Dewey Wins! Dewey Wins! (In Nanaimo?)...

Link

Gosh.

Perhaps Charlie Smith et al. got a little carried away and pushed the button prematurely after the first three of 111 polls had the former (and now present and future?) real estate speculation enthusiast up by a few votes.

Or.

Perhaps, like many a proMedia outlet trumpeter swan, they just put just a little too much stock in that last minute Mainstreet poll that sure seemed like a bit of a push to some in the know:

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Thanks to sometime reader Shushwap Ken for noting the GStraight's embarrasing (temporary) flub.
Best take on all of this was from Tom Hawthorn on the Twittmachine who noted that, in the end, the fine folks from Mainstreet had a margin of error of approximately +/- infinity, give or take eleventy billion.


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How Far The Klout Klub Has Fallen....The Asset And The Ambassador.

SomeWheelsOfInfluenceCannotBe
PeddledVille


Since they and theirs fell from power in May of 2017, the Klout Klub has been backing horses that just can't win.

First it was failed BC Liberal leadership candidate Michael Lee.

And then it was former Darth Vader protege Hector Bremmer who in the end garnered less than 6% of the vote in the most recent Vancouver election.

So what does the Klub have to do with Mr. McCallum's much more recent last stand?

Well.

When the Lotuslandian Star Division's Joanna Chiu was the only local proMedia member to track down then Ambassador McCallum at a downtown 'charity lunch' late last week where she asked him questions that led to answers that resulted in his sacking, it turns out that the then still Ambassador was breaking bread with...

You guessed it.

The Klout Klub's last remaining 'asset'.

To wit, from Ms. Chiu's Twittmachine feed:

Imagine that!



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And do not think for one second that we, and others it would appear, did not notice Ms. Chiu's additional bon mot for members of that other Lotuslandian 'Club' .


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Ledge Splitting (ctd)....The de Jong Insertion.

CookieDoughMike'sBreakfastOf
ChampionsVille


Justine Hunter, writing in the Globe and (No Longer Empire) Mail has given an overview of the profligate ways of the no longer Clerk and Sergeant-At-Arms of the Lotuslandian Legislature.

Not much new or even truly insightful there, in my humble opinion.

I was interested to find two passages in which former longterm BC Liberal Cabinet Minister Mike De Jong is mentioned.

To wit:

...“The knowledge that the details of their expenditures will become public alters behaviour,” said Mike de Jong, a veteran MLA who pushed for that disclosure...

...Mr. de Jong, who championed reforms to bring disclosure to the spending of the elected officials in Victoria, said it is now time to broaden those reforms. “The principle is, everyone involved in public service needs to embrace the notion that it’s not your money, and the public deserves to know how it is being spent,” he said. “The best way to safeguard against abuse is detailed disclosure.”


Gosh.

Perhaps in her next piece Ms. Hunter could tell how and what, exactly, the good Mr. de Jong actually 'championed' back when he and his were actually in a position to do something about all things profligate.

And there is that small matter of how Mr. de Jong and associates came to 'install' the no longer Clerk of the Legislature after doing the same when they made the same fine fellow the boss of Elections B.C.  back in the days of yore.

Charlie Smith, writing with depth and context in the GStraight has those stories.

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Stonehenge Revisited - The Roger Chroniclers.

VituperativeFoulMouthedDenizensOfThe
(Former)LeftBlogistanVille


You want facts, details and context on all things Mr. Stone (and more).

Here are my go to places....

Emptywheel - She's been at this since the days of Scooter Libby's leak fest, first on the long gone Firedoglake and now at her own most excellent longform blog...She's got credibility everywhere and these days she's even pushing the envelope back towards reality-based sandwiches quite regularly on and in CorpMedia monkey grinder organs like, say, this one.


Mueller She Wrote - The weekly podcast is free, long, detailed and addictive...It's also made by women and is way more insightful than, dare I suggest it, the boys' club audio offerings from the former denizens of Mr. Obama's West Wing....My favourite MSW regular segment is the 'Fantasy Indictment League'....It hit the jackpot this week.


Driftglass - He is a dinosaur of the longform, left-leaning linear typestries that emerged during the early Bush years who got his start as a five-tooled commenter at the house that the late, great Steve Gilliard built....Unlike Marcy (Empty) Wheeler, Driftglass doesn't even bother to push CorpMedia envelopes....Instead, he tears them to shreds, salts them, deep fries them in rancid lard scooped from the troughs of wingnut welfare supported Schlachthof-fünfian mass-distraction factories and feeds them to the likes of Bobo Brooks, whole, for breakfast...

Enjoy.

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Recognize, perchance,  those three fine fellows in the image at the top of the post from the days of pre-Willie Horton yore?

Speaking of the politics of the distraction-based deflector smear...I'll have something to say about the latest (alleged) OpEd on Mr. Eby in the PostMedia prints...Later.


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The Keef Report....A Tempest In A Keef Pot.

Link

The public doesn't differentiate?

Gosh.

Who, exactly, is paid the big bucks to (allegedly) help them do just that?

Differentiate, I mean.

Sheesh.


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Previous Keef Reports can be found...Here.



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RailGate Revisited....Responding to Our Friend Bob.

Imdemnify
ThisVille


After he read Rod Nickel's recent Reuter's story that starts like this...

Canada‘s two major railways are rationing space on trains traveling to the country’s biggest port and recently prioritized some commodities over others to deal with congestion, the latest indication of their struggle to meet demand from new trade deals.

That move prompted Canada‘s transport regulator last week to start an investigation into rail services around Port Metro Vancouver, after shippers complained of “discriminatory treatment of certain commodities” by Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Railway (CP)....


Friend of the blog Bob Fedderly posited the following  on his Twittmachine feed:

"Its almost like we could do better if we had something like BC Rail to move our resources more effectively. What was that reasoning behind dumping that asset again?"

Well, while we don't know the exact 'reasoning', we do happen to recall approximately 500,000 reasons that may or may not have helped Mr. Gordon Campbell decide dump said asset.

The following is from a post from the spring of 2010, which was still a few months before the six million dollar deal that stopped Railgate, cold:

In recent posts we have established that two of British Columbia's private Railway Tycoons, David McLean of CN Railand Peter Armstrong of Rocky Mountaineer Railtours each gave, either personally, or through their companies, at least $250,000, each, to the BC Liberal Party of Mr. Gordon Campbell since the latter became leader way, way, way back in 1993.

And, on the flipside, both private Rail Tycoons have done very well, indeed, in the wake of Gordon Campbell promise-busting dismantling of a very public Railway soon after he became the Premier of British Columbia in 2001.

Specifically, with the destruction of a 90 year-old statute that required BC Rail to run a public passenger service, followed shortly thereafter by the tainted/not tainted/sale/not sale of BC Rail to CN Rail, Mess'rs McLean and Armstrong ultimately came up aces by any and all financial measures one could choose to use and/or trumpet...
Imagine that!


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Is The Dipperian Position On A Money Laundering Inquiry Softening?

AllYourWhalingIndustries
AreBelongToUsVille


We first noticed it in a tweet from AG David Eby followed by his Fed-blaming press conference last week.

Now, tucked into a report from Global's Sam Cooper about the BCGEU's call for a corruption inquiry, there is this:

...(W)hile the B.C. NDP government has been resisting demands for such an inquiry, party leaders including Attorney General David Eby and solicitor general Mike Farnworth have started to make behind-the-scenes arguments in favour of an inquiry, according to Global News sources...


Shades of FDR and that 'I want to do it, no go out and make me do it' mythology from days of yore?



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For those interested...This week's Sunday Set auditory bonanza, sans Lorne Greene is....Here.
And, just in case you missed it....Laila has a very solid take on the Wood Splitter that has swallowed Lotusland's pundit class whole....Also, Jody Paterson explains why she returning to the long(er) form Bloggodome to tackle the Climate Change issue.


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Sunday Set....Mumble Tracking.

GiveMeAn
EHarmonicaVille


In the old days, I used to put these together, ostensibly for old-timey Kings Road bunk bed lullaby tunes for Bigger E. when she was away at school.

Now it's littler e.'s turn.

This one includes covers of....

• Jeff Tweedy's (almost) mumble-free 'Misunderstood'.

• Townes Van Zandt's medley of his hit (singular on purpose) 'Pancho and Lefty'.

• The Felice Brothers' 'Mercy' from when they were young.

• Mr. Springsteen's Steinbeckian lifter puller (with the ladder down) 'The Ghost of Tom Joad'.

And, just to be clear, there's also a wee bit of talking in between the tunes for those who like that sort of thing.

Here's the link to the entire Sunday Set (~20min)....Embed is below.






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What Mr. Eby Was Trying To Tell Us The Other Day...

AllYourWhalingIndustries
AreBelongToUsVille


Given the Dipperians' previous decision to not go all Charbonneau on the money launderingapalooza that may or may not have our fair Lotusland in a financial vice, I was having a hard time deciphering David Eby's recent tweet in which he upped the ante on the magnitude of the problem.

Well.

It turns out Mr. Eby is upset that the Feds have shut he and his out.

Sam Cooper of the Global Postal Media Service, who unearthed some data compiled by the Horsemen that helped raise Mr. Eby's ire, has the story.

Here is Mr. Cooper's lede:

B.C. Attorney General David Eby says he’s frustrated Canada’s federal government hasn’t shared a police intelligence study that showed organized crime groups are suspected of laundering billions of dollars in B.C. real estate.

At a press conference on Thursday, Eby referred to a confidential RCMP intelligence study obtained and investigated by Global News, which showed police found crime networks tied to China had laundered over $1 billion in Vancouver luxury real estate in 2016...

Hmmmmm....

Liberal (as in slightly differing flavours of a political brand) wheels within protective wheels perhaps?


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As for that bit of babbling wordplay in the sub-header....AOC!


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The Keef Report....Green Trashing (Again)

Link

Gosh.

You'd almost think that the Keef has gone and lost his (insider access) religion.

Then again, maybe it's just another one of those post 9:00 pm 'the schwag is over the yard arm'-type deals.

Or some such thing.


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Previous Keef Reports can be found...Here.


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What, Exactly, Is Mr. Eby Trying To Tell Us?

(Follow-up post is....Here.)

Link

Look.

I realize that I haven't been paying really close attention the last 12 weeks or so.

But I'm really starting to get confused about how the current government plans to deal with a Whaling Industry that was, in my opinion, incubated by the previous government and its deal breaker partners who helped breech birth the local Lotuslandian Casino Industrial Complex from the get go.

Can anyone enlighten me?

Thanks.


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The link to the watchdog's whaling report referred to by Mr. Eby is....Here.
Update: Laila weighs in...


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