Dion has to be insane - what's he thinking!?

94 Liberals didn't bother to show up for the "mini-budget" vote in the House of Commons today. Why? They couldn't vote FOR it - that would just be wrong for Liberals to do that, right? They also couldn't vote AGAINST it either, because doing so would set off a sequence of events that would immediately lead to a general election.

Stephane Dion doesn't want to fight an election now because: a) his party can't afford it, and b) he knows he can't win. He is in over his head and is fighting for his political life, so if that's the case, why make the idiotic statement today that, if elected, the Liberals would consider repealing the cuts that the Harper minority government have made to the much maligned and hated Goods and Services Tax?

Nobody likes the GST. If Dion thinks that launching some kind of idiotic debate on the merits of raising taxes is going to help his party rise from the ashes, he's living in some fantasy world. If he seriously thinks that Canadians from coast to coast might embrace the idea of electing a party that promises to consider hiking taxes, he must believe that Jack Layton is one heck of a threat to his political career. Canadians will elect Layton's New Democratic Party before they elect a "Dion-led Liberal Party of Canada that might hike taxes" to government.

We all know that will never happen.

I don't know what the Liberals were thinking when they selected Mr. Kyoto as leader. They had to know he wasn't marketable in each and every corner of this country. They had to see he lacked the charisma to make up for whatever he lacks in political smarts and experience and needs to be an effective party leader and Prime Minister in waiting. So why pick him in the first place?!

What do these Liberal delegates think now as they look to the horizon, fearing the inevitable conclusion of the yet-to-be contested general election? Do they seriously think that giving Stephen Harper a majority government and six years or more in power is just what their party needs? What's it going to take? A leader almost nobody likes is proposing tax hikes before the writ is dropped. I supposed that's better than promising no tax hikes and then later implementing one of the largest tax increases in Ontario history (a la McGuinty back in 2003), but why make getting elected even more remotely possible than it already is?

Mr. Dion, if you have any aspirations whatsoever, fire your PR team and fire your policy hacks that can't seem to forsee the massive chasms you seem to be so prone to gleefully leap into.

They say that no publicity is bad publicity. Promising to consider raising taxes at this stage in your career is NOT what you should be doing right now. Think about it for five minutes and try to convice the press you were taken out of context or didn't quite get the words out right. They might buy it and you might still possibly be forgiven before you further damage your chances.

This is your last chance. You can still save yourself... I think...

Dr. Robert Cushman not the man to lead Ottawa area health care system

An article on the front page of today's Ottawa Citizen blew me away this morning. Dr. Robert Cushman, the man who runs the Champlain Local Health Integration Network (the new arm of the Ontario government that plans and carries out the delivery of health care in the greater Ottawa area) stated in an interview yesterday that it's "time to balance fight for life with ballooning health costs" and that "we have too much of an emphasis on the cure when the returns on the cure can be very low".

So seniors are too old to be bothered with? A cost/benefit analysis of treating what ails them cannot be justified because dollars would be better invested in curing someone who still has a future?

I remember watching Dinosaurs - some sort of animatronic live action cartoon for children. When dinosaurs got to a certain age, they would get up and wander off to the tar pits to die. If they didn't do it on their own accord, their family members would have to see to it that they did what was expected of them. That's just how it was done. Is that how we should now deal with the elders of our society?

Given that I'm in my early thirties, I should be impressed that Dr. Cushman is standing up for me and making sure that the health system is ready to meet my every need instead of wasting countless millions on people who would soon die anyway. What a waste it would be, right?

I don't think so.

If this "doctor" thinks that this is a debate we should be having, he's not the man to be overseeing the delivery of health care in this district. These "old people" or the "frail elderly" built and helped modernize our country... and this "doctor" tells us we need to balance the fight for their lives against the costs of delivering health care to the population as a whole?

How would your father feel about that? What would your grandmother think? We should be demanding this man's resignation - clearly, he's not up to the job.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/2332dz

BP to pay hundreds of millions to end investigation into the manipulating of energy markets

CNN is reporting that BP will pay $373 million in fines and restitution to end an investigation into allegations that it manipulated energy markets and violated environmental laws. Four former employees have also been indicted for their roles in a price fixing scheme.

While BP is Europe's second biggest oil and gas company, its reach can arguably be described as world-wide. The way crude oil and gasoline world market prices are affected by the tiniest of incidents anywhere on the globe, their actions almost certainly have had an impact of sorts on North America - and most importantly, here in Canada.

Among other things, BP Products North America Inc. apparently bought huge stocks of propane in 2004 and essentially sat on them. Basic laws of supply and demand resulted in propane prices escalating in several US states. I don't buy propane very often so I don't remember any price spikes... but I know that if one "oil giant" isn't above scheming to pump up profits, others likely aren't above it either. Gas prices started their never-ending upwards trek right about then, didn't they?

News stories like this one make me think. Nobody can ever explain the ebb and flow of gas prices at the pump, nor can anyone explain the correlation between crude oil market prices and their effect on how much it costs for an average Ottawa to fill his tank. The Canadian government has concluded on more than one occasion that they could find no evidence of Canadian oil companies colluding (or working independently, I'd imagine) to keep prices artificially high.

Could it be that this BP story is the tip of the iceberg? Might it be the first of several investigations that are on the cusp of putting the spotlight on what governments haven't been able to prove while millions of individuals in all corners of the world have suspected?

I hope so - fear mongers were warning us earlier this week that we may be paying more than $1.50 per litre for gasoline next summer. I'd love to know how their crystal ball works - I want one for myself!!

It's time to resolve the Albion Road issue once and for all

An Ottawa Sun article reports today that the Albion Road through traffic issue will be debated again at a meeting of Ottawa City Council tomorrow. Here's hoping common sense prevails and they can proclaim "case closed!" at the end of the debate.

Albion Road has been an arterial road for just about as long as anyone still living today can remember. According to the Sun story, "a consultant revealed traffic on Albion Road north of Lester had far exceeded the limits for a residential collector road" back in 2002. If memory serves, this road closure was in response to a very small handful of complaints to the City resulting in a knee jerk reaction that caused all kinds of problems to residents living south of that particular area. For those who blame Rideau Carleton Raceway, Albion was a busy road before the racetrack was upgraded to a casino of sorts... yet many moved there despite the traffic count. What gives them the right to complain years after settling in? They knew what the road was like when they got there!

There are many who will loudly proclaim that an excess of cars is threatening the neighbourhood's quality of life. I've heard people living on Bronson, Maitland, Kirkwood, Baseline and Pinecrest whining about the traffic whizzing by their front doors too over the last decade. Tough, folks - if you want a quiet residential street, move to a cul de sac and don't try diverting traffic from your arterial road to the immediate area's side streets!

Why politicians feel the need to bend over and take it from a vocal minority most each and every time, I have no idea. When I someday get elected to City Council and a resident calls my office to complain about how hard it is to back out onto Carling Avenue or how airplanes flying over their new terrace home near Hunt Club and Riverside, I'll ask them how long Carling has been the road it is now or how long the international airport has been where it currently sits. I might lose their vote, but there's far more people out there who knew what they were getting into and they're not complaining.

Same thing goes for the whining millionaires living in the Glebe. If anybody there is 140 years old or older, they have the right to complain each and every August. Anybody else should shut up and grow up - the Central Canada Exhibition has been around longer than each and every resident of this fair city.

Come on, folks, if you choose to live on a busy street, next door to a mall or a few blocks away from a major airport, you made your choice - it's not the politicians' role to legislate whatever perceived nuisance into oblivion.

So Albion Road residents - if Council comes to its senses and the former regional road is re-opened to through traffic, move if you don't like it. That road's a heck of a lot older than you are and if you were surprised by its constant use by motorists after settling in, you didn't do your homework before buying there in the last forty or more years.

That's not the City of Ottawa's fault.

Holy ladybugs!

It looks like the Ottawa area is getting hit with another attack from evil orange or yellow ladybugs. I work in an old building and despite fighting for window screen restoration for a few years, I have not been successful - and now about about 20 friends crawling up and down the walls and ceiling in my office.

Not so long ago I remember playing golf at the Manderley on the Green course near Manotick, Ontario. A ladybug landed on me... I had always been told that it was good luck. Little did I know that there was a distinction between the red ones and those that are more orange in colour. The latter are evil and like to bite. What seemed to be a stroke of good luck quickly turned into a menace and irritant beyond any other I had ever experienced when it came to insects of any kind.

We had a power cart, that day, and the moment we'd get up to play our shot, dozens (if not hundreds) would descend on the now vacant cart seat and take it over. Several hours later, our game was over, I had been bitten a half dozen times, and I returned to my car to see that many had somehow crawled into it. It took weeks to get rid of them!

They're back!! Not quite in the same number as a few years ago, but I suspect this might just be the beginning of "ladybug season" and will continue to worsen until the snow flies.

If anybody out there knows how to get rid of these pests without staining walls and furniture (and smelling up the place - my boss told me that her daughter-in-law says they smell like peanut butter when squished), please leave me a note in the comments section. In the meantime, if you see one nearby, make sure you keep your windows closed or tightly screened.

Now... how can I get Alex Cullen to ban these from the City of Ottawa?

Internet Explorer 7 now available for all Windows XP users

Just a quick note to everyone out there who may not have a "genuine" copy of Windows XP on their computers: Microsoft has disabled the "Windows Genuine Advantage" validation requirement for people to download and install Internet Explorer 7.

It's nice to see Microsoft taking the initiative and helping combat the spread of viruses, malware, spyware and other bugs out there that compromise the integrity of the Internet. If you haven't upgraded yet, head over to www.google.com and seach for "Internet Explorer 7". Download it and run the install program. It will take about ten minutes to go through the whole process (and might at times look like the computer isn't doing anything.) Let it do its job and then restart your computer. Favorites/bookmarks will still be there - nothing will be lost.

The interface looks a little different but works the same way IE6 did - only in a somewhat better security environment. Things will never be 100% secure, but IE7 is heads and shoulders above IE6.

If you're an Internet Explorer user, take advantage of this turn of events and do what any responsible internet user should do - upgrade!

Politicians desperately seeking relevance whining to the media - grow up and look around, folks!

I woke up this morning to a news report about New Democratic Party leader Howard Hampton crying to the media. He's unhappy that none of the issues he's trying to shed light upon during this Ontario provincial election are making it to the headlines.

Why nobody is paying attention, Mr. Hampton, is because you lead a marginal third party - a party and platform that suffers from having a lack of relevance when it comes to the vast majority of average Ontarians.

The latest (October 2, 2007) Harris-Decima poll results show that Hampton's NDP has the support of 14% of decided voters polled and predicts that, based on the polling results, an election would yield him 5 seats. 5 seats. Out of 107. If there is a reason for sparse coverage of the NDP in this election and its "ideas", there it is. How much of an impact can a party with that many seats have on the Legislature? About the same impact the party has on the headlines.

Deal with it.

Besides, Howie, how are we supposed to take you and your ranting about the media seriously when you were scheduled to appear on Steve Madely's show on CFRA in Ottawa this morning... and cancelled? No reason has been given for the sudden sprinting for the hills, but cancelling interviews won't help you get your "message" out there. And then you whine about not being able to make an impact with the media? Toronto aside, Ottawa's a pretty big market and bailing out on an interview while complaining about lack of media interest is a bit rich.

Think about it.

If that wasn't bad enough this morning, I sat down to breakfast and unfolded the Ottawa Citizen. The headline below the fold is "Quebec City accused of shedding 'nationalism'" - the separatists are whining about the Liberal government taking down the "Welcome to the National Capital" signs that I have ranted about in the past. A Quebec government has the intestinal fortitude to undo something that never should have been done in the first place? It's about time and congratulations!!!

Whine all day, separatists... if I were in power I'd dust off the good old treason laws and lock you all up for plotting and conspiring to break my country up. From today's Citizen:

Francine Lavoie, the head of the Quebec chapter of the council of sovereignty, is even more outraged and sees it as a setback for the separatist supporters.

"It looks as if they (Jean Charest's government) are trying to weaken the national nature of Quebec. And it's an enormous contradiction with the motion recognizing Quebec as a nation adopted by (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper's government," said Ms. Lavoie.

The council is a body that promotes sovereignty and includes members of the Parti Québécois, the Bloc Québécois and Québec Solidaire party, as well as others outside political circles.

Poor separatists. Their cause has been "set back". And when, exactly, did Quebec ever have a "national nature"? Last time I checked, it was one of ten provinces and three territories that make up the country known as Canada. The Bank of Montreal has figured it out, it seems, with that mural it's painting, depicting Quebec as just another province. Way to go BMO! I'll overlook the next service fee hike you announce as an "improvement to client services" and will take one for the country. And if we're going to start playing around with Stephen Harper's lame recognition of Quebec being a "nation", well, that further makes my point from several months ago - whatever gesture that was supposed to be got lost in the lack of detail... nobody knew what it meant then, nobody does now. "Nation" does not have to be the same thing as "country" but the separatists seem to equate the two. One cannot... but who really cares anyway - a growing minority of Quebeckers (and no, not Québécois!)

Why it has taken so long for a "federalist" Premier to take action, I'll never know. You're either with them or against them. Screw them! They want to break the country up, so they're no friends of mine, nor should they be coddled by governments of any level.

So let them snivel, Mr. Premier. Don't back down and stay true to the country you once aspired to lead. This action might be the very key that saves your political career. Separatism is dying - it will never go away, but it can be weakened to the point it can be marginalized... so don't break down and

Once again, to the marginalized NDPers and Péquistes who are unhappy with being marginalized, maybe it's time to look in the mirror. And for pete's sake - stop whining... that activity's reserved for little children!!

Customer service redux

It's a good thing my wife shaved my head again last night - I'd be pulling what's left of the hair I have out by now. I'm listening to my father talk to yet another Bell "Canada" call centre employee in India. He's been having nothing but trouble with his Bell ExpressVu setup (which is why I am quite happy with my problem-free Rogers cable setup at home). Whenever he tries to get some help from the technical support department of Bell "Canada", he ends up getting transferred to a country on the other side of the planet.

Sometimes there's a language barrier. Most of the time, it seems that the "first level technical support" robots - I mean technicians - don't seem to know a television from a computer monitor. This one was just trying to tell my father that the TV was on the "wrong setting"... how one can screw up putting a television to channel 73, I have no idea. Where was this tech going? Nobody knows.

Aside from cutting costs (while cutting quality of service - but who cares... it's just a customer), what possible benefit is there to BCE or Bell Canada or whatever they're called? Watching my father struggle with this company has convinced me that I will never, ever, do business with them. Considering that I spend around $1,500 a year on television services, over the next 50 years (assuming the price never goes up - right - and that I live that long), that's $75,000 in lost revenues. Of course, bringing economic factors into consideration, that sum will likely exceed a quarter of a million dollars in cable services alone in my lifetime.

I know they don't care... they only seem to care that quarterly profit earnings continue to inch or skyrocket upwards.

To be honest, Rogers isn't much better, but I seem to remember spending 62 minutes activating a friend's digital box, going in circles with Rogers techs... but they were located somewhere outside Toronto. Maple Leafs aside, I have little against people who live there. At least Rogers is keeping its money here in Canada, investing in the economic area in which it operates. What does Bell "Canada" do in India?

Outsourcing is proving to be a real dud. We're not the only ones complaining here in Canada - US residents are losing jobs to Mexico, China and countless other places every day. What outsourcing technical support to India gets Bell and what Mattel, Fisher Price and other toy companies (or just about every remaining product manufacturing company in the world) get from outsourcing manufacturing to China where standards wouldn't meet those we had here in the 70's, I cannot fathom. Toys are being recalled... dog food killed family pets... Chinese WHEAT (why we import WHEAT from China I can't understand - what's wrong with Saskatchewan?!) has been tainted too...

It's time we bring our product and service industries back home. There's nothing wrong with "Made in Canada" or "Made in the USA" - and what's happened to Taiwan anyway? Didn't they make everything a few years back? What's it going to take for corporate fat cats to realize that the buying public is as important, if not more important, as are earnings reports.

We supposedly have the power. Let's refine it and wield it... come on, Canada!!

The golf season's not over yet!!

My buddy Steve has asked me a number of times why it is that I haven't written anything about golf since putting The World as I See It online. Here you go, Steve!

They announced on the weekend that "Fairways and Flag Sticks" will be airing its final show for the 2007 season on CFRA this coming Sunday. The "fall deals and closures" page is up on ottawagolf.com. Dragonfly is closing on Hallowe'en! Fair weather golfers are packing it in for the season - God forbid they play with a few leaves on the ground... who can believe the mid-June type weather we've been experiencing the last week or so?

I have to admit that I am getting a little long in the tooth this year, and for the first time in ages, I can honestly say that I wouldn't be too depressed if it snowed on Friday. Or would I?

Why? It's been a frustrating year. I've improved my game's technique. The lessons I took last fall have improved my short game and the tips I've been given by a few pros throughout the season have been paying off - sort of. I've had fewer 100+ rounds (that's good) and improved my games in the sub-90 scoring range, but the consistency isn't there...

I know, join the club - it's the same for everyone. It shouldn't be for me, right?!?!

Golf is a fascinating game where you can experience highs and lows - sometimes from one minute to another - and I "saved" a game from heading into triple digits on Sunday, but no thanks to my abilities. 17 and 18 at Renfrew ate my lunch again. Aw well, I conquered (or something to that effect) Falcon Ridge this year... Renfrew's got to be coming sooner or later.

When I look back on the season that was - likely in about six weeks - I will see that I improved over last year and I should be content and simply clam up. However, in the never ending pursuit of greatness, another year has passed and I only have seventeen more years to get my game into good enough shape to take a shot at making it on the Senior PGA Tour (or the Champion's Tour as they call it today).

Lofty goal? Sure - likely? Not really. But hope lingers forever.

Here's to what many call the greatest season for golf - Fall or Autumn... may it be long and warm! Let's leave snow to Christmas Eve, no??!