Keystone Kops. The Government Reflects the Nation.

You get the government that you deserve.

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Train bombs, pipelines, refineries - wrecked & exploding: These are NOT ALL of the incidents by any means, just the ones severe enough to be reported. There have been many many more smaller leaks and derailments. Lac Megantic is the most dramatic because the bombs went off in the middle of town and killed a lot of people - there have been lots of close-but-no-cigar 'accidents' far too near the centres of towns. The most recent explosion in Gogama f'rinstance missed the centre by more than a mile. That's a comfort eh? So let's begin with Keystone Kop-ette Lisa Riatt, Transport Minister: (July 15 2013 to present) Can we say she's put on some weight since she got to the House of Commons? She's doing what she's told to do, saying what she's told to say, being what she's told to be - maybe it's a psychological compensation of some kind for the cognitive dissonance where the rubber of her self meets the road of Stephen Harper. She pretends to think the problem is with rail car standards, or rail inspection frequency, or operating procedures. It's not. The problem is that this stuff should not be being transported at all.             1. Lac Mégantic, Québec - Saturday July 6 2013.             2. Gainford, Alberta - Saturday October 19 2013.             3. Aliceville, Alabama - Friday November 8 2013.             4. Casselton, North Dakota - Monday December 30 2013.             5. Wapske/Plaster Rock, New Brunswick - Tuesday January 7 2014.             6. Lynchburg, Virginia - Wednesday April 30 2014.             7. LaSalle, Colorado - Friday May 9 2014 (dud).             8. Clair, Saskatchewan - Tuesday October 7 2014.             9. Yellowstone River, Montana - Saturday January 17 2015.             10. Gogama, Ontario - Saturday February 14 2015.             11. Boomer, West Virginia - Monday February 16 2015.             12. Torrance, California - Wednesday February 18 2015.             13. Hornepayne, Ontario - Thursday March 5 2015.             14. Galena, Illinois - Thursday March 5 2015.             15. Gogama, Ontario - Saturday March 7 2015. Details can be found in two previous posts: Bakken Kraaken Lac Mégantic et cetera. (Sunday, August 17, 2014), and Extra! Extra! Read all about it! (Wednesday, February 25, 2015, updated 15-03-14). There is just ONE proper solution to the problem: KEEP THE OIL IN THE SOIL AND THE COAL IN THE HOLE.  Exactly who do you think is escaping from the jail tower in the cartoon at the right? Answer: Stephen Harper and his cabinet. All of this poppycock around terrorism, national security, law and order, the economy, and all the rest of it EXCEPT action on CO2 emissions is ... gas, red herrings. There is ONE issue - it's EXISTENTIAL - and ONE positive outcome - to force the fuckin' maggots to DO something to turn things around before Paris in December. For the record, the actual UN meetings in Paris don't matter much - they're just a line in the sand that happens to be towards the end of 2015 (being the planetary best-before date). Distraction. Dissembling.  Verisimilitude. These are (of course) among the tools in any politician's standard tactical kit. I wonder if there is a trick in there, some proroguery shenanigans, that will let him delay the election to the spring of 2016? Keyhole thuggery & breadcrumb sins. No boobage for a long while now. This image is ... irresistable.   ;-)

 
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Sheep & Goats (Full Moon).

Lookout! The living-dead are on the loose!

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Indeed, on the 17th will begin the Chinese lunar Year of the Sheep, Year of the Goat, or Year of the Ram - as you like. In Portuguese, however, 'carneiro' is specifically a male sheep or ram, with 'ovelha' for the generic, 'bode' for billy goat and 'cabra' for nanny goat. One of those little linguistic cracks that let in the light. :-) [Letting in light for the dim dills eh? As usual I've got it wrong and make little or no sense. And yet, all pretentions revealed ... even imagining these cracks is a comfort.]

And worse still considering the likes of Canada's Ludicrous Left which is as much behind building pipelines as the rest of the mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers. There is a HUGE turd coming down the pipe (followed by many more), officially unacknowledged and popularly not hardly understood, but it's there on the periphery of the Zeitgeist and soon to be a central feature (and soon after that 'the' central feature). It's in the consciousness and no accident that Gwynne Dyer began to take the environmental catastrophe seriously when he noticed his chums in senior security positions doing so.

Most of you will make out the fellow to the left as a Republican, but some of Joep Bertrams' acronyms may not be familiar: Pegida, PVV, FN, and UKIP. And there are others popping up every day (reminiscent of Edward Lear: "And thick and fast they came at last, and more, and more, and more!"). Neo-Nazis of one flavour and another, Stephen Harper's Conservatives of course, and whatever Tony Abbott's party is called. It would be bad enough if these were nutbar fringes, but it's mainstream in Canada & Australia and increasingly so elsewhere.

 

Belt tightening in a home economy, at the scale of one or several individuals or a family, even some certain small neighbourhoods, can be accomplished without immediate blood letting. At larger scales I think not. At larger scales it's police and the army and vigilantes and gangs of thugs. A suite of Laerte on the general theme (a ram in this case): What cracks nuts: Nutcracker! Nutcracker! Speak to me nutcracker. The magic is gone. Will it be the year of the ram? The Ram - One Act:         Study         Pain         Applause         Immortality The Ram - Second One Act: EMPOWERMENT STATION      Fill the tank.      More!      More. The Ram - One Act No. 3:             Do the possible and you will get the probable. The Ram - One Act IV:             Forgetting the causes does not cancel the effects. The Ram - One Act Vol. 7:         This is the historical moment. This is the historical place. I just don't feel like it.   The Twilight Zone (indeed) I:

Brian Gable's effort comes from 2013 - so, a perspicacious fellow then, is Mister Gable. Watching the whole State of the Union speech several times I see a good man, worn out and looking for a Flander's Fields moment. No one in sight to pass the torch to though ... Oh well.

The Twilight Zone (indeed) II: Why do we hate the politicians (when we do hate them) so viscerally? Is it that they (the ones we hate) lie so transparently and so continuously that our psyches are forced into a lower register? The phrase 'dead cat bounce' turned up in The Globe and Mail. Quite forthright talk for Crowley or whatever his name is to permit on his pages. See: Crude oil prices gain for second day: A bottom or a ‘dead cat bounce’?. 'Hog cycle' is another one: Oil's 'hog cycle' smacks Canada but in this case the columnist is touting the Bank of Canada deputy governor, Timothy Lane. I am hoping that his 'hog cycle' analysis is optimistic and that the decline hovers just above drop dead until the greed heads have squandered all their cash and wind up in the welfare line (with me). It hardly got started ... ... and 2015 has already crashed.   But Adão exaggerates. It hasn't missed, yet. 2015 is the last chance saloon sure enough but it's got some months to go. Gonna be what they call in the trade a 'cliff hanger'. (David Wilson)   I wonder if readers find this blog irritating in the way that I often find Doctor Who irritating?

 
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