Don't Leave It To Beaver

36°10' North; 115°10' West

Or, more importantly, the Beav's Dad, Ward.

Because, while there is no doubt that Ward Cleaver was a pretty good Father, it is also very likely that if he was living in Vancouver in 2004 Mr. Cleaver would own a comfortable home on the Westside and that he would vote NPA - everytime.

****

Saturday Oct 16th is decision day for Vancouverites..... Do we go with Neighborhoods (ie. Wards) or do we soldier on with an En Masse (ie. At Large) system?

Personally, I'm a little bit conflicted about the whole thing because I don't believe that a lock, stock and barrel Ward system is actually the best way to go.

Instead, I figure the real ticket to ride is a proportional representation system where we elect a mixture of Neighborhood and At-Large counsellors.

So I would be willing vote 'No' to the Ward question if I thought we were gonna get another kick at the cat, but I really doubt that will happen if the proposition goes down in flames.

Why would I think that when the KnoWards anti-ward coalition says otherwise?

Because if we had not been delivered the gift of a transitory, and extremely rare, acquisition of moral backbone by former Mayor Philip Owen we would never have elected our current activist Vancouver city council, the first one we have had in almost two decades.

In other words the status quo in this town for most of the last 70 years has been conservative, pro-business, pro-development, pro-chamber of commerce slates that ramrod their way into power time after time on the back of huge gobs of money, a party machine, and a compliant media that always gets out the vote in the more affluent parts of town. The latest incarnation of this beast is the NPA which has never been whole-hog Neandercon, even when the party's cash cow of the day, Marathon Realty, selected Gordon Campbell to run the city. However, the NPA can always be counted on to pander to its base. As a result, there is a perpetual virtual wall that divides the city, like Old Berlin, into Eastern and Western factions. And while there is a bit of an ideological bent to this division, the main differences between West and East are cold hard cash and real estate assets.

And this means the NPA-dominated Westside always wins and the poor cousin Eastside always loses.

Always.

A nice little nugget in the usually throw-away 'Kudos and Kvetches' column in Wednesday's Vancouver Courier captured this state affairs perfectly:

"....(During a recent election campaign) we attended an all-candidates forum sponsored by a community group on (Eastside) Commercial Drive. Hundreds of voters showed up. Candidates form COPE and the Greens (and the independents) showed up, but one group was noticeably absent: the NPA.

Not a single NPA politician showed up, despite pressing concerns on the Drive about civic governance, the growing drug trade and community policing. The NPA later claimed it made a scheduling mistake and that no one from the cific party was able to attend.

No one? Nice try. The NPA ignored the meeting because it could afford to.

Thanks to support from West Side voters, the NPA was the dominant party on city council, which meant it could blithely brush off thousands of East Side citizens. The NPA could not have gotten away with such arrogance i a ward system because in a ward system, neighbourhoods and communities cannot be ignored when each ward means a seat on council. Vote yes for wards and you will automatically increase the power you and your neighbours have at city hall....It's that simple."

It really is that simple.

And when you get a whiff of all that NPA money wafting off of the Anti-KnowWards "Coalition" it's pretty darn clear that this is our one and only shot at this simple change.

That's why I'm voting Yes to the Wards (but not the Cleavers).

.

....And Watched the Tailights Disappear

40°49' North; 96°42' West

Had Bruce Springsteen's 'Highway Patrolman' from Nebraska stuck in my head all day long and couldn't figure out why.

So, instead of the usual 'City of New Orleans', I finished the goodnight lullabies tonight with the Joe Roberts story instead.

Actually it's really the story of two brothers from the American Heartland that begins in the mid-60's. One brother stays home to work the farm and gradually gets ground down until during he finally gives up and goes to work as a local cop. The other brother goes to Vietnam and comes back bitter, confused and wild. As a result, the upstanding brother is always having to reprimand and/or reign the wild one in.

When I got to the last verse of the song, which put my 5 yr old out cold, as anything from Nebraska always does, I suddenly realized why the lyrics had been runnin' round my head all day long.

And it had nothing to do with feuds I've had with my own brothers over the years.

Instead, it was because of a woman named Amy Goodman.

****

Ms. Goodman is one of the top independent journalists currently working in the United States. She has a radio program called Democracy Now that runs on hundreds of stations every day and she is fearless. She was also simulcast on CBC Radio One's 'The Current' this morning and a major theme of the show was the story of two American kids from the Heartland that recently bailed out of the Army and escaped North. It was a rivetting story and we can only hope that we Canadians do the right thing this time around just like we did during Vietnam, and just like Joe Roberts did when his brother got in a big heap of trouble and skipped town.

Because the highway patrolman chased his brother all over three counties until he came to a sign that said:

"Canadian border, five miles from here."

And that's when he pulled over to the side of the Highway and watched the tailights disappear.

We Can Run, But We Can't Hide.....

33° 04' North; 111° 09' West

....Our Flu Vaccine, that is.

*****

In Bush/Kerry II the Shrubbery said that Americans shouldn't come to Canada for cheaper prescription drugs because we're a third world nation and, thus, our drug supplies are not safe.

Now it is our children, our old, and our infirm that are no longer safe.

Because tonight in BushKerry III, Twiggy, as the Shrubbery is now known since it was discovered that he was one helluva cheerleader in between s(n?)ports at Yale, said that, in order to make up for a shortfall in the US caused by trial lawyers(??!!), he was coming North to get our Flu Shots (ie. "Operation Vaccination Liberation").

Strike another blow for freedom. Specifically, the freedom of a private American multinational drug maker (read: Chiron) to be bailed out once again, this time after it screwed up and outsourced such important public health item.

Sure glad to hear that our socialist system, a system that truly is to the Left of Ted Kennedy, can be used to help out Big Chief Neandercon in his hour of need.

Third world indeed.

CanWest Sinclair Anyone?

38°53' North; 77°02' West

Josh Marshall is one of the Sultans of Left Blogistan in the States. The last couple of days he and others of his ilk have been digging up the dirt on the connection between The Sinclair Broadcast Group and BushCo.

Why?

Because the Sinclair Group is shilling for BushCo's Brain, Karl Rove, Bigtime. Specifically, they are going to broadcast an anti-Kerry schlockumentary on the eve of the American election:

".....(The Sinclair Group) has ordered its 62 local stations to broadcast (the documentary) in the days before the election. Those 62 stations include affiliates of all six major broadcast networks in Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The broadcast will preempt normal prime-time programming on those channels...."

Now this may seem trivial, in that 62 stations is relatively small potatoes south of the border and those particular states are relatively minor media markets.

But the thing to understand is that those are all battleground States, where a 0.5% swing either way in any one of them could alter the outcome of the entire election (ie. the 'official' difference in Florida, which 'won' it for the Shrubbery in 2000 was 537 votes).

****

So, should we be worried about blatant media manipulation such as this being used to help swing things in favour of our local NeanderCon chapter next May?

Well, why not?

After all, it's not as if they don't have both the print and broadcast arms of our own 'Made in Western Canada' type of Sinclair group in their pocket already.

And as for the federal Neandercons.....don't forget that Johnny "The EyeBrow" Reynolds had a grand-old time at the recent Republican National Convention learning all the tricks of Mr. Rove's patented "72hr Blitzkrieg Strategy".

______
P.S. On the flipside (ie. censorship), it was also the Sinclair Group that refused to allow it's stations to broadcast an ABC Nightline programme in which host Ted Koppel was treasonous enough to read out the names of American servicemen and women killed during the Iraqi Occupation.

Aggressive Gentrification

49°13' North; 123°06' West

Best commentary on Little Lord Lorne's Safe Streets Act so far....

A guy who called CBC Radio's Talkback line and said he hopes it can be used to keep filthy rich people from Shaughnessy, Kerrisdale and Point Grey from performing acts of aggressive gentrification East of Main St which is scaring the heck out of the current residents and fast destroying the only cool parts of Vancouver that are left.....

JimmyP Gets Beat

49°13' North; 123°06' West

In our rant on aggro-solicitious bus shelters that should be sent packing under Little Lord Mayencourt's Safe Streets Act, we suggested that, given his billboardian track record, a man named Pattison might have been involved in this latest debauchery of Vancouver's civic life.

We were a little off base, not about the whorish ads on the shelters themselves, but instead about their pimp.

Seems that JP had nothing to do with it this time, not that he didn't try. It's just that he lost the contract to a huge French/American conglomerate that bamboozled the City's old NPA Council into taking future trick projections rather than solid money upfront.

Charlie Smith has the story in last week's Georgia Straight.

What's interesting is the fact that so far the number of tricks actually performed (ie. 'projected revenues') are coming in way low. Thus, so far we've prostituted our streets for a lousy 22% of $780K.

Me, I'm wondering which of the new Wards will be the first to mount a campaign to push all of those gigantic 2-dimensional, non-ambulatory streetwalkers out of their area and into Shaughnessy where they belong.

(thanks to AD for pointing us towards Smith's piece)

The General's Revenge

39°74' North; 109°98' West

For those of you who, like us, figure that Jon Stewart is biting satire, check this out.

Apparently, at least amongst the far-right in the Excited States, there is no General like the Jesus' General.

What Would George Bailey Think?

36°10' North; 115°10' West

It's kind of like a variation on the 'Shoe Fly' Song.

In other words, Squeegie Kids Don't Bother Me.

No Sir.

Because I can always decide whether I wanna toss 'em a loonie, chat 'em up for the duration of the red light, or, just wave 'em away if I'm not in the mood.

But if I'm sitting at the bus stop on a dank, wet Sunday night for half an hour there's no escaping the back-lit, siliconized, 8 ft tall Amazonian in the revealing lingerie with the salad bowl-sized bra cups right at eye level....or the scowling Eminem look-alike with the Viva Las Vegas shades, no shirt, and more tatoos than Rod Steiger or Ray Bradbury ever imagined.

Bus Stop Porn. That's what I hate.

And I'm pretty sure that Frank Capra would have hated it too.

So much so that if he were to re-make 'It's a Wonderful Life' today you can bet that Mr. Capra would have included a little BSP in that scene where George Bailey comes back to Pattisonville....errrr.....Potterville's main drag with angel Clarence in tow only to find that the entire place has been turned into a hopped-up 24hr gin joint that has corrupted Bert the Cop, soured the soul of Ernie the Cab Driver, and tossed Violet Bick out on her ear.

Of course, there's no telling what Capra would have done with VLTs.....

An Anti-Coulter to Call Our Own

Toronto Ontario
43°39' North; 79° 23' West

If you subscribe to a particular world view, reading the following exchange with Bill O'Lielly should make you an instant Heather Mallick fan (if you're not already):

O'Reilly: Are you a socialist?
Mallick: Yes, certainly.
O'Reilly: Are you anti-American?
Mallick: I'm generally opposed to American values, which are overly money-centred.
O'Reilly: OK, interesting. I have advised the Canadian government I will no longer buy Canadian products or visit the country.
—From The O'Reilly Factor, FOX News Network

However, even if you are not a waygone lefty it would be a mistake, based purely on the comments quoted above, to dismiss Ms. Mallick out of hand. Here are a few reasons why.

First, she's got guts. She went on O'Reilly's rigged, mundacity-filled hate-fest and gave him no quarter.

Second, she is actually way more than a waygoner. This is evident in her strangely old world and somehow simultaneously post modern pillow book titled 'Pearls and Vinegar'.

Third, she posesses one king hell-sized bullshit detector. Here's what she had to say about American Mercenaries (ie. not 'contractors') plying their trade in Iraq a few months ago in a column written before Sy Hersh published his New Yorker piece that exposed the systematic/systemic torture of the native population at Abu Graib and the other prisons of the occupation:

".....We all remember the four Americans found in Fallujah on March 31, their bodies burned and mutilated and things resembling torsos left to swing on a bridge. The killings seemed more suited to the 17th century - bits of Oliver Cromwell all over London - than anything 2004-ish. I was horrified.......

......"My human feelings changed once I studied the Fallujah bridge scene with more care. The four men killed were not U.S. soldiers. They were mercenaries, who worked for Blackwater USA, a firm that is a small part of a huge industry that contracts out hired "security guards" - read mercenaries - to nations, organizations and individuals that can afford to employ them. At least three of the four Americans in their shallow grave had worked for Halliburton, the biggest private contractor in Iraq.......

...... My first charitable thought was that the mercenaries were the same cannon fodder as regular soldiers. This is not quite true. The typical soldier fights because he has no other chance in life, but also out of some degree of patriotism or feeling for his fellow grunts. The mercenary, say, a former Green Beret trained at taxpayer expense, can earn $1,000 (U.S.) a day from Halliburton. His loyalty is to himself or his HR supervisor....."

Fourth, Ms. Mallick has a soul. From the same article on the Mercs:

" These are grim times: My reading now is divided between exposes of the Bush II administration and war poetry. W.B. Yeats's 1919 poem An Irish Airman Foresees His Death seems to apply to private-sector war:

Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds.

What poem does a modern mercenary recite? Halliburton's mission statement?"

Fifth, as evidenced above, Ms. Mallick can flat out write.

****

For awhile now, I've viewed Mallick as our very own Morford of the North, you know, the type of columnist that speaks truth to power while at the same time cosying up to the Greedheads just enough that they can then poke them in the eye in the public prints.

But more recently I've started to think that our Heather might have a bigger role to play than that.

Specifically, I think her reasoned, soulful outrage may be just the antidote we need to fight off the necrotizing fascisti-itis that is being heaped upon us by Scaife Foundation-bankrolled shillophants like Ann Coulter.

Here's a little sample of what Ms. Coulter had to say about the Muslim world recently while she was on FOX's other, supposedly less-hateful, hate-fest a couple of weeks ago:

ALAN COLMES (co-host FOX's of Hannity & Colmes): [R]ight after September 11, you said, and you know where I'm going with this, I'm often asked if I still think we should invade their countries, kill their leaders, convert them to Christianity. You say the same thing Nixon said in 1972: "Now more than ever."

COULTER: Now more than ever.

This is wingnuttery in the extreme, but in the debased world that American punditry has become it gets a lot of play. In fact, many members of the chattering classes South of the Border are so deluded that they consider A.C. to be the far right's equivalent of the far left's Michael Moore.

Of course, the only problem with such a comparison is the fact that Moore takes, well, facts and then propagandizes based pretty much on said facts while AC/DC takes trainloads of Prefab Propaganda Polyps and utilizes bogus Ozzian Wizardry in an attempt to convert them into a few cold hard facts. The following is a 'never mind what I'm doing behind the curtain' example based on Ms. Coulter's take on last week's Cheney/Edwards VP debate:

"Democrats are good Bolsheviks. No matter, I mean, their guy could fall flat on his face, as I think Edwards did, and they will all rush to the TV cameras and say, "Oh, Edwards won the debate." And so you end up with a consensus position, even when the Republican beat the Democrat about the head, as Cheney did with Edwards."

Now, we could just let a statement like that lie there and wait for somebody like Mr. Moore to come along and stomp the life out of it with the big, slobbery, hob-nailed boots that he bought way back in the day when he was thrashing around his hometown of Flint Michigan looking to nail his first victim, Roger Smith.

But, then again, stompings like that, if and when they occur, tend to create a big mess that nobody wants to clean up. Or, even worse, the resulting flying bits of Coulter proto-spittle could metasize into a hundred new Scaiffian tumors on the Body Politic which would be disastrous in the extreme (witness Michelle Malkin, if you must).

Instead, we think we have a more polite, more surgical, and certainly more elegant, 'Made in Canada' solution. In fact, the surgeon's tool, which you cannot take on a plane or use to carve the Turkey tomorrow, arrived on our doorstep just yesterday in the form Ms. Mallick's most recent weekly column in the Globe:

" (during the debate) Mr. Cheney said he had never claimed Iraq was behind 9/11. Lie. He did, repeatedly, and it's on tape. I watched Mr. Cheney's mouth, which has been described as something doglike that scares the postman. But it looks to me like Charlotte Rampling's long upper lip stretching to greatest effect in 'The Night Porter', a movie about sado-masochism".
(Toronto Globe & Mail, Oct 09/04 pg F2 - subscription, sorry no publicly available link yet).

Wow!

And best of all, we'll take our Heather's Charlotte Rampling over Ms. Coulter's faux-arayan Uber-A(pp)lles anyday.

_______
Update: Mon Oct. 11/04, 11:37am
Heather Neale has a decent background piece on Mallick up at the Tyee that has a pretty good take on how off-putting it can be to sneak-up on the greedheads (see description of interaction with David Thompson's offspring and Andrew Coyne).

It's a Drive Alright, But There's No Commercial

49°13' West; 123°06' West

David Beers and the folks at the Tyee are having a bit of a pledge drive.

Well, OK, it's not a pledge and it's not really a Drive either.

In truth all they want us to do is sign up for free Email alert subscriptions.

Give it a whirl. The Tyee is doing its bit for media independence and Beers' track record has pretty much convinced me that he won't sell out (at least not before the next prov. election anyway).

And besides, helping to make an enterprise like the Tyee successful is the best way to make CanWest and the other media CorpoGoons pay.

And it won't cost you a single cent.

That, as my kids like to say, is a superfunkchunkdeal.

The Dust-Up

123° 22' West; 48°25' North

It was nothing on the scale of atrios or the freepers or anything, but a recent post by Sean Holman over at Public Eye really got the juices flowing going in the local gallery.

It all started with a relatively restrained post from Mr. Holman, who's been doing a pretty good Mencken impersonation lately (ie. looking down his nose before swinging both left and right to bash whomever he sees fit), about the possibility of a hotshot banker named Paul Summerville running for the NDP in the next election.

This got everybody, including the waygone lefties, the thirdwayers, the newpragmatists, the centrists, and even the redmeateaters going.

Heck, even Charlie Smith jumped into the fray, which is worth having a look at, if only because this kind of thing is sure to become a major recurring theme in the next few months.

(for the record, we're still stuck somewhere firmly in the fireswamp between the waygoners and the thirdwayers....dangerous territory indeed; we're gonna have to make a decision one way or the other pretty darn soon)
______________

Update: 4:30pm Sat Oct08.
Reader CK points out that while Public Eye, or even the Tyee for that matter, don't generate atriosian comment numbers one thing they do have is diversity in the comment threads. In other words they're not just preaching to the choir as is so often the case on the major American blogs.

The Franco-Orwellians Are Coming!

38° 40' North; 90° 15' West

We realize that we've been sidetracked by the American election lately but the outcome is so important to everyone that it's hard not to pay at least a little attention.

Our verdict on Kerry/Bush II ....... Kerry by a TKO.

Most importantly, Kerry was clearly going after the all important swing vote (ie. he was willing to go out on a limb and take some chances) while the Shrubbery was playing almost entirely to the base (ie. war, war, war, anti-abortion, anti-tax, anti-freedom, anti-foreigner, anti-worker, anti-universal healthcare and, oh ya, war, war, war, war).

There was one point, however, where the Shrubbery did extend a twig.

It was a gnarled and diseased twig to be sure, but it was a gesture all the same.

Specifically, Bush ran through a litany of double-speak, anti-environmental programs, told us he was going to design a hydrogen car, and then concluded that this proved that he is really on Mother Nature's side (as long as she's not actually a woman, or a muslim, of course).

This was laughable in the extreme and Kerry nailed him for it. Specifically, Kerry flat out stated that Mr. Bush was being Orwellian.

Almost immediately, the Shrub's eyes glazed over as if he was trying his damndest to remember where he'd heard that dastardly foreign-sounding term before (couldn't possibly remember the septally deviated Yale Days of course, so probably had to go all the way back to references from Prep School at Andover).

And yet somehow Shrub managed to got ahold of one of the cobwebs in his ESPN/NASCAR-addicted mind because after a few moments the smirk returned and then came the Cheneyesque snarl of recognition that an evil intellectualizer was in his midst.

All of which got us to wondering, is it possible that GeorgeW thinks GeorgeO was actually a snivelling Frenchman?

His Lorneness

49°13' West; 123°06' West

David Schreck has a well researched piece up on his website that explains the historical and ideological underpinnings of Little Lorne Mayencourt's private member's 'Safe Streets' bill.

Schreck's bit is well worth reading, if only because it uses fairness, reason and balance to demonstrate that the Little Fiberal's bill is a direct descendent of Mike Harris' 'The Poor Are Criminals' Law that is very likely unconstitutional and very definitely morally wrong.

But sometimes fairness, reason and balance are not required to toss codswallop right back into the face of he who cooked it.

In this case His Lorneness uttered those eminently tossable words on CBC Vancouver's 'Morning Edition' last week while he was describing streetkids in the West End:

"Sure, some of them come from troubled backgrounds......but some of them are just little bastards."

Which is all well and good, as far as it goes.

But then again, if we were to throw all of the bastards in jail just where would that leave the somewhat less than legitimate Mr. Mayencourt?

Wild is Still on His Side

40°65' North; 73°95' West

A lot of folks, myself included, mourn the fact that Lou Reed no longer regularly performs Metal Machine Music at decibel levels much beloved by vulcanologists.

And some have become downright concerned about the Wild One's heavy reliance on the Jane Scarpatani's cello playing on his recent album 'Animal Serenade'.

Which begs the question - Has Mr. Reed gone acoustic?

The answer is, it doesn't matter, as evidenced by this recent interview with Brent Banbury on CBC Radio.

BB: "Why do you like the cello so much?"

LR: "I like the cello for the same reason that hip hoppers like the bass in their boom boxes.

BB: (clearly dumfounded) "Why is that?"

LR: (pauses) "For the Power."

The Last Train to Kelso

46°8'31" North, 122°54'22

Actually, there are no trains to Kelso.

Because these days it's little more than a fast-food stop along I-5 in Southern Washington right next to the Columbia River.

In the old days it was a bit of a boom town that ran on raw logs. Now there's not much left because it just doesn't have the charm of nearby Castle Rock, which was made famous by Rob Reiner's movie 'Stand By Me'.

Hell, things have been so bad in Kelso lately that last spring even the Highlander mini-casino/golf complex shut down.

I knew that mini-golf course well. It had some of the best gigantic paper mache animals anywhere and my kids were especially fond of the giraffe on the 13th green.

How do I know all this?

Well, the one thing Kelso's got going for it is that is exactly 1/3 of the way between Vancouver and San Francisco.

It also has a Motel Six.

So when we make the trip to Bagdad by the Bay, which we do regularly, we always stop in Kelso, both because the Motel has a pool and because we can always get a room.

This weekend though, you wouldn't be able to get the folks at the Motel 6 to 'leave a light on for you' or give you a room for love or money.

Why?

Because if that train did stop in Kelso, the Chamber of Commerce would be furiously working the Refs right now to have it renamed 'Mount St. Helen's Station'.