Laila Weighs In On Site C.

RevengeOfTheIdiot

BloggerVille

It would appear that at least some of the creme de la creme of the local proMedia contingent has finally started to catch up to the citizen journalist who was once derided as little more than an unreliable activist by certain Keef not named Richard.

More importantly, Laila Yuile is back:

In the age old tradition used by politicians of every stripe who are forced to release bad news, the NDP waited until late Friday before the BC day long weekend to tell the public about the long overdue progress reports on the Site C dam.

And the news wasn’t good…. delays and rising costs related to the Covid pandemic had taken its toll, and now the project was facing cost overruns, and unknown in service date and worse yet…. a final budget figure couldn’t even be given! In fact, a quick google search shows the majority of headlines and excerpts on this by media bought the carefully crafted press messaging hook line and sinker on the Covid angle, with some not even mentioning the bigger story held within the report...


Go read her latest in its entirety.

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Your Morning Audio....Gabriola, Not California.

NorthSouth
InterruptedVille


Normally, in even numbered years we head south, by car, to California for a summer holiday.

When there, we spend most of our time in Mendocino County visiting friends, going to beaches, and even playing open-mics.

This summer of course, we couldn't do that so, instead, we spent time on Gabriola Island. The image, above, is of the girls heading down to the beach at Sandwell Provincial Park when we were there last week.

We had a really great time while social distancing from any and all outside our wee pod.

Today's story is backed with the tune 'California Zephyr', which came out of a Jay Farrar and Ben Gibbard collaboration to write songs based on Jack Kerouac's 'Big Sur' a few years ago...

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In the tune there is a lyric about riding the rails across the great salt flat at daybreak...You can see that, for real....Here.


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Sunday Set (Reprised)...Long May She Run.

July 30th: Hi All...We're away for a few days, mostly at the beach...Sure am missing the Whackadoodle...Just putting this back up to the top as this particular Sunday Set will soon be cycling off the server...We've got a new one in the works.

AFriend
IndeedVille


My best beach buddy, Rosie the Whackadoodle, is no longer with us.

In the end she had a good and pretty long run.

Bigger E. joins me for this Sunday Set which is made up of...

Long May You Run  - Uncle Neil's ode to his first hearse mobile.

Dope City Blues - A collaboration with Mr. Beer 'N Hockey and We.

Angel From Montgomery - Mr. Prine.

Alabama Pines - by a still-then-looking-for-home Jason Isbell. 

Mercy - (all of) The Felice Brothers.

This is the tree crazy kitty kat (not) fat going after the Whackadoodle's collar the other day...Photo by littler e.

Wearing Shirts Of Camo-Brown, They March Northward.

DetachmentsWithout
StormsVille


From the NY Times' Mike Baker:

For the record, here is what Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan had to say:

“Any deployment here would, in my view, undermine public safety,” Ms. Durkan said.


Again, the only clearly discernible rationale for any of this is to provoke a violent response all in the name of having the faux prophecies of the screamers realized.


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The Faux Prophecy Of The Screamers.

LightingFiresAndFanningFlames
InCrowdedCitiesVille


Why is the Trump administration doing it's best to provoke violent clashes in American cities like Portland while simultaneously serving it all up, red hot, for the TeeVee?

Because, as Michael Grynbaum of the New York Times reports, it makes for fantastic fodder for the screamers:

To his legions of listeners, Rush Limbaugh calls the demonstrators in Portland, Ore., “anarchists” who “hate Americans and America.” He recently made an ominous prediction: “I can see secession coming.”

On Fox News, Sean Hannity describes the scene in Portland as “a literal disaster area — and, yeah, it looks like a war zone.”

On Wednesday, Breitbart News — which features a “Riot Crackdown” page on its website — published an article declaring, “Now would be a real good time to do whatever is necessary to obtain a permit to legally carry a handgun.”

Right-wing outlets and conservative media stars have seized on the weekslong protests in Portland as a rallying cry for law and order, instructing their followers to fear for their safety and blaming Democratic leaders for failing to restore peace...


And if a rampaging secret police force that is literally wearing camouflagish brownshirts can provoke a truly violent response, well, who cares if it destroys a once great country as long as it proves the screamers right.

Right?


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A Cold Day In Hell Arrives...

WhenYou'veLostTheShrubbery'sPolitical
FootSoldiersVille


Tom Ridge is a Republican.

He is also a former member of the US Congress, a former governor of the state of Pennsylvania, and he was George W. Bush's first director of the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of 9/11.

Thus, in no way can Ridge be easily tarred-and-feathered by the screamers as a Surrender-Crat.

This is what he had to say about Donald Trump sending sending secret police, under the banner of Homeland Security and against the wishes of State and local officials, into Portland Oregon:

The nation’s first secretary of the Department of Homeland Security had sharp words for his former agency Tuesday, condemning the Trump administration’s decision to send federal officers into the streets of Portland, Ore. to quell protests, saying it was “counterproductive,” and that it was not the agency’s mission to act as domestic law enforcement.

“The department was established to protect America from the ever-present threat of global terrorism. It was not established to be the president’s personal militia,” ex-Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said during an interview with Sirius XM host Michael Smerconish.

Ridge, the former two-term Republican Pennsylvania governor, who was tapped by President George W. Bush to lead the domestic security agency two decades ago, said “it would be a cold day in hell before I would consent to an uninvited, unilateral intervention into one of my cities.”...

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Meanwhile, via the NY Times' Mike Baker's excellent on-the-ground reporting in Portland last night....

Feds are out in force now after a fire on the facade of the building pic.twitter.com/SGLdWlZV88

— Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker) July 22, 2020

How can anyone possibly think that this action is not meant to create chaos that will justify a further, even more vicious clampdown?


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Beware The Horror Of The Gorbtgem!

DarthVaderSpeaks
Kinda/SortaVille


Yesterday we noted that someone, Marky Mark perhaps (?), had opened the previously sealed GordCo, Inc. crypt and let the inanities of Cookie Dough Mike out into the sunlight.

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, came a gaseous release from the good Mr. Coleman:

The Gorbtgem?

Oh, the Horror!


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It really does appear that the BC Liberals have cranked up yet another digital influencer /klout klubbish campaign on the internets in an effort to bring back the good old days...Because, suddenly, they're everywhere with carefully curated talking points backed by the 'concerns' of  friendlies (see, for example, above)...Personally, I'm waiting for a certain wacky one out in the valley to go off-book so that he can  invoke the 17th letter of the alphabet, anonymously, of course.


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The Lid To The GordCo, Inc. Crypt Creaks Open...

WhatSixteenYearsOfWaterCarrying
WillGetYouVille


The lid to the long sealed GordCo, Inc. crypt creaks open and who should pop out but...

Cookie Dough Mike!

Good grief.


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What's the doughboy thing all about Alfie?....Well, Sean Holman's PublicEye archives have that story....Here.


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There Is A Real Wall...

...In Portland.

There is a real wall in Portland that the actions of Donald J. Trump has built.

And it is made up of Moms dressed in yellow.

It now forms nightly to protect constitutionally protected protesters from Mr. Trump's unconstitutional secret federal police.

Julia Silverman of Portland Monthly has the story:

...By Monday morning, the so-called Wall of Moms, some of them women whose children had been protesting for weeks, were going viral online. The group of mostly white women dressed in yellow and linking arms at the front of the protesters, pledging to use their privilege to protect others in the crowd from the brunt of the harm.


“I got to the breaking point,” says Eloise Hoatlin, a SE Portland fitness coach, student, and mother. She says she had attended only smaller neighborhood protests thus far, wanting to protect her elderly parents, but on Sunday night was at the front of the crowd facing down the police, separated only by the fabled fence in front of the Justice Center. “I can make all the excuses I want to make. It is fear of a lot of things, but what I am most scared of is fear if we don’t do this. It is a numbers game. We need to start coming out in numbers. And I can be one of those numbers.”...


Here they are, in all their peaceful glory:

Moms sing lullaby “hands up please don’t shoot me” pic.twitter.com/GJhj8ymn12

— Sergio Olmos (@MrOlmos) July 21, 2020

Something is happening there.


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Your Morning Audio...Travelling In America.

TheKennyVanGoes
ToIdahoVille


When I was a teenaged kid we piled in our 1970 VW (notso) Microbus and drove to Idaho to visit relatives.

I was reading 'All The President's Men' at the time and my learner's license allowed me to drive, lots, on the freeways.

Still, the trip did not really change my perception of travelling in America which had by then already long been set by Paul Simon's 'America' (covered awhile back, here).

It was a view of things that wouldn't change much until C. and I moved to California years later.

More recently, a tune by a kid named Conor Oberst, who likes to hang out with another favourite, The Felice Brothers, became my new travelling in America song on the strength of one verse, a few chords, and some truth...

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