Wither BC's 'Liberal' Party?...The Ron Gets More Oblivious Than Ever With His Obviousness.

PerhapsNowWouldBeAGoodTimeToStickTo

SportsWritingVille


BellGlobeCTVTSNRDSMTViHeartBNNVrakMuchStarz' western columnist man-about-Lotusland-town, Gary Mason, has just published a piece about why the British Columbia Liberal Party needs a new, more 'inclusive' name.

As near as we can figure it, Mr. Mason's thesis is that such a change will make it possible for finest-of-the-fine, hard core conservative-types like the oft-quoted ol' turdstormer himself, Bill Bennett, to keep voting for whatever the BCL currently constituted party re-brands itself as.

Which is bad enough, on its face, for the very obvious reason that the good Mr. Mason ignores (see bottom of the post).

But, to make matters more laughable, the Globe's western man writes this:

...This isn’t the first time that a rebrand under a more inclusive-sounding moniker has been mooted. It was a topic of discussion in the 1990s when the party found itself on the outside looking in while the NDP ruled British Columbia...


Now.

Let's have a look at the actual fact of that 1990's matter, shall we.

Which is...

The post-Socred, bagman-reconstituted, made-man-led BC Liberal Party never, ever held power in this province before the Dipper wipeout of 2001.

In fact, if you look at the historical provincial summary, above, it is obvious (there is that word again) that, prior to the rise of the Socred tent pole in the '50's, the Liberal party last won an election in British Columbia in 1941 back, when it was actually liberal, for real, as evidenced by the fact that it beat the actual Conservative party at the time.

****

So, what is that other obvious, and important if you have been paying actual attention, thing that Mr. Mason does not once mention in his latest digital fish wrap offering that wanders off into climate change pontification territory?

Well, it is the fact that it was not the far right side of the ledger that was the BCL's really big voter loss problem in the election just past.

Instead, what they really need to worry about is that big chunk that the now economically Dr. No-free Mr. Horgan managed take out of the center of the electorate.

And no name change that makes uber-Cons like Bill Bennet happy is going to solve that problem for the party of the bagmen.

OK?

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What's all the 'Ron Obvious' stuff about?...This.

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Your Evening Audio...Mr. Prine's Double-Edged Lyrical Sword.

Ridin'OnTheCityOf

AllYourMusicalFriendsVille

There are many things that make the work of John Prine great.

Just one of them was the way that he could write a lyric that could simultaneously evoke two opposing emotions in the listener.

Like, say, happiness and sadness or comedy and tragedy

Despite this, I always figured that Mr. Prine knew exactly how he, himself, felt about the subjects of his own writing.

Now I'm not so sure.

What changed?

Well, as so often happens, when I decide to butcher someone's song, I go searching for all the live versions I can find

This time it was Prine's 'All The Best'.

In early live versions of the tune, which was released almost three decades ago, Mr. Prine picks, hard at a festering wound when he serves up a pre-amble that mentions how he recently received 'a divorce for a Christmas'. In the immediate aftermath  Prine and a friend went out and bought an electric train that they promptly nailed to the dining room table 'just because we could'. 

It was an acid-laced commentary from a still relatively young writer that left no doubt about how he felt about the subject of the song at that time.

However, in recent years an aging Prine became much more kind-hearted and empathetic when he introduced and sang the song.

Personally, I like to think that the lyrics of the younger Mr. Prine, not to mention his funky way of dealing with an otherwise standard 1/4/5 chord progression, helped an aging Mr. Prine coax his better angel to the fore.

Then again, what the heck do I know...

______

Image at the top of the post....A young Prine with another denizen of the Chicago folk scene back in the early 1970's, Steve Goodman.

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Bloggodome Bat Signal.

Those of you who have spent any time hanging around here at all likely know of  'Mr. Beer and Hockey'.

For all the right reasons. 

And I'm not talking about, as he calls it, 'The Jerry Jeff Walker act'.

Anyway...

Beer is going through the toughest of tough things imaginable at the moment.

So head on over to his establishment and give him a shout.

It's the least we can do.


_____
The non-blog, real world story is here.


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The Cullen Inquiry: IGET We Hardly Knew Thee.

TheLongTailOfTheVaderOf
DarthValley


Former GordCo, Inc. and Clarklandian 'Minister of Everything', Rich Coleman, dismantled the 'Illegal Gambling Enforcement Team' (IGET) in 2009.

This is what the Mr. Coleman told Sean Holman in 2010:

"I had a team that wasn't working (i.e. in 2009) and it was costing the taxpayers money. I decided to do it differently and get better results."

And as a result of those 'better results' the following, according to Ian Mulgrew in the VSun,  is what happened in 2012:

...The Cullen Commission of Inquiry into Money Launderingheard Wednesday that apparently, at its height, casinos were swamped with $63 million in the first nine months of 2012 alone — $44 million in $20 bills...

Gosh.

That's a lot of hockey bags.

_______

Personally, I am of the opinion that the video of the interview that Mr. Holman conducted with Mr. Coleman back in 2010 should be, at the very least, Exhibit 1A at the Inquiry...

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Not With A Bang, But A...

HollowerMenCouldNeverHaveBeenImaginedEvenBy

EliotVille

Oh gosh, hang on a second. I think I've got this one wrong.

Because...

This:

Michigan Court of Claims Judge Christopher Murray issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday that effectively halts Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's directive banning the open carry of guns near polling locations on Election Day...

****

I'm sorry to say this about a place where I once lived and still do love, mostly because of the people we got to know so well while were there, but...

I honestly fear that if Mr. Trump wins AND the Democrats do not take back the Senate next week that this really will be the end of America as we know it.

Regardless whether there are bangs, bang-bangs, whimpers, or all three put together, involved.

OK?

______

The quote, above, is from the lede of a piece by Beth Leblanc in yesterday's Detroit News...And lest you think this post is nothing but hyperbole, do not forget that Michigan is the state where, at least in part due to the bleatings of President ALL CAPS, a group of deranged hollowed out 'men' tried to...Do this.

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The FOING-ing!

IgnoreThatCullenInquiry
OverInTheCornerVille


Noted IGET hitman and seller of the finest kind of public housing land, the Vader of Darth Valley is outraged...

Outraged I tell you!

Link

But...

Now that the Keef and other members of the Club have officially gone over to that insider access portal controlled by the other side, will anybody even see or hear this naked attempt at screamy-scary, deflector-spike spin?


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An Apology To The Good People Of Chilliwack-Kent.

MamaMia
CulpaVille


When Laurie Throness' continued extremist comments finally got him kicked out of the BC Liberal Party we had a pretty good discussion about it around here.

And it was in that discussion that I made the following comment, in response to contributions from longtime readers Bruce M and NVG, which I now regret:

'...I'd be willing wager that the latest developments will actually fire up the base such that Mr. T. of the Valley gets an even bigger percentage of the total this time around...'


Why regret?

Because Mr. Throness's numbers actually dropped through the floor, from 53% of the vote in 2017 to something on the order of 32% this time around depending what happens with the mail-ins.

So.

Why did this happen?

Well, it appears that many of the good people of Chilliwack-Kent who previously voted for the 'Liberal' candidate this time voted for the Independent candidate, Jason Lum, a three term city councillor who, by all accounts (and his own website), appears to be an actual 'liberal' or, at the very least, a slightly red-tinged Socred type.

Thus, my apologies for impugning all those fine, reasonable folks out in Chilliwack who would rather chew rocks than vote 'Dipper' or, now it would appear, 'Extremist'.



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Your Evening Audio...Jerry Jeff Walker

HeTalkedOfLife

TalkedOfLifeVille


Jerry Jeff Walker died last Saturday.

If you want to learn how, exactly, a guy from New York named Ronald Clyde Crosby came to be known as Jerry Jeff Walker back when he was just a kid looking for a gig in New Orleans, well...

Head on over and check out Todd Snider's tribute to Walker that he recorded live, in one long take on the weekend.

Not long after he settled on his new moniker, Jerry Jeff spent the night in a New Orleans drunk tank. A few hours later he stepped out into the morning light with a hangover and a song in his back pocket about an old dance man he now 'knew' that would make him rich. The tune also give him the freedom to become one of the founding members of the Cosmic Cowboy movement with a bunch of soon-to-be-country-outlaws in Austin in the early 1970's.

Not long thereafter Walker got all his friends together to record their songs however and wherever they wanted which, of course, was antithetical to the then still pre-Americana 'country' music business at the time.

And all through those wild years he also raged against the dying of any and all light:

...“The mid-’70s in Austin were the busiest, the craziest, the most vivid and intense and productive period of my life,” Mr. Walker wrote in his memoir.

“Greased by drugs and alcohol, I was also raising the pursuit of wildness and weirdness to a fine art,” he wrote. “I didn’t just burn the candle at both ends, I was also finding new ends to light.”...


Luckily, as the seventies began to wind down, Walker met the love of his life, Susan Streit,  and settled down.

Sort of.

Todd Snider tells an amazing story about the time he and Walker stumbled out of a bar at three in the morning in Santa Fe, New Mexico sometime in the late '90's.

As the pair walked backed to their hotel they heard the unmistakable opening bars of Mr. Bojangles being played on a banjo off in the distance.

So they changed direction, went around a corner and up the next street where they found an old busker, empty hat on the emptier sidewalk at his feet.

They listened to the old guy play Bojangles in its entirety and then, without a word of explanation, Walker pulled all the cash money he had from his all pockets and dropped it in the empty hat before heading back off into the night with a dumbfounded Snider in tow...

.

________

Switched to an 'Evening Audio' because I keep hearing about how these things are good for falling asleep to...Not entirely sure how I feel about that, but what the heck...

You want Snider's story, for real, of meeting the old busker with his idol in the middle of the night?...It's here.

And, for the record, if there is only one thing I can ever convince you of at this little F-Troop-list blog it is that you will not regret clicking through on that link directly above...Seriously...I absolutely promise that it will surprise you, amaze you and, if you are even remotely alive, make you very, very happy....OK?

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The Keef Report...There's No Access Like Behind The Mask Access.

AlwaysBe
InsidingVille

Link

Gosh.

Does this mean that BC Ferries schwag ain't what it used to be?

****

Despite the fact that the Whackadoodle is no longer with us, I still take a once weekly walk out where the North Arm of the Big Muddy meets the Salish Sea.

It is a fine patch of sand, etcetera, that is directly under the path of those damnable Jets from Heli.

And if the newly unleashed Horgan doesn't now do the right thing on Site C?

Well,  I'm going to have to start shaking my fist at the white and blue coloured whirlygig machines whizzing by overhead all over again.

OK?


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Sammyfreude.

I'veGotAMemoryAnd

I'mStillGoingToUseItVille

It would appear that the massive war chest is all spent out and Spam-A-Lot* is finally dead according to Dan Fumano's piece in the VSun:

The B.C. NDP flipped the key battleground riding of Vancouver-False Creek on Saturday night, on its way to winning nine of 11 seats in the City of Vancouver.

New Democratic candidate for False Creek Brenda Bailey had collected 5,295 votes to 4,512 votes for the two-term incumbent Liberal Sam Sullivan...

Even more satisfying, to this long term observer at least, is the way Smilin' Sammy went down, essentially disavowing everything he once pretended to stand for:

...During the campaign, Sullivan took a “harder line” on drugs than voters had seen from him in the past, Prest said, including vocally opposing a plan approved last week by Vancouver city council to open an overdose prevention site in the riding...


Now, as for Ms. Polak and Mr. Johal?

Here's hoping that Angus Reid and Co. were right about which way pre-election day early voters were leaning.

OK?


___
*Trademark Stephen Quinn, from back in the days when he (really) worked for a living.


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Wilky's Way...The 'Scanning Things' Syllogism.

AlwaysBeReacting

MitchMurrayAndTheZubeVille

It would appear that the good Mr. Wilkinson now feels that every working person deserves to receive a working wage, including folks on the front lines:




Hmmmm...

Not sure how, exactly, Mr Wilkinson got there from his springtime statements to Mikey Mike on the (no longer so) Giant '98 back in the spring, as noted recently by Dipperian Harry Bains:

"...You know, people working as cashiers in the grocery stores are making about 16 bucks an hour as a starting wage. That's good. But is it sustainable?

We've got cashiers starting at 16 dollars an hour for scanning stuff at the supermarket..."

In fairness, I suppose it could be argued that sixteen bucks an hour is a bridge too far for all those finest of the fine-type folks that Mr Wilkinson must, ultimately, keep happy.

As for that earlier GordCo Inc. training wage loophole thingy....

Well, perhaps Mr. Wilkinson could disavow that vociferously as well?


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What If....

BeneathTheValleyOfThe

EugenicsDollsVille


Paul Willcocks has written a solid piece in the Tyee about Mr. Wilkinson's 'extremist' problem.

It's worth heading over to read the entire thing, but this snippet snagged in my brain:

...Throness will still likely win his seat in Chilliwack-Kent and sit as an Independent...

Now.

I realize it is unlikely given the current polling, but let's say Ms. Furstenau and the Greens do come back and make things close when the final seat numbers are counted, at least in terms of making it problematic for the Dippers to reach majority status, and...

Well.

Can you imagine?


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Mr. Wilkinson Explains Why He Did Not Try To Stop Jane Thornthwaite, Laughably.

DidHeEver
GoClearVille

Link

Gosh.

Does this mean that Mr. Wilkinson always laughs and make smiley faces whenever he sees and hears one of his caucus members make two minute statements that are filled to bursting with words that are clearly poorly chosen?

_____

Subheader given you an ear worm?....This!


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One BC Liberal Explains Why He Didn't Try To Stop Jane Thornthwaite.

Update...Tuesday morning...It would appear that Mr. Wilkinson has finally fessed up, sort of.

AllPoliticsIs

PublicVille

Jason Sturdy has been the BC Liberal MLA for West Vancouver - Sea To Sky since 2013.

On September 17th he was the lower left square on the Zoom call wherein Jane Thornthwaite (center-right), who has been the BC Liberal party MLA for North Vancouver - Seymour since 2009, spent two full minutes sexually shaming a fellow MLA.

Unlike his party leader, Andrew Wilkinson, Mr. Sturdy at least had the guts to explain why he did nothing to stop Ms. Thornthwaite on that call when he spoke to Jennifer Thuncher and Nick Wells of the Squamish Chief and the Canadian Press:

..."Certainly not my proudest moment," is how West Vancouver-Sea to Sky incumbent MLA candidate Jordan Sturdy describes sitting quietly while a Liberal colleague made degrading comments about New Democrat politician Bowinn Ma during a recent online roast for retiring fellow politician Ralph Sultan.

"I am not proud of not sort of leaping in there and saying, 'Jane, really?' which I think in a personal setting, might have been different," said Sturdy, reached at his home on Thanksgiving Day...

Gosh.

Might speak up and attempt to stop degrading comments in private but not in quasi-public?

What, exactly, does that say about Mr. Wilkinson's caucus?

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Is It Possible That...

AndTheBandWore

BlueSuitsVille


Is it possible that the leader of the BC Liberal Party, Mr. Andrew Wilkinson, was slow to respond to the public's overwhelmingly negative reaction to the sexualized shaming of a sitting MLA by a member of his caucus because, well....

He was listening to the boys in the band who were saying it was nothing?

If you get my drift.


_______
What's all the fuss about?....This.

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A Question For The Leader Of The BC Liberal Party...

Link

That is all.

(for now)

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The Real BC Liberal Party Reveals Itself...

AllThatSmirking
IsThemVille

The following is from a BC Liberal party 'roast' on September 17th, with invited supporters present, of former MLA Ralph Sultan.

Current MLA Jane Thornthwaite does most of the talking.

The other fine figures, safely ensconsed in their Brady Bunch boxes, do most of the guffawing and smirking, including the current leader of the party.

No one puts a stop to it.

I’m not going to editorialize this.

Rather, I’d like to hear from women on how they feel about this clip.

I’m sharing because a woman reached out to me and asked me to do so (her email in below tweet).#bcpoli pic.twitter.com/AiDwFmBT7F

— Mo Amir ॐ This is VANCOLOUR (@vancolour) October 11, 2020

Again.

This event was apparently engineered and broadcast, on purpose, by today's BC Liberal Party.

Just ponder that a moment...

OK?

_______
Meanwhile, the good Ms. Thornthwaite just keeps on digging.... and ...'fall flat' out digging.

And then there are those super-fine, finest-of-the-very-finest-kind of folks offering their support to the poor, beleagured Ms. Thornthwaite...by the Trillions!

Ms. Ma, as expected, takes the high road.

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The Drug That Mr. Trump Did Not Receive At Walter Reed (Allegedly).

InTheEnd

TheDataAreTheDataVille


Lost in all the excitement of the past week was the appearance of a  paper published in the New England Journal Of Medicine titled: "Effect of Hydroxychloroquine in Hospitalized Patients with Covid-19."

The paper reports on a randomized, controlled clinical trial of 4,716 hospitalized patients with a primary endpoint of death at 28 days. You can find the abstract with the specifics at the bottom of the post.

Once again, for informed, expert analysis on this topic (which is not my field), we turn to drug development guy Derek Lowe:

...I’m not in a mood to be subtle. Hydroxychloroquine treatment for coronavirus does not work. It is not beneficial, and in fact appears to be actively harmful. As far as I’m concerned, administering it to infected patients now constitutes medical malpractice. I have no interest in goalpost-moving efforts to say that they didn’t administer zinc or azithromycin, or they picked the wrong patients or the wrong loading dose or whatever. No. This is special pleading, and it is not backed up by any hard data. None of the countries or regions where HCQ was enthusiastically adopted, with or without the addition of zinc, azithromycin or what have you have seen discernable benefits. It. Does. Not. Work...


Enough said?

_________

In the same post, D. Lowe also weighs in on another recent paper in the NEJM, and concludes that the latest clinical trial supports the earlier conclusion from A. Fauci that the anti-viral treatment remdesivir is moderately beneficial.

In case anyone is wondering about those 'HEK 293' cells that were originally derived from human fetal tissue in the 1970's that currently have the public prints in a tizzy...Well...Those cells, which have since been modified by many labs, were originally developed by a Canadian, Frank Graham, while he was a post-doc in the Netherlands in the 1970's. These cells are really are an invaluable tool in biomedical research the world over because it's very easy to get genes into them that can then be expressed (i.e. turned on) so that you can test their function, alone or in combination with other genes.

Added the 'allegedly' to  the header....Just in case...Interestingly, according to news reports the current President of the United States apparently did receive zinc in his VIP cocktail (see bottom of this report)....Hmmmmm.

_______________

Abstract

BACKGROUND

Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have been proposed as treatments for coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) on the basis of in vitro activity and data from uncontrolled studies and small, randomized trials.

METHODS

In this randomized, controlled, open-label platform trial comparing a range of possible treatments with usual care in patients hospitalized with Covid-19, we randomly assigned 1561 patients to receive hydroxychloroquine and 3155 to receive usual care. The primary outcome was 28-day mortality.

RESULTS

The enrollment of patients in the hydroxychloroquine group was closed on June 5, 2020, after an interim analysis determined that there was a lack of efficacy. Death within 28 days occurred in 421 patients (27.0%) in the hydroxychloroquine group and in 790 (25.0%) in the usual-care group (rate ratio, 1.09; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.97 to 1.23; P=0.15). Consistent results were seen in all prespecified subgroups of patients. The results suggest that patients in the hydroxychloroquine group were less likely to be discharged from the hospital alive within 28 days than those in the usual-care group (59.6% vs. 62.9%; rate ratio, 0.90; 95% CI, 0.83 to 0.98). Among the patients who were not undergoing mechanical ventilation at baseline, those in the hydroxychloroquine group had a higher frequency of invasive mechanical ventilation or death (30.7% vs. 26.9%; risk ratio, 1.14; 95% CI, 1.03 to 1.27). There was a small numerical excess of cardiac deaths (0.4 percentage points) but no difference in the incidence of new major cardiac arrhythmia among the patients who received hydroxychloroquine.

CONCLUSIONS

Among patients hospitalized with Covid-19, those who received hydroxychloroquine did not have a lower incidence of death at 28 days than those who received usual care. (Funded by UK Research and Innovation and National Institute for Health Research and others; RECOVERY ISRCTN number, ISRCTN50189673. opens in new tab; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT04381936. opens in new tab.)

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Political Psychopathy, Vol 5...Coming Face-To-Face With The Crazy.

CrazyUncleLiberty
RidesAgainVille


OK.

Well, maybe not face-to-face exactly, but keyboard-to-keyboard at the very least...

Yesterday, I used my memory, with an assist from the Googleplex, to write a post that started with a tweet from a certain Mr. Trump in which he shouted, in ALL-CAPS, for his base to 'Liberate Michigan!' 

The post then moved on to the spectacle of armed 'protestors' over-running the Michigan statehouse and it ended with the arrests, yesterday, of a fine passel of (allegedly) grown men who were plotting, amongst other things, to kidnap the Governor.

In response, I received the following anonymous comment on the thread attached to the post:

C'mon, man, you have to know there's so much more to this story.

Consider that, as Trevor Aronson has documented*, the FBI creates more terrorism than all other terror groups combined; and then factor in that their dirty paws are all over this latest episode, too.

Consider that the FBI has much to worry about from a second term DOJ under Trump, and that Dir. Wray issued the recent white-supremicist charge without evidence right when the public was becoming aware of evidence that BLM and Anti-fa are marxists proxies with links to the DNC and the Biden campaign.

Consider that Gov. Whitmer just suffered a resounding constitutional defeat over her decision to take implement excessive quarantine measures.

If this little nudge hasn't at least moved you to consider the possibility that we're looking at another synthetic terror plot, then it's time for you to pack it in and go fishing full time.

****

Here is how I responded:

I know of Mr. Aaronson's work. Much of that work points out what he views to be overzealous attempts by the FBI to root out terrorists of a very different kind in the context of a post-9/11 America. I do not disagree that much of what he has to say is worth paying attention to. However, to my knowledge he has not yet written about this particular incident, either in the Intercept or elsewhere. Regardless, if you would like to provide specific evidence of entrapment in this case I would be happy to reconsider the post under consideration.

My question for you based on your comment is the following....Are you arguing that there are not self-styled, armed militia groups who are fomenting unrest in places like Michigan after they (were first) exhorted to do so by the current president of the United States?


I'll keep you apprised of further developments and/or discussions...

______

Previous editions of PPsychopathy, defined, can be found....Here.

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Two Things About The B.C. Election Poll Numbers.

Granularity
MattersVille

Link

The first thing...From a raw politics point of view how could Horgan and the gang not have gone this fall?

The second thing...I'm not sure how I feel about what appears to be a wiping out of the Green Party given how well, overall, that tenuous balance worked out the last three years...Put another way, do we really want a 'New Labour' third-way type strategy to run rampant, unchecked, for the next four years?


______
I realize that last bit will upset some readers...But I'm saying this as a progressive who has been paying attention.


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Your Morning Audio...Open All Night.

Interchangeable

ImagineeringVille


Recently, I fell into Springsteen's compendium of outtakes called 'Tracks and I couldn't get out.

Released in 1998,  it's a sixty-six song grab bag of everything you could possibly imagine, much of it curious to the obsessed, some of it dross, a little of it inspired, and it even has a surprise or two.

One of the suprises is 'Living On The Edge Of The World' which was recorded during  'The River' sessions in 1979. 

Sonically and melodically, 'Living on the Edge' is a rave-up that borrows heavily from Sonny Curtis' 'I Fought The Law' that others, starting with Bobby Fuller, made famous 15 years before every single punk band in the world incessantly inserted it into their setlist.

Lyrically, ''Living' is pretty much stream of consciousness that flies by, rapid fire.

I fact, the images come and go so quickly that it took me a couple of verses before I realized that the tune was actually released, stripped down, linearized, and turned evocative, as 'Open All Night' on Nebraska in 1982.

Nebraska was then, still is now, and forever will be, my favourite Springsteen album of all time.

And, as proof, I offer up the fact that I first learned to play 'Open',  cowboy chord style, in a little log cabin on the edge of a lake in the Sooke Hill woods in the summer of 1983.

Of course, the imagery that surrounds you in the Sooke Hills is the exact opposite of that which rolls on by, non-stop and linear, on 'Drive All Night'.

And both have stuck with me for almost 40 years now.

Imagine that!

______

It's also striking how much 'Living On The Edge Of The World'' has in common sonically, lyrically and thematically with that very famous and somewhat similarly named REM tune which was released five years after 'Nebraska'...In a most interesting twist, however, Peter Buck has said that 'It's The End of The World' actually borrows heavily from Mr. Dylan's 'Subterranean Home Sick Blues'.... 

Update: Reader B.a.D. sent a message off-line to give a hard time for ripping off  Eddie Vedder's version...At least the front end of the thing....Oh boy....And, if you want a great 'I saw Bruce when...' story, check out Mike's tale in the comments!.

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The Keef Report....In Which Our Hero Appears To Forget An Old Saw About His 'Profession'.

He'sMostDefinitelyAMan

ButIsHeAlsoMadVille

"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations."

George Orwell (maybe).

****

Well, whadday'a know....

A PR firm has ranked local journalists currently covering British Columbia's provincial election.

And, thanks to the horse's mouth itself, we actually know who comes out on top:

Now...

We have no idea how, exactly, 'Brandwatch's proprietary ranking system' works but you might be seriously wondering about that 'analysis of total followers' bit, unless, of course, you actually think the BeeGees were better and more influential than, say, the Ramones.

If you get my drift.

_______

Interestingly, the Keef has used the opposite tactic in an attempt to discredit folks who, in his opinion at least, are of no consequence because they do not have enough popularity points....errrrr....followers...Perhaps more interestingly, however, was that time that the Shatner did not agree with him.


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Political Psychopathy, vol. 4....Root Causes.

WordsDeedsAndActions
StillMatterVille

First, back in April of this year, after Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer invoked a lockdown to protect the state's citizens, Mr. Trump screamed the following in all caps:

Then, a few weeks later, protesters, a number of them armed members of 'militia' groups, stormed the Michigan statehouse as part of what was a decidedly non-theological liberation-based strategy:

And now, in early October, there is this:

The FBI says it has thwarted a plot to abduct and overthrow Michigan's Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Mrs Whitmer has become a target of coronavirus sceptics after enacting strict mitigation measures that were overturned by a judge last week.

Officials say the kidnapping plot involved six men who planned to hold a "treason trial" for her. Mrs Whitmer's office has yet to comment...

{snip}

..."Several members talked about murdering 'tyrants' or 'taking' a sitting governor," the charging document states. In one video, a suspect denounced the state's role in deciding when to reopen gyms during the coronavirus lockdown...

{snip}

...The group wished to gather about "200 men" to storm the capitol building and take hostages, including the governor. They hoped to enact their plan before the November presidential election. If that failed, they planned to attack the governor at her home, officials say...


Enough said?

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Political Psychopathy, Revisited...They Knew.

ManifestHealthcare
DestinyVille

From Bloomberg's Jennifer Jacobs, the proMedia journo with real, rather than imagined MaggHabbian, White House sources:

A top White House security official, Crede Bailey, is gravely ill with Covid-19 and has been hospitalized since September, according to four people familiar with his condition.

The White House has not publicly disclosed Bailey’s illness. He became sick before the Sept. 26 Rose Garden event President Donald Trump held to announce his Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett that has been connected to more than a dozen cases of the disease...


Which is even more evidence that, when they went to the 1st presidential debate a few days after the Rose Garden event and made a show of taking off their masks and then refusing to put on replacements offered to them by an attending Cleveland Clinic doctor, all the president's men and women knew, at that time, that at least some of them had very likely been exposed to the virus.

And yet they pulled their life endangering stunt, with malice aforethought, regardless.


_____

The subheader is from an idea that longtime reader BCW implanted in my brain...Real post, with actual thinking and longformish writing coming on that I hope...Presuming, of course, that I can get off the darned Zoom machine for more than about 5 seconds.

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The Keef Report....In Which A Former Club Member Works The Refs.

Link

I mean, just have a look at who the good Mr. Johal tagged on that thing.

Sheesh.



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Former Keef Reports can be found...Here.

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You Keep Using That Word...

PsychopathyDefined
TrumpVille


You keep on using that word...I do not think it means what you think it means.




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Political Psychopathy, Defined...Part Deux

TheTrumpHerdIsInsideThe

HouseVille

Link

I mean, again, seriously, what is wrong with these people?

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Part one?...This

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Political Psychopathy, Defined.

WhatPartOfInectiousWhileAsymptomatic
DoTheyNotUnderstandVille


From Justin Rohrlich in the Daily Beast:

U.S. (Trump Party) Senator Ron Johnson tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday. But, after finding out he had the virus, which has killed more than 220,000 Americans to date, the Wisconsin Republican still chose to attend an Oktoberfest fundraising dinner that evening...

{snip}

...“I feel fine, I feel completely normal,” he said in a conference call with reporters, adding that he didn’t “stick around” to mingle at the dinner...


Honestly.

What is actually wrong with these people?


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Your Morning Audio...The ESV Orchestra.

Rockabye

Ville


When our family was young we lived in a row house on the edge of town.

The street was quiet, the lawns were wide open and the kids ran free.

At night they climbed into bunk beds in the upstairs bedroom.

Then I would sit on the floor in the dark, back to the wall, and sing lullabies until they fell asleep.

Anyway....

Apparently, these days my now grown-up kids, and even some of their friends, fall asleep to these little songcasts I make occasionally.

Imagine that!

****

This is E. and her friends S. and V. messing around with an old Gillian Welch Song I also covered not long ago...

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He Was An Anarchist.

PleaseBuyOur

MerchVille


Mr. Lydon of Rotten Harbour once sang a little ditty under the crash down chords, in or out of tune, of an incorrigible petty thief named Steve Jones called 'Anarchy In The UK' 

In the song Lydon declared that he was an anarchist, among other things.

As for the here and now?

Well...

Come to think of it, the way things are going down in the MAGAtronic Gulch, perhaps Mr. Lydon still is one.

An anarchist, I mean.

In a non-philosophical, non-Godwinian way, of course. Which is something that only Mr. Beer and Hockey can really explain and/or illustrate.

OK?


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Ironically, the best part of 'Anarchy' were the bits where Lydon made fun of all the stupid, self-aggrandizing organizational acronyms screaming for attention at the time...Go figure.

And who'd a thunk, 40 plus years ago, that it would be Mr. Jones that would have both something to say and some staying power.

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A Question For Mr. Wilkinson...

IGETWeHardlyKnewYe
VancouverModelVille


Based on our last post about the nine figure COVID cash bailout for a certain gaming operator whose establishments have been a oft-named feature in revelatory money laundering stories in the public prints, as well as a bit of back and forth over on the Twittmachine, we have a question for the good Mr. Andrew Wilkinson the current leader of the BC Liberal Party:

'What, specifically, have you changed when it comes to the BC Liberal Party's demonstrable pro-money laundering regulatory stance since you became leader?'

****

We sure hope Mr. Wilkinson can take the time to answer the above question and/or any reasonable facsimile thereof.

When he isn't busy trashing NDP candidate Ravi Khalon that is, presumably because Mr. Khalon had the temerity to bring a potential voting irregularity issue to the attention of Elections BC as well as the good Mr. Wilkinson himself.

Presumably...

Ravi Kahlon and Andrew Wilkinson disagree on politics. Kahlon is also one of the kindest, most thoughtful politicians in Victoria. This is nasty and over the top and I’m not sure what voters are looking for in a leader. #bcpoli #bcvotes https://t.co/dsfnXidSf1

— Richard Zussman (@richardzussman) October 1, 2020

 

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Elevator Shaft COVID Cash?

TaxpayerDollarLaundrological

SocietyVille


Now here's something interesting, from Daniel Thompson at the gambling trade site 'Casino Reports':

Gateway Casinos and Entertainment bagged a hefty cheque coming from the Government of Canada and aiming to support its ongoing business. Some CA$200 million is going to be loaned to the casino leader based in British Columbia. The support comes in accordance with the Large Employer Emergency Financing Facility agenda....


Which leads us to wonder...

Will all that cash be delivered in hockey bags?

The following is from a Sam Cooper Postmedia report in 2017:

Criminal charges have been laid against Silver International Investment, a money-transfer business that RCMP allege was involved in money laundering, had ties to underground banking and used suspected drug cash to fund Chinese VIP gamblers in B.C. casinos.

{snip}

...In late August, at a Vancouver conference attended by law enforcement officials, RCMP Insp. Bruce Ward outlined the details of E-Pirate. The investigation started with surveillance of gambling and cash drops at River Rock Casino, documents say, which led to Silver’s cash house, about a 10-minute drive away.

{snippety-two}

Describing a typical cash drop, (RCMP Inspector Bruce) Ward said: “They would put $100,000 into a hockey bag, show up at the casino, and give (the VIP gambler) $100,000 …


And who, exactly, dismantled the illegal gambling enforcement team (IGET) back in 2009 that paved the way for such business as usual practices?

Well.

You know...

.

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Of course, 'Silver International' has been in the news for other, more deadly, reasons recently.

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