 80th Academy Awards took place last night, and as it's been the habit of this page for several years now, this page could not be bothered and retired early to finish off Standard of Honor, the second novel in Jack Whyte's Templar Trilogy. This page carries almost as much as contempt for awards shows as he does for so-called 'reality TV', and doesn't grasp how anyone can regard these affairs as being competitive, let alone interesting.

The Oscars pulls in ratings similar to the Super Bowl, but unlike the Super Bowl, the Oscars are a subjective competition, not an objective and transparent one. Once I get the past the insipid commercial excess and patriotic overkill of 'the big game', I can actually see the New York Giants surprise the New England Patriots because of their control of the line of scrimmage, their relentless pursuit of Tom Brady, and the athletic prowess of their receiving corps. In contrast, I couldn't tell anyone why No Country for Old Men won Best Picture. It's a good movie, but is there any empirical standard that makes it any better than the other nominated movies, or movies that weren't nominated?

It's often been said that the standard for awarding the Oscars is more political than empirical, which is perhaps why I can't be bothered, because the politics involved seems to be the middlebrow American standard of personality cults, style over substance, the love/hate relationship with populism, and the inability to seriously engage voters. This page actually knew someone who was a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and the only reason he looked forward to the Oscars was getting to see the nominated movies for free.

Perhaps if there were more moments during the Oscars like Marlon Brando turning his acceptance speech over to the American Indian Movement or Michael Moore calling 'Shame' on the Bush Administration, I would be more willing to engage this annual cinematic bacchanal, but as it stands, the Oscars only remind this page that I'm not one of the cool kids, and that many Americans still mistake gaudy overhyped popularity contests for real democracy.

A Happy Planet at 12th and Cambie?

Gregor Robertson is running for Mayor of Vancouver.

Now that Peter Ladner has decided to throw a monkey wrench through the spokes of Sam Sullivan's NPA (Nasty Political A**holes) hegemony, the emerging split on the right makes a great opportunity for the Juice King to throw his hat in the ring. Robertson has done yeoman work for his Fairview constituents as an NDP MLA, and would certainly be seen as a fresh alternative alongside the colourless technocrat Ladner and Sullivan, arguably the biggest wheelchair-bound sociopathic thug since Lionel Barrymore in It's a Wonderful Life.

This page would have preferred to see Raymond Louie as Vision's Mayoral candidate, because of his City Council experience, his reputation as a young, hard-working family man (George Bailey to Sullivan's Old Man Potter) and the fact he could rip down Sullivan's bogus claim to have a mortal lock on Vancouver's Chinese community. However, Robertson does have a strong understanding of fiscal policy, understands how to build coalitions rather than polarize people, and has impeccable environmental credentials, compared to Sullivan's 'Eco-Density' fraud. Vision, and the civic Left in Vancouver, are not going to find much better in a Mayoral candidate.

Bill C-484: It's On

"Never is a long time. What I'm saying is I have no desire to see that issue debated in the near future."

-Stephen Harper, on Abortion

The future is now: In less than a week, Parliament will vote on Bill C-484, 'The Unborn Victims of Crime Act'. Pay attention, because this page is only going to see this once: Bill C-484 is nothing more than a pathetic, underhanded, manipulative, vicious, disgusting attempt by the right wing Christofacists of the Conservative Party of Canada to rob Canadian Women of their reproductive rights and usher in a new dark age of misogyny.

The mainstream media, particulary the Stephen Harper syncophants at CanWest Global, are playing right along with this atrocity with their uniform silence about Bill C-484 and its chilling ramifications. This outright rape of women's freedom is only being discussed within the flimsy pretext of recent violent crimes committed against pregnant women and Trojan Horse push polls. If Stephane Dion and the Liberals have any brain cells left to rub together after toeing the Conservative line for the past year, they will realize that this is the wedge issue to simultaneously uproot, bludgeon and bury the evil right wing weeds of reactionary fundamentalism which have been poisoning this country since the emergence of the Reform Party.

Here's a petition link. This page usually refrains from gratutitous self-promotion, but I strongly encourage anyone reading to share this post with as many people as possible, particularly female people who after next will hopefully still be living in Canada instead of the Republic of Gilead.

You have the right to remain silent, and stay home

The BC Human Rights Tribunal has busted Coast Mountain Bus Company for its Absentee Management program, on the grounds that it discriminates against workers who have a physical or mental disability. This page has nothing but contempt for employers who try to harass and intimidate their employees through such dehumanizing tests of company loyalty, in a poor attempt to bypass provisions with collective agreements for sick time and medical appointments. Those provisions make their way into collective agreements because it's understood that one: sick or injured workers aren't going to return to health on the job, and two: specialists, let alone general practitioners, are seldom available during evenings and weekends AND accepting new patients.

Absentee Management, or Attendance Management as it's called by other employers, is the practice of expecting one's employees to work themselves to death by making them feel guilty about taking sick time or time for medical appointments. Most collective agreements have filters against abuse (such as the requirement of a doctor's note after x number of days). In this case, the abuse is in the eye of the employer, and this page congratulates the Tribunal for siding with the bus drivers, and the transit users who depend on them.

Carbon Tax Time

It appears that after today's budget, British Columbia will be the first Canadian province to implement a carbon tax. This page says its about time. As regular readers are more than aware, this page goes out of his way at every opportunity to sandbag the current regime in Victoria. However, every now and then even the most contemptuous of governments does something right. If British Columbia is going to even consider long-term, sustainable economic growth, the price of damaging the environment has to be factored in throughout the BC economy.

That being said, this page shares the concerns of NDP Finance Critic Bruce Ralston in that if all British Columbians live in the same environment, all British Columbians should pay their fair share to protect it. Dinging working people at the pumps while giving corporate polluters a free pass isn't going to work, and it will only remind voters of the BC Liberals' love of corporate camapaign contributions and contempt for the little guy. Also, a carbon tax implemented in BC to fight Greenhouse Gas emissions has to stay in BC to fight Greenhouse Gas emissions. No touchy-feely 'offset' purchases on the other side of the world, and certainly no Public-Private Partnerships (P3s) to let corporate BC to greenwash themselves and kickback a donation to the Liberals.

The only destination for any carbon tax can be identified in two words: Public Transit. The majority of Greenhouse Gas emissions come from private vehicles, and every step needs to be taken to take as many of them off the road as possible by making transit cheaper, faster, and more comfortable.

The Load to 2010
part 2: Shut Down or Shut Up

Over the past few weeks, this page has turned a deaf ear to the groups calling to stop the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, because it's not going to happen. The Games will go ahead. The Games have the potential to be a financial, social, and environmental catastrophe, but they are going ahead. In fact, this page is going to argue that the biggest reason why there have been so many unresolved problems surrounding these games is that the most vocal Olympic opponents are in fact, a problem in themselves.

First of all, some of the arguments put forth by the likes of the Anti-Poverty Committee are a little shaky, the most dubious being 'No Olympics on Stolen Land'. That's a hard sell to the general public who have been repeatedly told that VANOC has agreements with the four First Nations where the Games are being staged. Usually when something is being stolen, the theives don't make a token effort to give something back, which in this case would be some modicum of economic development for the affected Bands. It has been argued that in supporting the Olympics, the Chiefs and Band Councils have defied the wishes of their own people, particularly the marginalized among them. Unfortunately, that's an issue for the Bands to decide, if right-minded British Columbian were angry about a Treaty Referrendum which dictated right and wrong to First Nations, we also have to let them reach their own decisons about the Olympics.

Secondly, the 'No Games' crowd has been as bad as VANOC (and their corporate and government enablers) in generating a polarizing, all-or-nothing hype about the Olympics: This is what happens when you have the Greens and the Anarchists leading the parade: the parade gets lost and tries to shout itself down. Instead of actually focussing on issues like social housing, transit and the environment with a view beyond 2010, the simplistic argument has been repeated that this is all the fault of the Olympics, which would be great if it was actually true.

Sorry folks, but I've pointed my Golden Compass at two different worlds: one where Pyeonchang is hosting the 2010 Olympics, and another where that honour went to Salzburg. Guess what? In both those worlds, Vancovuer still has homelessness, crime, weak infrastructure and poor public transit. What galls me is that the years that should have been focussed on to mitigate the negative impact of the Olympics are 2008 and 2009: People who think the Olympics are going to destroy B.C. could have been working to engage the public to elect a few people people to prevent that from happening. Instead they chose to storm the barricades and throw rocks at the Royal Bank.

It's not like the public is in love with these games either. The call for Olympic volunteers was made this week, and fell on deaf ears in the Lower Mainland, 79% of CKNW listeners polled say they have no interest in working for VANOC for free. Unfortunately, the opposition to the Games decided to focus on a winner-take-all shutdown rather than working to hold VANOC accountable to the promises that were made to the IOC and to Vancouver voters in the 2003 referrendum on the Olympic bid. Two years to the Games, and they can't generate any enthusiasm either.

The Load to 2010
pt. 1: from Hoedown to Showdown

This week will mark the T-minus two year countdown to the XVI Olympic Winter Games here in Vancouver. This page, like a number of media outlets, is focussing a modicum of attention on this millstone...er...milestone, but I think I'm one of the few who's not a division of Bell Globemedia. Also, I'm not about to gush about how much better driving the Sea-to-Sky highway to Whistler is.

This two-year countdown can be framed in another event this week, the 20th anniversary of Calgary's Winter Olympics. This page lived in Calgary during that period, and if I could sum up the difference between the Games of 1988 and the Games of 2010 it would be like this: Calgary used the Olympics to build Calgary, while Vancouver is being used to build the Olympics. In 1981, Calgary wanted a light rail transit system, freeway improvements, and an NHL-calibre arena. In 2003, when Vancouver bid for the 2010 games, City Hall wanted mass transit in the Broadway Corridor and social housing. Why did Calgary end up filling its Olympic wish list while we ended up stuck with mass evictions and the Canada Line?

For one thing, Calgary, unlike Vancouver, has a Ward system at City Hall where Aldermen are directly held accountable by their own constituents, unlike the vicious little thugs who hide behing the NPA banner at 12th and Cambie. The upshot is that the ward system produces decisions that veer towards the pragmatic and the non-partisan, as opposed to the psychotic neoconservative machinations of Vancouver's 'Non-Partisan' Association (NPA). The NPA's bloodless coup in 2005 (aided and abetted by the phantom 'James' Green candidacy) spelled the end of the Vision Vancouver/COPE alliance, which, while shaky, would have provided far more oversight and demanded far more accountability from VANOC than the right-wing, free-market, Developers-Gone-Wild prediliction of the NPA.

In the run-up to the 2003 referrendum on the Olympic bid, Larry Campbell and Jim Green twisted the arms of VANOC to gain several concessions on Social Housing and the impact of the Games on Vancouver. Imagine if someone still had the authourity to make sure those concessions were implemented, as opposed to someone like Sam Sullivan idiotically spinning in his wheelchair with the Olympic flag. At the least, Vancouver could have had an Olympics about which we could have felt a little less ashamed, and a Games that actually did something for this city.

Seattle is the new Minneapolis

The Obamanom touched down in Seattle on Friday, the eve of Washington State's Democratic Caucuses. After touring an environmentally-friendly manufacturing plant with Mayor Greg Nickels and picking up the endorsement of Governor Christine Gregoire, the Illinois Senator spoke to a packed house at Key Arena, home of the NBA's Seattle Supersonics. Thousands had to be turned away by Seattle Police, which begs the question for this page as to why Obama's local organizers hadn't thought of booking Safeco Field: with the momentum he's carrying he could have filled all 47,000 seats, and they could have put up the retractable roof if it did rain.

Of all the states in the Union, there are two that this page feels I can 'get' because of either knowing enough people living there or spending enough time there: Minnesota and Washington. On Super Tuesday, Obama easily took Minnesota, and there's no reason why he won't take Washington this weekend. Like Washington, Minnesota has one predominant urban area (Minneapolis-St. Paul, Seattle) that overshadows smaller, rural areas (Duluth, Spokane). Like Washington, Minnesota's economy is anchored on a handful of large corporations. Minnesota has 3M and General Mills, Seattle has Boeing and Microsoft. Both are surprisingly culturally diverse for being historically agrarian: Minnesota gave us both Garrison Keillor and Prince, Washington claims Bing Crosby and Kurt Cobain. Both States' Democratic Parties choose delegates by caucuses rather than a primary, a system which plays into Obama's charisma and oratorical charm.

One more thing: In both Minnesota and Washington, there is no sizeable African-American population. So, contrary to the racial profil...er....conventional wisdom which has been floated throughout the campaign, Minnesota proved that Obama doesn't need to exploit a sizeable African-American demographic (or any other demographic) to beat Hilary Clinton, he just needs to find more new voters than she does. Even though Washington was the first state to elect women to the Governor's office and both Senate seats, Hilary Clinton won't be hitting for the cycle in Washington. Look for the next big prize from the Democrats' electoral Cracker Jack box to fall into the hands of the Evergreen State's Obamaniacs.

Gung Hei Fat Choi!

Today marks the first day of the Lunar New Year 4706 - The Year of the Rat. Around the world, people will gather around the world to greet family members, share food, enjoy cultural events and hopefully make off with some serious Lai Tsi. Except perhaps in the People's Republic of China, where the Communist regime, like a lot of things, muscles in and tries to spoil any fun which doesn't portray the corrupt, hypocritcal 'revolution' in a positive light.

Knock the Vote

Canadians are becoming caught up in the excitement of the U.S. Presidential election campaign, which reached another peak yesterday with the Super Tuesday primaries. One poll reports that 15 percent of Canuck voters would drop their franchise for the next Federal Election in favour of a chance to elect America's 45th President. This page is not convinced that this is an entirely new, or just infrequent, phenomenom. Just four years ago in Portland, I made a cash donation to canvassers from the Democratic National Committee in the hopes that it would help drive George W. Bush from the White House. Canadians always get caught up with Presidential elections, just like we do with the Super Bowl, the Academy Awards, American Idol, and any other cultural behemoth aimed at our TV screens from just south of us.

Morever, this page is concerned about the value of obsessing about America's next Commander in Chief this time around. Most of the attention surrounding yesterday's Super Tuesday results was focussed on the race between Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic Nomination. Watching the returns on CNN, I didn't know if I was being subjected to The Best Political Team on Televison (tm), or the largest racial profiling project in American history. Besides exit polling based on gender, Countless exit polls were flashed showing preferences among African Americans, Asian Americans, European Americans, and Latino Americans for Senator Clinton and/or Senator Obama. At one point a panelist charged Obama with having a 'Latino problem' and that 'a history black-brown tension' in Houston did not bode well for that candidate in the upcoming Texas primary.

Maybe this page is still coming off the flu, but I don't remember Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper obsessing on the Republican side about exit polls showing support among followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for Mitt Romney, or among septugenarians for John McCain. Maybe it was the abscence of John Edwards, but for all the demographic profiling going on, CNN missed the two most important demographics of all: rich people and poor people, and how they voted.

Pattison-of-a-B*tch

The Overwaitea Food Group expects UFCW 1518 members to accept two-hour shifts at Save-On-Foods and Urban Fare stores. This page says that this had better be some flamboyant posturing on the part of B.C.'s grocery, outdoor ad and car king, or else his customers will be shopping somewhere else for a good long time. This page has heard from a number of sources since relocating to Vancouver about what a pillar in the community Mr. Pattison is, and how he right-sided Expo '86 when the fair was headed for financial and logistical oblivion. The only thing I've seen King Jimmy do that was actually nay modicum of clever was team up with Quebecor to produce the local free tabloid 24 Hours, hire Glen Clark to give as managing editor to give the impression of being an equal opportunity offender, and rake in the money while Bill Tielman took shots at his B.C. Liberal pals.

One of the payoffs Pattison and his slave-driving thugs among the business community received from the Lieberals in 2001 was the shredding of the B.C. Labour Code, including an end to the four-hour minimum shift. Employees without a union are expected to be at their employer's beck and call, drop in for an hour or two, then go back to whatever it was they were doing, like, working another job to meet the obscene cost of living in Metro Vancouver. Employees that do have a union, if they are in their right mind, are not going to stand to be treated like disrepected and disposable minimum wage meat puppets.

The bare minimum in the Labour Code is not a good place to start negotiations. This page has the impression The Pattison Group will stick by their hard-headed and assinine bargaining proposals, while running to Victoria for the Liberals to put more 'balance' into B.C.'s labour laws. In the meantime, UFCW 1518 has asked the public not to pursue a boycott at this time as it only hurts the members who are still on the job. However, once the pickets go up, expect a lot fewer new vehicles stuffed with Save-On-Foods grocery bags running around town. To the mouth-breathing worker haters among you: this is not a question of 'if you don't like your job, get a new one.' It's a question of how many, if the Pattisons of the world get their way, two-hour shift jobs will working families in British Columbia need to survive?

That's just Super

A couple of quick 'Super' picks:

-Super Bowl: Take the Giants against the spread.

-Super Tuesday: Clinton racks up more delegates than Obama, but not enough for the nomination.

There you have it - back next week.

S'no Intelligence out there

Once again, the Lower Mainland has been smothered by a suspicious white powder, and the locals are engaged in a small struggle to navigate it until it's flushed away with the next rainfall. It's the kind of the thing that makes people in other parts of the country, where "real" winters take place, snicker at Vancouver and our lack of preparation. This page is not about to advocate that Starbucks starts selling snow chains, but I do have a few suggestions to ward off the nasty weather with one's reputation intact.

-If you are using your own vehicle to commute, resign yourself to the fact that even though that mound of snow fell on the roof of your car, it is not yours to keep. Clear it off immediately before getting in your car and driving away. This page sees a multitude of drivers with rolling snowpacks stuck to their vehicle roofs like some kind of trophy they hunted down and are taking to a nearby taxidermist. It's enough snow that could cause a mini-avalanche on your windshield at precisely the wrong time, i.e. when you're running into something, or someone.

-You are not some kind of hero for leaving your vehicle at home and availing yourself of the services of the Coast Mountain Bus Company to make your commute. Heroes would not neglect to familiarize themselves with such overwhelming details as the correct route, the fare, and where to get off the bus and possibly transfer BEFORE insisting that the driver provide this information as you hold up other passengers who are running later than you.

-This page appreciates the struggles of small businesses, and the challenges of keeping costs under control. However, the last time I checked, one could still purchase a snow shovel for under twenty dollars. Some of us are healthy enough to walk to our destinations, at least until we slip on an unattended patch and injure ourselves. Any retailer or service which wants our businesses should be making it as safe as possible to come through their front door.

-If you are a large University which is located at the farthest western point of the largest commuter corridor in Metro Vancouver, remaining open while every other educational institution closes because of the weather is an exercise in masochistic futility. Nothing will endear your students to their alma mater like a treacherous 2 to 3 hour commute for a lecture their professor has cancelled. This page is also sure that your support staff greatly enjoy having to scramble for last minute child care (because their kids aren't going to school) and risking their personal safety because you 'expect' them to show up for work.

Alberta's ED MIA on Climate Change

This page, as regular readers are aware, grew up in the province of Alberta, the land where progressive change goes to die. Having been removed for almost a decade now, I don't give much thought to Albertans' sense of selfish exceptionalism, which rivals only their Red State American cousins from which they take one too many cues. Why can there be no sales taxes, unions, same-sex marriage, affordable housing, rats, cops wearing turbans, changes of government, an end to health care premiums, or sharing resource wealth with the rest of the country? The non-answer to these and other questions, which has mollified two generations of Albertans under the 'Progressive' Conservative dynasty is this: It's because we're Albertans, and this is Alberta. End of discussion.

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach is using this rationale, complete with the usual fear-mongering about carbon taxes and a second National Energy Program, to end any effective discussion on Climate Change among Canada's premiers here in Vancouver today. As much of this page dislikes Gordon Campbell and considers the B.C. government's plan to substantially expand public transit and build the Gateway Project disturbingly counterintuitive, the B.C. Premier does deserve some credit for taking a modicum of leadership on reducing Greenhouse Gases.

Stelmach's walking away from these talks is nothing more than disgusting political posturing on the part of another Alberta Premier with his head so far up the oilpatch he can't see the forest for the trees which were shredded by the likes of Syncrude or Suncor. "Honest" Ed also faces a provincial election, and can't be seen imperiling the roll of good times brought on by oil priced at $100 a barrel. At one time, Alberta Premiers would at least make an attempt to hear their peers out, but Stelmach has opted to follow suit with a decade of Ralph Klein's demagoguery, and will take his toxic fossil-fuelled ball and go home. Shame.

Growing up in Alberta, this page heard repeatedly from friends, family, and co-workers about a far away province that was not happy to be part of this great nation, and how their leaders always felt the rest of the country threatened their people and their distinct way of life. As it turns out, that province, which from Vancouver is pretty far away, is in fact, Alberta.

Not a Good Deal

"I don't believe in tearing up Collective Agreements."

-Gordon Campbell, Hospital Employees Union (HEU) Newsletter, November 2000.

Eight years later, and British Columbians are finally close to seeing how much the Premier's mishandling of the truth is going to cost him and his B.C. Lieberal administration. The government has finally reached an agreement with the HEU over Bill 29, Campbell's health care privatization law which saw many of its provisions ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada last year.

Unfortunately, the agreed price for the Lieberals exercise in union-busting and eroding public health care amounts to approximately $85 million. That may pay for a respectable compensation and retraining package for HEU members, but this page doesn't see that amount as much of a deterrent. For a government committed to completely destroying public infrastructure and services in British Columbia, spending that amount of taxpayer's money to rip up contracts and kneecap any Union that gets in the way of that goal may just be a price they're willing to pay.

For working families in British Columbia, the price will be the loss of quality jobs, the continuing disintegration of communities, higher taxes and user fees to pad the margins of corporate contractors, and the crippling of democracy as public institutions are no longer accountable to the public. All for just $85 million per shredded contract. A great deal for shareholders, and the shItty short end of the stick for the people.

The Manley Thing To Do

The report from John Manley's independent inquiry into Canada's mission in Afghanistain is in. Judging from the commentary surrounding the release of the Manley report, this page is left with the impression that nobody comes out of it looking that terrific, particularly the architects of this enterprise, the Harper administration. What this page finds annoying is that while media outlets will repeat the revised mandate for Canada's military presence in Afghanistan as 'buidling democracy', nobody's picked up on the Strategic Counsel poll taken last week which shows only 17% of Canadians support continuing a combat mission in Afghanistan (pg. 23). If the Harper government is serious about showing Afghans about how to govern according to the will of the people, now would be a good time for a serious discussion with Canadians rather than telling us to shut up and Support our Troops (tm).

The key points in the Manley report appear to be 1. Our government hasn't been straight with us about what's going on in Afghanistan, and 2. Simply pulling out of Afghanistan is harder than the critics think. This page is a critic of the current combat mission on principle: I think war is a moral failure of diplomacy and humanity that shouldn't be inflicted on anyone. However, I also realize that Canadian forces have also been involved in peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan which shouldn't simply be abandoned by bringing the troops home.

At this point, the best thing to do with the Manley report is for to sit on it, for two reasons. One, this is not Canada's mission in Afghanistan, it's NATO's. Canadian forces went in with the Allies to overthrow a government that sympathized with Al-Qaida and was sheltering Osama Bin Laden. Unless other NATO countries are willing to take up a combat role, there is no reason why Canadian soldiers should be put at risk in perpetuity. As for reason two, whatever happens in Afghanistan is going to revolve around what happens in November's U.S. Presidential election. The McCain administration may be prepared to live with whatever thugocracy is running Afghanistan as long as they promise secure pipeline access from Iraq. The Obama administration might want to push the War on Terror (tm) into Pakistan where most Al-Qaida forces are actually based. Either way, the pieces on the board will have changed or knocked all over the desert floor, and Canada will need to come up with a new plan.

Running the Afghanistan mission on misinformation and polarizing patriotic bombast might let Stephen Harper beat the Liberals, but it's not going to beat the Taliban or Al-Qaida.

Cops do the Craziest Things: Capital Punishment Edition

It appears that the hijinx from the Boys in Blue are not confined to the Lower Mainland after all. Victoria Police have some explaining to do after Willow Kinloch broke a three year silence about being taken from her home, handcuffed, hog-tied and tethered to the door of a padded cell. The BC Civil Liberties Association says that Kinloch's treatment by officers in BC's capital city amounts to torture.

This page is calling a TKO fro the BCCLA - Victoria Police were questioning Kinloch (15 years old at the time) while she was forcibly restrained and traumatized. My skimming of the Geneva Convention says that trying to get information from people while subjecting them to physical hardship is torture. I appreciate that the nylon strap restraining device is used as an alternative to a taser (some breaking news for the Richmond RCMP), but if Kinloch had been allowed to come down from her episode before they started pumping her for information, I don't think the Victoria Cops would necessarily be seeing her in court this fall.

#16 for 12th and Cambie?

A recent CKNW polled asked the question: Who would you like to see as the next mayor of Vancouver? The results were:

8.63% Sam Sullivan

14.15% Carole Taylor

5.22% Gregor Robertson

5.31% Christy Clark

5.72% Philip Till

55.41% Trevor Linden

5.52% other

This page says why not? Stop laughing and making that circling motion around your ear: seriously, why not?

After the brutal, divisive, and polarizing term of the NPA's Sam Sullivan draws to a close, Vancouverites will be looking for a figure to bring us together, which Linden does repeatedly: not only as the de facto captain of the Vancouver Canucks but also through the extensive work he has done for community groups and charities in the Lower Mainland. Sullivan's failed mayoral term will be defined by an approach to City labour relations which gravitated from aloofness to outright hostility. By contrast, Linden served as President of the National Hockey League Players Association during the 2004-05 lockout, and pulled out a number of stops to get an agreement with the league, including circumnavigating his grandstanding business agent to get negotiations back on track.

This page isn't exactly certain what Trevor Linden's politics are. However, this page does know that during the NHL lockout, the NHLPA was certified as a trade union in British Columbia to keep the league from putting scabs on the ice. I also know he's a member of the Order of British Columbia for his humanitarian work, which puts him in some fairly prestigious company. At the least, Linden would probably be as qualified as the owner of a juice company (i.e. before Gregor Robertson went to Victoria) to seek election as Mayor.

One thing's for certain, Sam Sullivan's number isn't going to be hanging from the rafters any time soon.

Meet me at the counter

A few weeks ago, RevMod Don posted his reaction to a study comparing the number of fast food restaurants in a city and the city's corresponding obesity rate. What's not apparent from the University of Alberta study is how many of those restaurants in the study have a drive-thru. Drive-thru customers not only face the possibility of obesity, they also suffer from acute stupidity and a complete disregard for their environment. At one time, Don and I both lived in Calgary, where we both were witness to carloads of cretins who would order food from a drive-thru, then eat it in the nearby parking lot.

I doubt if many of these people (and their fast food multinational enablers) realize the volume of greenhouse gasses their idling vehicles are spewing into the atmosphere, nor the amount of trash that's left behind in the neighbourhoods where fast food restaurants are located. This page lives near a section of Main Street in Vancouver which has a Burger King, a McDonalds, and a car dealership between the two of them - it's kind of the 'f**k you block' heading south just before the vegetarian restaurants and bus stops of the Broadway Corridor. For all the people who are scared to visit East Vancouver for fear of stepping on a used needle, trust me, if you come down Main you can easily insulate yourself in burger wrappers, french fry boxes, and not-so collectible cups.

That being said, I'm heartened to see that North Vancouver's City Council is thinking about banning drive-thrus. Land is expensive and scare in the Lower Mainland, and it can certainly be better used for something other than cheap dining options built to a vehicular scale. It's a step in the right direction, and hopefully along the way Metro Vancouver's local Councils consider giving the boot to other purveyors of crap and free parking: I'm looking at you, Wal-Mart .

That Old College Why

The University of British Columbia wants to take its athletic programs out of Canadian University Sport (CIS) and bring them to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Much has been made in the sports pages over the last couple of weeks as to how this move will stem the 'jock drain' to U.S. schools, rake in revenues from TV coverage and merchandizing, and give alumni the outside chance to brag to their grandchildren about how the Thunderbirds won the Final Four and the Bowl Championship* Series in the same year. How likely is all of that to happen? Given that the T-Birds would be relegated to the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (Division II of the NCAA) and face an ongoing feud with the CIS schools they leave behind, Rapid Transit will arrive at the UBC campus long before any substantial athletic honours do - and they'll be serving free drinks on that gold-plated SkyTrain too.

If anything, joining the NCAA would give student athletes at UBC and SFU a bit of break by playing against schools in the Pacific Northwest, allowing more time for study rather than perpetually trekking over the Rockies in the Canada West conference. UBC's baseball team already plays against Northwest Schools in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the second tier of U.S. College Sports, as no other Canadian schools have a baseball program. After an easier travel schedule, the tangible benefits drop off dramatically, and are tied to a school qualifying for the NCAA's coveted Division I.

Don't get this page wrong, I love my sports, but I'm also aware that in this country, Universities aren't run by their athletic departments, nor do they try to shake down the school or nearby taxpayers. From what this page has observed of the 'big-time' Universities in the NCAA, those would be the only tangible 'benefits'. There are some notable jockrider wannabes among UBC alumni (our Olympic-obsessed Premier for one) who might favour the NCAA in our collegiate playground, but Vancouver is still far better known for making videogames about sports than for any substantial sporting accomplishments**. This page is thankful that Canada doesn't have the well-oiled army of boosters who fuel the NCAA's corrupt recruiting games, slip the occasional performance-enhancing substance to a student athlete, turn a blind eye to cheating on exams, or shell out 100 grand to get a football coach fired.

Besides, if this page wants to see NCAA competition, I have to look no farther than the nearest TV. It's not like cable sports channels in this country give the CIS that much attention.

*Warning: not a real championship.

**Except for Roger Bannister and John Landy breaking the four-minute mile at Empire Stadium in 1954.

God hearts Huckabee?

Mike Huckabee remains in the mix for the Republican Presidential nomination, which has much to do with his appeal to Evangelical Christians. This page, like most Americans, doesn't have a problem with people who think that Man was made in God's image. Where I have a problem is when Mike Huckabee starts talking about re-making the Constitution in God's image.

For those of us north of the border who might be scoffing at Huck's attempt to slap Krazy Glue on the Separation of Church and State, don't forget whose constitution begins with the words Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law... Given how the Religious Right have rallied around Canada's Conservative Party, all it would take is for a Stephen Harper majority to have them take advantage of the back-handed head start Pierre Trudeau and the Premiers gave them in 1982.

Concentrated Disappointment

This page would have been celebrating if yesterday's CRTC ruling on concentration of media ownership had been what the CBC and a number of other sources had reported. However, upon further review, the Commission has opted to keep the status quo in place, which may yet see this page subject to an offer he can't refuse from Bell Globemedia or CanWest Global.

For those of you scoring at home, CRTC stands for Canadian Regulators Too Chicken. Restricting media conglomerates to ownership in two of the three conventional media (i.e. radio, television and newspapers) won't do anything to stop the erosion of media diversity. CanWest can still own both newspaers in Vancouver. Bell Globemedia can still have plug your basic cable service with its grab-bag of channels.

Mind you, a good chuckle can be had from the editorial page of today's Globe and Mail, which features a spirited renuncication of a ruling that's anything but spirited. Now, back to waiting for my cheque from the Aspers...

Talk - Action = $14 Billion

Spending $14 billion to improve public transit in BC, particularly in the Lower Mainland, is a good idea. Unfortunately, good ideas, let alone new ones, are few and far between in the Provincial Transit Plan. First of all, Victoria is only putting up $4.75 billion of that $14 billion, the rest of it comes from Ottawa, Municipalities (most in the Lower Mainland) and Translink (which used to be run by Lower Mainland Municipalities until Kevin Falcon stripped control and handed it to an unelected 'technical' board). At least Falcon won't have to threaten holding his breath and turning blue like he did when the old Translink Board kept rejecting the RAV (now Canada) line.

The Canada Line is actually included in this 'new' plan, despite the fact it's only a few months away from completion. So is the Evergreen Line, which is projected to serve the Northeast Corridor and would have been built years ago had the Canada Line not jumped the queue in a fit of pre-Olympic hysteria. The province will spend $1.4 billion on the Evergreen Line, which uses cost-effective LRT technology. By contrast, they're willing to shell out twice as much for a SkyTrain line to UBC, which this page guesses is to impress the NIMBYs in Point Grey so they'll bitch a little less - they have a thing for big ticket items. In addition, a handful of rapid bus services are featured, which will be serviced by 1,500 new buses - something of a surprise, given that transit activists have been lobbying for 500 new buses for the past couple of years to deaf ears at Translink and the Ministry of Transportation.

If this plan actually does come together, it will mean that there will be a lot fewer single-occupancy vehicles on the road. That would also mean a lot more room for commercial truck traffic on routes like, just for the sake of argument, Highway 1 across the Port Mann Bridge. That being the case, why do Kevin Falcon and Gordon Campbell still feel compelled to impose the Gateway Project on Metro Vancouver, which will only increase traffic congestion and increase greenhouse gas emissions? Is $14 billion the price tag for hypocrisy these days?

Oscar doesn't live here anymore...at least not these days

This page has, to be honest, not that affected by the Writers' Strike. I tend not to watch a lot of the marquee offerings on network television, opting instead for the news, movies, and sports channels. I'm pretty much oblivious to the unreal life struggles of characters in Lost or Grey's Anatomy, so I wasn't really clued into how big a deal this was until I realized the producers of Smallville, Battlestar Galactica, or Reaper hadn't slipped a note under my door for some time. (I live near an industrial park that's a favourite location for movie & TV shoots in Vancouver, which make a lot of noise and take up parking spaces).

However, just because I'm not as worked up about this labour dispute as say, the Vancouver civic workers strike (just ask my relatives and neighbours I'm no longer on speaking terms with), it doesn't mean that there aren't people I'm seriously disappointed with - Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, I'm looking at you. Both of these 'progressive' comedians are members of the Screen Actors Guild, and the Daily Show built much of its hipster audience when Comedy Central was offering it up for free on RealPlayer back in the day. What, does Stewart now have no problem with his writers not getting paid for online work?

It didn't escape my notice that yesterday's Golden Globe Awards were reduced to a press conference, and that the ongoing strike, and there is a very real chance that the Academy Awards may not be presented in the style that America's entertainment industry and its multitude of devoted consumers are accustomed to. Does this mean that the couch potatoes of America will devote their dwindling attention spans to a more important competition, like who will serve as their next President? Or will they smile and nod while their corporate overlords double up on Super Bowl ads?

Today's Forecast: More Bullsh*t

If you are planning to buy a new condominium in British Columbia, there is a very strong possibility that the developer is going to lie to you about your future home. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I'm locked into a real estate market that doesn't know the meeting of the word 'sensible' with no recourse.

Having lived in British Columbia for over seven years now, that doesn't come as much of a surprise to this page: nothing gets done in this province without some kind of manipulation, misrepresentation, lie, deceit, or outright assault on the truth. Health Care workers were told by the Leader of the Opposition that he "doesn't believe in tearing up Collective Agreements". Small business owners along Vancouver's Cambie Street were assured that the Canada Line wouldn't disrupt their business because a 'deep boring' tunnelling method would be used. The referendum on the Olympic bid passed because the bid committee promised that social housing would be a priority. Translink repeatedly promises improved bus service while nodding like psychotic bobbleheads at Kevin Falcon's porky megaprojects.

Given that the Real Estate industry bankrolls the NPA and B.C. Liberals, why would a missing closet or low ceiling be any kind of a surprise? These people trade on stabbing people in the back, and it's reflected everyday in the policies of the growth-at-all-costs governments they support at the municipal, federal, and provincial levels. My prediction is that in Vancouver, the lying will finally stop sometime after the rain does.

White (Wo)men Can't Jump: So What?

Canada's female ski jumpers are outraged that their sport won't be included in the program for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. This page is tossing this one on the boo-fricking-hoo pile. It's not that Katie Willis, her Mother Jan Willis, and her 'fellow' athletes don't have a case: It's hypocritical of the IOC to claim that Women's Ski Jumping requires two world championships be staged before 2010, while at the same time the Women's Marathon had only one world championship before its inclusion in the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Mind you, in the era of tit-for-tat Cold War boycotts, the Olympics was probably looking for a few more higher, faster, stronger bodies to put in front of the TV cameras.

Jan Willis filed a Federal Human Rights complaint, to which Ottawa smartly told the athletes to take it up with the IOC. This page isn't exactly optimistic with their chances in persuading an organization which was ruled for decades by one of Francisco Franco's lieutenants, and lets the Olympic Torch be carried to the site of Tiannmen Square Massacre this summer. Human Rights and the Olympics go together like Oil and the Bush Administration.

The plight of Women's Ski Jumping puts the 'con' in controversy - this non-issue is meant to distract the audience from the REAL human rights issues surrounding the 2010 Olympics: the eradication of social housing, the criminalization of homelessness, the ongoing blind eye to sex tourism, the expansion of military and police power (which resulted in the death of Harriet Nahanee in a Vancouver prison cell, whose only crime was wishing to preserve Eagleridge Bluffs from a bulldozer), and the outright lack of accountability in the planning and construction of the various Olympic megaprojects.

The lack of Women's Ski Jumping at the 2010 Olympics is a sporting and political issue, and will be resolved by the 2014 Sochi Games. Jan Willis and her ilk should take it as an inconvenience and not some kind of tragedy. The real human rights issues of the Olympics will be with us much longer.

Need a Bigger Crown

Upon further review, Carole Taylor has decided not to seek the Mayor's chair in this fall's Vancouver election. Either Ms. Taylor has been paying attention to this page's musings, realized her political trajectory should be pointed towards Ottawa rather than 12th and Cambie, or she just got too creeped out with Larry Campbell repeatedly telling her what a MILF* she is.

Since the coronation has been cancelled, the field now opens up significantly for challengers to the myopic thug rule of Sam Sullivan and the NPA. Hopefully, COPE and Vision Vancouver can agree to play nice - David Cadman, a great a Councillor he is, should have learned from the past couple of years that the most time on Council doesn't necessarily equate to the best Mayor. This page would rather see a Raymond Louie or Gregor Robertson driving the fortunes of the centre-left in November rather than allow Sullivan to scream about the unionized barbarians at the gate again.

*"Mayor I'd like to ...." Frankly Senator Campbell, this page doesn't see the appeal.

E Pluribus Virgin

America's electorate will be riveted to today's New Hampshire Primary, as it has become more than apparent that the 2008 Presidential Election will be a historical watershed, or at the least a nifty little boathouse. In only 11 months, The new President is almost certain to be the first of his or her kind to reach the Oval Office, but which kind will it be? Let's take a closer look:

If Hilary Clinton wins, she will be the first Woman elected President.

If Barack Obama wins, he will be the first African-American elected President

If Mitt Romney wins, he will be the first Mormon elected President.

If Bill Richardson wins, he will be the first Latino elected President.

If Mike Huckabee wins, he will be the first Arkansas Governor NOT married to Hilary Clinton elected President. He will also be the first Huckabee elected President.

If John Edwards wins, he will be the first character from a John Grisham novel to be elected President.

If John McCain wins, he will be the first Non-AWOL American pilot from the Vietnam War who actually went to Vietnam elected President.

If Fred Thompson wins, he will be the first Law & Order cast member to be elected President. Not to worry: if he doesn't make it, there are more than enough Law & Order shows on TV that someone in that cast will reach the Oval Office in our lifetime.

If Rudy Guliani wins, he will be the first shameless, self-promoting 9/11 exploiter to be elected President. For those of you scoring at home, Bush was already President on September 11, 2001, and who ever said he was elected?

Wow, there really is a first time for everything! As for the people of New Hampshire - here's hoping they'll be gentle...