Song: "You're Walkin' on the Fightin' Side of JB"

Whooee! Well, friends an' foes, I posted up another song an' video on YouTube. It pretty much speaks for itself. Have a look-see:

New Song: "The Ballad of Steve Harper"

Whooee! Well, friends an' foes, I done it again. Here's a new song all about Steve Harper set to the tune of the Beverly Hillbillies theme song.

The Ballad of Steve Harper

Come and listen to my story 'bout a man named Steve
Sneaky politician, dirty tricks up his sleeve
The oil companies needed a man on the inside,
So they bought a buncha votes and gave Ol' Steve a ride
(To Ottawa, that is. Parliament Hill.)

Well the first thing you know old Steve's the PM
The oil boys are happy 'cause he's workin' just for them
Environmental rules was holdin' oil back
So Harper killed the rules an' put the pipelines on the track
(Fast track that is, supertankers, Chinese money)

Well now it's time to say goodbye to Steve and all his crew
You've shown Canadians the kind of damage you can do
You're not invited back again to this locality
Since you took advantage of our hospitality
(Big Oil's bitches, that's what they call 'em,
Not nice folks. Get the hell out now, ya hear?)

Enbridge lobbied 23 MPs, 3 deputy ministers, 1 chief of staff & other public office holders

(Reprinted from Lobby Monitor Newsletter)

Enbridge did fall lobbying blitz
January 12, 2012 - 9:22am | Lobby Monitor Staff


In-house lobbyists with Enbridge, the Calgary-based energy company behind the controversial Northern Gateway Pipeline, lobbied 23 MPs, three deputy ministers, one chief of staff and other designated public office holders this fall, communication reports filed with the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying show.

Registrations filed with the commissioner's office have Patrick Daniel, Enbridge's president and CEO, listed as the responsible officer for the firm's in-house lobbying. D'Arcy Levesque, the vice president of public and government affairs, and Sonya Savage, the senior manager of government relations, are identified as the two company officials whose lobbying activities represent 20 per cent or more of their duties.

A communication report does not specify which officials did the lobbying, or if the communication was face-to-face or by telephone.

The registration says Enbridge officials were to lobby on “bills (such as C-606 "An Act to amend the Canada Shipping Act, 2001 (Prohibition against the transportation of oil by tankers on Canada's Pacific North Coast) - measure or area of interest is the proposed ban on oil tanker traffic.”

It also noted there could be “discussions regarding the development of a national energy strategy and the approach to opening new markets for natural resources” and that the company would be “seeking improved efficiencies in the environmental assessment processes.”

One communication shows Enbridge lobbied 22 MPs, all of them Conservative, at once. Another communication shows Enbridge's in-house lobbyists lobbied Louis Levesque, deputy minister of international trade at Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. Michael Wernick, deputy minister at Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada and Michael Horgan, a deputy minister at the finance ministry, were also lobbied, according to two separate communications.

Enbridge is also working with outside consultants, the registry showed. Ensight Canada's Jacquie LaRoque, Gregory Kolz and Robin Sears are registered to lobby the House of Commons and the Senate on behalf of the company.

Fun, Games and Free Rice for the Hungry

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, we got us a bigass disaster loomin'. The food crisis looks like it's gonna be long term and millions of people may die a slow, painful death by starvation. Countless others will be caught up in the civil strife that will shatter much of the developing world. The food crisis can be blamed on the confluence of a number of factors:

• Rising oil prices
• Unrestricted commodities market speculation
  
• The rise of the middle class in China and India
• Biofuel production and subsidization
• Extreme weather conditions
• Rapid population growth

Got money in mutual funds? You're probably invested in commodities and your portfolio is doing well thanks to record high profit taking on grains, oilseeds, rice and other food staples. Hedge fund traders are making out quite well these days and financial gurus are advising "investors" to go long on commodities.

Got 15 or 20 minutes? Play a fun vocabulary quiz and send a few grains of rice to some poor starving bastard in some hellhole where they might otherwise be eatin' dirt.


I played fer about 20 minutes an' managed to earn 3000 grains of rice. I ain't sure if that's enough fer more than one helpin'. Sounds like a lot but I figger maybe it's a cereal bowl full. Better than dirt, I reckon.

Itchin' to do more than play games? Wanna invest a few bucks into global security and feel good about feedin' hungry kids? Send some dough to World Vision. The food crisis is hittin' 'em hard. The high cost of food and fuel means the good fellers an' gals at World Vision are cutting back the number of people they can feed by 1,500,000. That's a million an' a half hungry folks who ain't gonna get any supper.

Wanna know my prediction? Over the next few weeks and months, we will see unprecedented violence and suffering all due to high food prices. Governments will fall. All other world issues will pale by comparison. Millions will be affected. Fingers of blame will be accurately pointed at commodities speculators, government-subsidized ethanol programs, meat-eaters, big oil, failure to act on climate change, failure to implement fair trade and failure to eliminate poverty.

JimBobby

The Fat Man, The Doctor, The Diet and Intensity Targets

Whooee! I was just over to Eric's Gettin' it Right boog where he's tryin' to explain intensity targets by usin' an analogy of a Toyota vs. a gas guzzlin' Chev. The analogy's okay but I been tryin' to come up with a better one - one that's easier to understand. I think I got one that ain't too bad. It ain't politically correct, I reckon, an' some body-mass challenged victim of McCulture will probbly gimme shit but, here goes --

The Fat Man, The Doctor, The Diet and Intensity Targets

Once upon a time, there was a fat man. His name wasn't Steve. He was gettin' fatter an' fatter an' he was gainin' about a pound a week. That's about a half kilogram, fer you younger folks.

The fat guy goes to his doctor an' the doc sez, "Fatboy, yer killin' yer stoopidass self. You gotta lose weight an' fast or else yer headed fer a nasty life an' an early death." He tells the fat man he's gotta go on a diet, start exercisin' an' get thinner. Or else.

So, the fat feller starts walkin' down to the corner store instead drivin' the chugmobile. When he's there, he buys the small bag o' chips an' only half as many chocolate bars as before he got the death sentence from the sawbones. With his efforts at exercise an' dietin', the fat feller cuts down the rate at which he's gainin' weight.

He cuts it down to a pound a month from a pound a week. He's reduced the intensity of his weight gain by 75%. Sounds good. A 75% reduction must be good.

But.. but... but... the doctor told him he was gonna die if he didn't lose weight. Cuttin' down the rate at which he's gainin' weight ain't losin' weight. He's still gainin' an' he's still puttin' his stoopidass self into a early grave.

I reckon the fat boy (whose name ain't Steve) was only foolin' hisself. The epitaph on his gravestone can read -- "He reduced intensity by 75%. R.I.P."

JimBobby

Boom Town Social Ills - Syphilis in the Oilpatch

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, a coupla days ago a story come out in the Globe & Mail all about the troublems they're havin' over in Alberty in the oil patch with all the new workers movin' in t' get the oil outta the sand. A coupla Canajun boogers posted up boog stories on these troublems they're havin'. Politique Vert had a good piece where she quoted a speech made by the gal I adore, Earth Mother Lizzie May. BigCityLib had a piece where he sorta poked some fun at a coupla nutjobs who happen t' come from Alberty. Alberta Aardvark ain't happy with BigCity.

Well, I been boogin' against Alien Alberts who wanna bust up Canada since when I started boogin'. The sorta regional finger-pointin' an' guiltifyin' goin' on between Alberty an' Ontariariario ain't good fer Canada. My Canada includes Alberty.

Over t' Politique Vert I seen a speech from Lizzie May from way last June. Here's the part that applies --

"Before I get to the ecological impacts, I want to cover some of the social ones, because they get missed. Believe it or not I have friends in Fort McMurray, and it is really appalling what's happened to the community. In 1971 it had a population of less than 7,000 people, by 1981 it was over 30,000. Today there are 70,000 people living in Fort McMurray. They lack adequate infrastructure of every kind. They don't have adequate sewage, they don't have adequate housing. As a matter of fact 20% of that 70,000 population has no fixed address. A lot of the people working there are in work camps. Thousands and thousands of working age guys who take big salaries are in these work camps.

So of course there's a huge crime problem, there's the use of drugs, there's assault, there's HIV/AIDS, there's prostitution. One of the doctors I've talked to in Fort McMurray said that every kind of high impact, high stress, high risk behaviour you can imagine happens in those work camps. And they have an acute lack of workers. They want more people to come, there's no place to put them, there's no infrastructure. "

Lizzie weren't just talkin' through her hat an' now we're seein' them troublems comin' home t' roost.
I left me a couplafew comments over t' the BCL an' the Aardvark boogs. I'm gonna paste some o' them in here.
At the Aardvark, they was bashin' the Grits an' goin' on about the NEP an' even Pierre Truedough. One Aardvark commenter by the name o' Lycan sez "And now, despite all the Liberal(s) have done, Alberta is booming."
I figgered I'd set him straight a little.
I ain't in Alberty but from what I hear-tell, it's these here tar sands that's the biggest boom goin' on, right?
An' I ain't a Liberal but I lived under a Liberal gummint fer 13 years an' I paid attention t' what was goin' on. The Liberals is the ones who made the tar sands development possible with $1.4 billion a year in tax breaks.
Here's a little bit on that from the National Post.

"Environmentalists, the NDP and Bloc Quebecois have repeatedly called for an end to programs introduced in 1997 -- when Mr. Dion was minister of intergovernmental affairs under Jean Chretien -- that allow oil companies to write off their start-up costs with breaks on taxes and royalties.
While it helped kick-start development in the 1990s, critics say the industry is taking record profits and no longer needs government assistance. Opposing parties have frequently assailed the Tories in the House of Commons as friends of the oil industry, despite the fact the tax breaks were put in place by the Liberals well before the Conservatives came to power."

NEP was decades ago. PET's been dead fer years. Tar sands development is now. Liberals in Ottawa kick-started the tar sands. Don't hate 'em fer helpin' make Alberta rich. (That there was a play on the Aardvark title Don't hate us because we are beautiful. )
When there's troublems in Alberty, like in Fort Mac with the syphilis, I reckon it's a troublem fer Canada. That makes it every Canajun's troublem an' I reckon name-callin' an' regional one-upsmanship crappola don't do a dang thing t' solve the troublem.
I ain't been in Alberty since 1973 when I was young an' handsome. I'm gettin' old an' wornout now an' I might never get t' that beautiful province again before I cash out. Even so, when Alberty suffers with social troublems, I feel the pain on accounta it's Canajuns who's sufferin'.
Now, I'm all fer givin' Alberty all the help it needs. One thing I didn't like was when Harpoon divvied up the CO2 reduction money an' Alberty got less than Ontariariario or Q-beck. I don't reckon money like that ought be divvied up on the basis of population (votes). I figger Alberty should get the most on accounta they've got the biggest troublems.
They also got big troublems on the social side an' I figger them oil companies an' the taxes them workers pay oughta be enough t' make sure they got doctors an' womens' shelters an' STD clinics an' drug rehab programs an' recreational facilities. If Ottawa's gotta chip in an help Canada's richest province look after the workers who's makin' 'em rich, so be it. We can't have these sorta troublems in the oil patch any more than we can have 'em on northern reserves or in Parkdale.
Even if Lizzie May gets elected Queen o' Canada (which she won't be anytime soon) the tar sands is gonna keep on growin'. It ain't stoppable, even if we wanted to. What's possible is t' clean it up. We can clean up the extraction process an' we can clean up the social mess.
We're intelligent, educated, hard-workin', compassionate Canajuns. Of course, we can look after our people and our planet.
JimBobby