How will the CBC Spin This?
The head of Iran’s soccer federation issued a public apology and a member of his staff resigned after the federation mistakenly sent a New Year’s greeting to its counterpart in Israel, Iranian officials announced Sunday.
There are dozens of editors working overtime at the CBC, trying to figure out how to blame this on George W Bush.
Rex Murphy on Climategate
Bailout from the Private Sector?
“We don’t have enough public dollars to fill the hole of private dollars that was created as a consequence of the crisis. It is only when the private sector starts to reinvest again; only when our businesses start hiring again and people start spending again and families start seeing improvement in their own lives again, that we’re going to have the kind of economy that we want,” Obama said.
Personally, I think he’s just trying to find out who the smart people are with the good ideas so he can buy them off and make them czars.
Coinciding with the jobs forum, organized labor and religious leaders in several cities sponsored events featuring unemployed and underemployed people to raise the public profile of the issue.
Those wouldn’t be the people that voted for Obama would it?
Activist Agenda at the Star
Disgruntled Star Editor Takes Constructive Revenge
…union chief Maureen Dawson explained that “Journalism is a collaborative effort, the product of a team of reporters, photographers and editors working in concert to produce the kind of activist agenda that has served Star readers and our community so well for so long…To remove a critical element of that work is to shortchange everyone who depends on it.”
Activist agenda? I think it is interesting that the Star’s readers point to Fox and claim it isn’t really news.
I thought journalism was “the occupation of reporting, writing, editing, photographing, or broadcasting news or of conducting any news organization as a business.” I guess the Star goes for the third definition instead.
writing that reflects superficial thought and research, a popular slant, and hurried composition, conceived of as exemplifying topical newspaper or popular magazine writing as distinguished from scholarly writing: He calls himself a historian, but his books are mere journalism.
“Solidarity Forever!” on the Sidelines
Rene Watteel with Ironworkers Local 712 says it’s unlikely the company will hire local workers, “It was us that built BC Place in the first place. We have the capacity. If we don’t keep our members employed, we’re going to lose that capacity.”
He says the fabricating will likely be done in Quebec and Japan, and it means 150 lost jobs.
“We want the BC government and PAVCO to make a commitment to support our local industry and local workers who pay all their taxes here and spend their money in our BC economy – anything else just doesn’t make sense,” Watteel said. “Why would BC taxpayers want to stimulate the economy in another province or country and not right here?”
From the same website.
The IRONWORKERS SHOP LOCAL UNION # 712, has proudly been representing it`s B.C. Ironworker members for more than 50 years. Today, we represent over 2,000 members throughout British Columbia in various manufacturing industries. Our negotiated collective agreements are amongst the best in these industries.
I guess picking up the phone and saying you would be able to do it for the cheaper bid would be out of the question.
Here’s a fun game to play if you are good at math, if you ever cross the border to the States, count the cars with union stickers on them heading down for a deal. Trust me, you’ll need a calculator.
Rider Pride on Ice
World Juniors honour the Riders
Hockey Canada announced Saturday that the Canadian junior team will wear green jerseys during next year’s IIHF world junior hockey championship in Regina and Saskatoon.
The jerseys are designed to honour the CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders, and were unveiled Saturday during the Saskatchewan-B.C. Lions game in Regina.
This didn’t happen when the World Juniors were in Vancouver.
Nor should it have.
Glen Suitor on Blackouts
It was a game that had it all, from big catches to big hits and even a little controversy. It was, in a word, a “classic.” Due to Grey Cup preparations, McMahon was beyond capacity. There were over 38,000 fans on the edge of their seats on a perfect October afternoon for football – and yet the game was blacked out.
I live 64.2 km away from the cement and dirty white roof of BC Place and when the Roughriders are in town, I am unable to watch the game because of blackout. Now, I could buy a ticket and travel the distance to watch the game in one of the worst places to watch a game in Canada. I love the crowd noise (even though it is piped in) but the game hosts yelling into their microphone to try and get the normally dry crowd going is really annoying.
With gas, parking and the two hours of time to get there it just isn’t worth it. Not to mention that my wife works Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and I have to watch the kids, making babysitting another cost I’d have to budget in for the night.
Blackouts are a thing of the past. The Canucks have no problem filling their seats for 40+ games a year and almost all of their games are televised.
The CFL product is not the problem and it isn’t even the stadium. The problem is that the CFL does not market its players or its game properly. Suitor nails it in his blog post.
Then, there are those who can’t afford to buy season tickets or can’t physically get to a game. And don’t even get me started on the possible marketing opportunities when you show hundreds of thousands of potential new customers your product on what, when it is right, can become the best three and half hour commercial you will ever get. Some owners will argue that it costs them thousands of dollars to lift a blackout, but I wonder how much it would cost to run a three and a half hour advertisement promoting your product on national TV.
Has anyone actually decided to go to a game because it may have been blacked out at home?
The Real Inconvenient Truth
It doesn’t take the brains of Einstein to figure out that only Wind and Sun are not going to power Al Gore’s vehicles, boat, house, office, etc. We’ll need a brand new form of energy production that can make this world run clean. Or do we?
How can we run an entire city for five years on six ounces of matter with almost no environmental impact? It all seems so incomprehensible that we make up problems in order to make things seem normal again.
Computer Model Inconvenience
Now they are complaining that the computer models aren’t inconvenient enough.
“Hadow fears that the current climate models developed by scientists may not be extreme enough.”
Let’s look again at how the ice gazers describe this year’s forecasts and scramble to adjust to realities…
Weather in June and July was supportive of a major summer sea ice loss in 2009, but the weather in August and September changed completely from that of earlier in the summer, preventing extreme sea ice loss late in the summer. While no new record was set in 2009, the September 2009 sea ice extent was still much reduced compared to 1979–2000 mean conditions.
Until they can accurate predict the weather for a day from now, they may want to withhold judgement on long term forecasts.
Cupboard of Pots Painting a Kettle Black
My favorite part is this paragraph:
ALISON LECLAIRE CHRISTIE (Canada) said that her delegation had taken note of the request made by the Palestinian delegation, during the last session, to defer consideration of a resolution on the Goldstone Report until the next regular session in March 2010. The lead co-sponsors had believed that this would allow for more time for broad-based and comprehensive consideration of the report. Canada was very concerned that this Special Session had been called so soon after this assessment had been made. The Council’s credibility depended on its preparedness to confront violations of human rights and Canada strongly supported the use of a Special Session to address grave violations of human rights wherever and whenever they occurred but was concerned at the continued and unbalanced attention given by the Council to Middle East issues. This Special Session was considered by Canada as a very poor precedent for the Council which undermined its integrity.
Here are the voting results which should highlight the integrity of the UN Human Rights Council.
In favour (25): Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, and Zambia.
Against (6): Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia, Ukraine, and United States of America.
Abstentions (11): Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gabon, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Republic of Korea, Slovenia, and Uruguay.
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