BigCityLib Strikes Back

 Another pipeline ruptures in B.C!  They're blowing up like pop-corn in a microwave!

...here:

“(Mulcair) waxes quite eloquent on that in relation to the oilsands, but then the question is going to eventually come back, ‘Well why didn’t you apply those principles then to Quebec Hydro when you were in a position to do so?’ You want to talk about a carbon tax for the petroleum guys, fine, well where’s the reservoir tax for Hydro?’” Manning said in an interview with iPolitics this week. “I don’t think that discussion has even started to occur, but when it does occur, I think that any temporary surge of the NDP as environmental champions will be knocked back.”

So I will repeat myself.  Past aside, if such a discussion were to occur today, Mulcair and the people of Quebec would be all smiles.  Because though hydro causes extensive emissions during the construction and early operations phases, these return to background levels after about a decade, after which they are no longer even counted in Canada's National Inventory Report, which outlines the nation's carbon budget.  Most of Quebec's push for hydro took place twenty years ago, so a reservoir tax on those projects would raise bupkis.  And even their most recent projects would only suffer under a tax for a few more years.

In other words, try again please Preston Manning.

The longer version of my argument can be found here.

...a pipeline catches fire in Fort St. John, B.C.!

...between April and December, 2013.  And then, presuming a rubber stamp from the panel, it hits the court system, and becomes a national issue in 2015.

Yesterday, after Postmedia announced the sale of its HQ building on Don Mills Avenue, its stock plunged in heavy (for Postmedia, anyway) trading.
And here's PNC.B-T's  one year trading chart, which shows the stock's long-term trend:
You know, if you showed that chart to an astrophysicist without telling them what it signified, they'd say it could only be the path of a star plunging into a humongous  black hole, for no other phenomenon in the known universe exhibits such a steep decline.   Then you could explain to him about Conservative newspapers in Canada.


In any case, here's the company's "forward-looking" press release.  Reading between the lines, the author is saying that next time he writes one of these things he will already have boiled his belt for the calories, and will be hungrily considering eating his own gaunch in a desperate attempt to stave off malnutrition.


PS. Here's a Postmedia columnist sounding off on the glories of Capitalism.  Talk to your boss, Peter Foster!

If I am interpreting this email I got correctly, they will be airing a few ads of their own.
I wonder if they will link  them to Big Oil in the ads, as is hinted at in the email.

That might work.

Postmedia Network has sold, and will be moving from, their Don Mills HQ, which I run past every morning on my way to work.   Word is they're headed for a slightly less palatial facility "closer to town". Taste the austerity, fellas, it will help build your character.

Word is they'll be selling off everything, from PCs to coffee mugs to boxes of documents from Conrad Black's time at the paper.  You just stand outside the building and haggle, and they hand you the stuff you bought out through the smashed windows.  Coyne will keep track of the monies raised, as he is the only guy on staff that's handy with numbers.

For what its worth, because I've given up trying to figure out whether my personal take on these things matches that of Joe 6-Pack, but  other than for the specific reference to "Dutch Disease" (which is not in the French version) this could be about any NDP leader of the past 30 years.  This says to me that the CPoC hasn't quite found Mulcair's Achilles Heel yet, the way they were able to successfully tag Iggy with the "elitist" label.  

BITE ME VEGAN SISSIES.

It seems so, though the comment from the editor-in-chief (through link) makes this a little unclear.  Perhaps they will continue as a web-based publication,  like The Torontoist.  Kind of a pity, because I've always had a soft-spot for the weeklies.  Wonder what this portends for NOW?

Sun Media's one guy that understands social networking has fled to Postmedia...like abandoning The Titanic for The Lusitania, but whatever.

PS. I don't believe  that William Wolfe-Wylie is his real name.  Its probably an Internet invention like "Long Dong Silver" and etc.  But on the other hand I could be wrong.  Hippy parents did a lot of damage to the younger generation by naming their babies while on LSD.    In any case, its telling that Sun Media should be happy to see their brains leave and double-down on the knuckle dragging.

And yes if I am writing about stuff like this than its been a very slow news day in our peaceable kingdom.

Two fellas I am proud to call friends.  And I would just note that this fight is not yet over.  To all you journos that teamed up with the CDN Neo-Nazi movement to effect the repeal of S13,   I can't speak for these two gentleman, but as for me I will pursue you to the gates of Hell itself, and farther if necessary.  If you guys are not unemployed or in jail when I die, then that will mean that I  have fucked up in life.

Word.

Lilley and Coren's ""Black Thugs" Caused English Riots" rant  OK by CBSC.  From the press release:

The CBSC’s National Specialty Services Panel examined the complaints under various provisions of the CAB Code of Ethics and Equitable Portrayal Code.  The majority of the Panel concluded that the discussion dealt with political and social issues and did not constitute abusive or unduly discriminatory comments about black people in general, nor did it contain unduly negative portrayals of that group.  There were, therefore, no violations of any Code provisions.  One adjudicator dissented because she felt that Coren had unfairly attributed all the blame for the riots to the black community.

Here is the dissent from Mr. D.-Y.:

 While I agree with the majority with respect to Clause 2 of the CAB Code of Ethics and Clauses 2 and 4 of the CAB Equitable Portrayal Code, I disagree with respect to Clause 3.  Coren’s choice of words and the overall sense of his message was that black people were the sole cause of the riots.  He repeatedly attributed the riots to “black thugs”, “black young men” and then broadened his scope when he said “you have to have a large urban black community; the rioting begins there.”  Coren argued that it was “not about race, it’s about culture”, but, either way, he was labelling an identifiable group as the source of the problem.  Although Coren acknowledged that there were white participants in the riots, he claimed that those white youth were simply trying to “pretend they’re part of black culture”, again linking the problem back to the black community.  These comments were insulting and unfounded generalizations about the black community and clearly constituted an unduly negative portrayal of that group, contrary to Clause 3 of the CAB Equitable Portrayal Code.

So there you have it.

A philosophical question to end with: if a controversy arises on Sun TV  that nobody sees it, was it really controversial?

...it would look alot like this.  Minus the ascent to high-office, the vampires, and the axe, axes being sharp and pointy when you drop them on your foot, and therefore something I try to avoid..  Replace the axe with a computer monitor, though, and you're there.

Ottawa Citizen paper boxes in downtown Ottawa are now sporting "permanently out of business" signs in their windows, and are redirecting customers to nearby corner stores.  This is exactly what happened to the National Post in 2008 when CanWest began its death-spiral into bankruptcy.  The Citizen is part of PostMedia, CanWest's successor company.  Right now their stocks are worth pretty close to nothing.

h/t anon Ottawa resident.

I get LPoC talking points delivered into my mail-box every day.  I usually ignore them, but sometimes they raise legitimate questions:

NDP Must Stop Protecting Dean Del MastroOTTAWA— Liberal Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics critic Scott Andrews made the following statement today on the Liberal motion to call Dean Del Mastro to appear before the Ethics committee:“The Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Secretary and chief apologist for Conservative election fraud, Dean Del Mastro, is under investigation by Elections Canada for allegedly violating campaign spending limits and serious questions have been raised about the conduct of his campaign.Liberals have tabled a motion to call Mr. Del Mastro before the Ethics committee to shed light on these claims in an open and transparent manner, a motion the NDP, inexplicably, seems reluctant to support. Canadians deserve answers. It is difficult to comprehend why the NDP would be helping the Harper Conservatives protect Dean Del Mastro. If they take their job as the Official Opposition seriously, they will support our motion and hold this government to account.”


So, I have a lot of NDP-inclined readers: why are you guys supporting this scum-sucker?  

He responds below to remarks I made here:


My comments were that Trudeau scored the best with the public of the current range of talked about candidates (since Mr Rae dropped out and none of the erstwhile heavyweights from the LPC show much interests). Of those who are actively discussed Justin Trudeau has a major recognintion and approval advantage . As for Mr Carney , I doubt he is interested but the empirical evidence shows that he has remarkable, albeit loosely formed approval ratings . You may resort to ad hominems but the polling data show that Mr. Carney has a reasonably high profile with the public , somewhat above the four people who can place him in a line up as you put it . BTW I did not intend to "annoint" Mr. Trudeau, merely note that of the main talked about current potential candidates he had the best polling numbers. ( I did not write the headline for the story) . I agree that this is very early in a race which hasn't even officially begun and there are a range of different potential otucomes. If my quotes were too unmeaured on this point that was a mistake on my part. As for the propsects of Mr. Trudeau or any other future Liberal leader in the next federal election I continue to believe that it is unlikely that any leader-saviour will quickly restore the LPC to power and I also do not think that even the effective Mr. Mulcair will likely win . Barring a major scandal I would argue that the political arithmetic of four parties on the center left and one tightly committed party on the right would continue to favour the CPC .

Frank Graves.

So there you have it.
---
PS. Thanks very much for your response. Obviously, I disagree with your analysis. I think a very plausible scenario for 2015 is that the LPoC vote collapses to the NDP's benefit and they get a minority government, whoever is LPoC  leader.  Because this is often the way parties "merge". One just craps out as its members decide they must vote their second choice to avoid their greatest fear.  That may be what I personally have to do, although I have given nearly $50 to the LPoC over the last several years.

But I would be interested in who you think Harper and Co. could recruit  back to their cause to get the eight or nine percent they need to remain in power in 2015.  To me, B.C. is the key: Northern Gateway is poison there.  And without B.C. their committed base doesn't amount to a great percentage of the CDN population.

Frank Graves is going senile, or desperately poll whoring to get his name in the papers--from anointing Justin, to suggesting that BOC Presdient Mark Carney would woo 'em as an LPoC leadership candidate because of his "magic reviews" with the public, which presumably means that the four people who could pick him out of a police line-up really, really like him.  Rob Silver, in addition to being (in my wife's words) "devilishly handsome" is clearly correct here.  Committing to an LPoC leadership candidate right now would be ridiculous.  Not that I have anything against Justin Trudeau.  His enthusiasm is contagious, and  he's put himself on the right side of a number of fights over the years (including his somewhat tentative embrace of NDP/LPoC merger talks).  And he is definitely the MP I would want  covering my back during a bar fight.  He's also stuck his foot in his mouth way more than once.  His burden, should he choose to run, will be to prove to folks that he has judgement and discretion.  That the foot will go in the mouth less often.  That he can, as Paul Newman put it, be himself...but on purpose.  If he does run...and remember he is still saying he won't...and he CAN do that, he may indeed be THE ONE. But maybe not right away--which is why the party needs someone to who is willing commit  a full decade of their lives to the project.  I suspect that, in 2015, if the Canadian people are tired of the Tories, and they might well be,  they will  more likely  turn to the Mulcair NDP (what the hell, they'll say...if Conservatives can learn to eat with a fork than why NOT try out the long-haired commies?) than back to the LPoC.