As IF Times

link Canada government defeated in non-confidence vote – Yahoo! News.

There’s an ancient anecdote about a movie that was made about the lives of an husband and wife team of brilliant scientists.  As they were watching the movie depiction, during a particularly steamy love scene, the real life wife leaned over to her husband and whispered, ” I don’t remember it being like this”.  The husband responded, “that my dear is because they are professionals and we are only amateurs”.  This stupid story reminds me of what has just happened in Canada.

The opposition parties have ganged up on the minority Conservative party to force the 4th federal election in 7 years.  Apparently, the opposition Liberal and NDP parties are expressing the mandate of  “the people” in pushing for a vote.  There is no anecdotal evidence that anyone wants another election, but hey, they are the professionals, so they must have some special insight.

If anyone has noticed, Canada at the moment is a bastion of calm both politically and economically in a world where everywhere else there is chaos and uncertainty.  There are no religious or cultural protests in the streets.  There are no burnings of effigies.  We are not at war with anyone.  There are no massive bank failures.  There is no imploding real estate sinkhole.  The currency is at an all time high versus the U.S. counterpart, our main trade partner.  The economy overall is strong with worldwide demand for our commodity products.  Thank goodness we have the Liberals and NDP willing to come to the rescue and save Canadians from all of this disaster.

The professional politicians are at it again.  The leaders of the opposition parties, Ignatieff and Layton,  both lack experience in any executive capacity; they are either academics or of some other crazed ideological bent that want to foist some tired notions of socialism upon the nation.  We know how that worked out just across the border to the south.  A handful of entitled people, otherwise unemployable, pushing their  mandate upon 35 million others who are living lives of relative tranquility.  For the benefit of these idiots, the way the  nation is running now is the way it’s supposed to be when things work.  The only thing they don’t like is that they’re not in charge.  These are people whose only role in life has been to suck on the nation’s political teat.  Let’s hope the amateurs rise up and make these ‘professionals’ pursue new professions in the next election.   I hear Cuba is looking for new leadership.

link Canada: A billion on summit security well worth it – Yahoo! News.

This may be patently obvious, but if a country needs to spend a billion on security for a summit, maybe the summit should be held somewhere that’s more easily secured, perhaps Labrador or Iqaluit in the Northwest Territories.   If the whole point of gathering exalted poo-bahs and geniuses from all nations is for the face to face serious discussions on solving word hunger, yada yada yada, then why even hold it in a metropolitan area?

Spend the money on some infrasture in the vast and secure north of Canada and pump some money into that part of the world.  Get the army corp of engineers to build an instant conference room and contract out Starbucks for the coffee and banana bread.  The entire security budget can be reduced to the cost of shooing away curious moose.  Considering the Conservatives are supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility and common sense, this is a great disappointment.  Heck if we wanted all kinds of wasteful boondoggle spending, we would have kept the Liberals in office.

The public safety minister Vince Toews states that this expenditure is “worth it”.  ??!!  Really? Why? At the core of the issue, the money will be spent to ensure the safety of notionally 20 some odd representatives and their aides and of course their wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands or some combination thereof.  So if we generously give each entourage 50 people, then that makes security for 1000 people. But let’s really be gracious hosts and allow 100 people per country. That makes the total group count at near 2000 people.  Counting on my fingers rapidly, this breaks down into $500,000 per person for this extravaganza or $1,000,000 per person if you use the smaller entourage figure.

Naturally, this number doesn’t include food, tax or gratuities.  Vince Toews may want to qualify what is meant by “worth it”.  Is it worth it to spend a billion dollars on cops and dogs when you could probably achieve the same result by having a hundred or so army staff secure a Holiday Inn in St. John’s Newfoundland?

We all know the answer to that, but as has been mentioned in an earlier post, the real reason that the exalted summit is being held in Toronto, is….shopping!  Yes, the spouses had to be enticed to go along and the only way to do this was if the destination had some decent shopping.  Toronto isn’t Hong Kong or Milan, but, hey, you have to keep up the appearance of belt tightening.  As far as Labrador, well, how many sealskins can you buy?