Might as well kill yourself - Week 71 - Sept 3-10

Oh man.  Maybe it’s just my mood this week, but things seem really grim.

We’ll start with the always excellent and always depressing Matt Taibbi.  He lays out just how Mitt Romney made his millions and just what is wrong with it.  Gawd.  Don’t worry though, Mitt is on the scene making sure we aren’t side-tracked from the most pressing of America’s many problems – identifying Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  At least he finally may have admitted that climate change is real…but not his problem.

Moving on to more depressing talk on the economy.  Here is a nice summary of some 21 truths to our current economy.  If any one of those doesn’t depress the hell out of you…man…I just don’t know.

And I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.  With all of the “improvements” in our lifetime, why are we so much worse off than our parents?  Why can’t we buy homes for reasonable prices?  Why are our wages stagnant?  Why is our environment shit?  Why can’t we invest for the long term with some reasonable expectation of a return?  Well, because we’re the fools holding the bag on a Ponzi scheme.

We’ll move on to Quebec, where a separatist government has just been elected.  But don’t worry, it’s a chance for Stephen Harper to really prove himself by ignoring all of their requests/demands/questions.

Because a Quebec branch of the Public Service Alliance of Canada supported a separatist party in the Quebec election, a Tory MP (Pierre Poilievre) figures all federally regulated union members should be able to opt out of paying union dues...which kind of kills the union, no?  As well, last week, Mr. Poilievre saw a car speeding on the highway and suggested that all cars should be banned.  He also caught his son looking at pornography on the computer and suggested the dismantlement of the Internet. 

Enbridge has done some legal maneuvering to set up their proposed pipeline as a limited partnership.  A cynic might suggest that they're trying to avoid legal responsibility.  And, somehow, I don't quite understand this, but the pipeline is going to raise our fuel prices.

So, out of nowhere, Canada has broken off diplomatic ties with Iran.  There's no crisis.  No incident.  Just...time to no longer talk to those guys.  It happens to be on the same day they announce five new Senate appointments...but I couldn't really make sense of this.  But the National Post put it in perspective.  Oh Israel appeasement.  What haven't you done for us lately? (and Iran is pissed)

Stephen Harper named five new Senators?  How many of these fuckers are there?

As well, he's announced that KPMG will review the spending on the new Fighter Jets....and some people are complaining that he's spending more money!  Can't win on this.  In other fighter jet news, somebody is proposing to resurrect the Avro Arrow.  Seriously.

Hey.  Let’s talk about real estate.  Despite statistics showing a decline in house prices and an admittance that sales numbers are way down…hell, if we just use a different statistic “prices remain high”.  Look at that fucking graph!  This shit is not sustainable.  Not by outside money.  Not by drug money.  Not by Vancouver being the 3rd most liveable City (didn’t we used to be #1?).  You’re fucking delusional.  Prices are going to come down.

I don't know if he's totally full of shit, but a dude in the comments section of this article just laid out a plan for how BC could become a wireless internet province by piggybacking the smart meter infrastructure.  Very, very cool, if possible.  It's kind of sad that the best idea that I've seen in some time came from a Tyee article comment section.  I actually e-mailed this link to my MLA, Christy Clark.

Oh.  Some good news.  Bruce Willis is actually becoming a bit of a copyright crusader!  Yes, he’s trying to figure out a way to make sure, and I’m not making this up, to make sure that his children have access to his iTunes catalogue if he dies!  Why anybody would pay money to “own” a digital something that is not really theirs is beyond me.

Hey.  Fracking causes earthquakes.  It's no biggie though.

Bev Oda strikes back from beyond the grave.

We'll end with some inspiration.  Alex Zinardi lost his legs in a CART accident a few years back.  He just won a gold medal at the Paralympics.  Honestly, read this story.