Free Labour = Free Of Unions

Critic howls over trade agreement Note the headline.....It's from the Edmonton Sun of course......And you know there is trouble when the Fraser Institute says its a good deal....This is the latest ne0-liberal/neo-con attack on workers and their unions.

Alberta's highly touted free trade agreement with B.C. is "a wolf in sheep's clothing," says the head of the Alberta Federation of Labour. Gil McGowan is warning other provinces that the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement, dubbed TILMA, "is not all sweetness and light."

But McGowan says union lawyers fear the deal will give companies the right to sue municipal and provincial governments and school boards that try to bring privatized services under the public umbrella.

He's also concerned the deal will result in a "dumbing down" of Alberta rules for trades training.

Liberal critic Bill Bonko says the deal should have been debated in the legislature if it was so good, rather than being negotiated behind closed doors.

But Jason Clemens of the Fraser Institute raves about the deal, saying the Yukon, Saskatchewan, Ontario and the Atlantic provinces are keen on it.

"This really could be a domino effect across the country to remove or dramatically reduce trade barriers," he said.

Also see: Legal advice on TILMA

For more on the TILMA go here and here

This is a provincial agreement that was drafted to meet the open corridor polices of NAFTA and the new North American Union proposed under the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) which will be discussed by the Three Amigos this summer in Kananaskis.

And it fits in with the agenda of the Harpocrites in Ottawa and their business cronies who are promoting this policy as well as the increased use of temporary workers.

The $10-billion plan to help manufacturing compete globally
Expand the temporary foreign worker program to make it easier to hire non-Canadians when there are no domestic citizens available.

Although governments can only influence manufacturers' success to a certain degree, the industry believes Ottawa could be doing much more to help.

The sector's wish list includes lower corporate income taxes, the elimination of provincial trade barriers, more investment in skills, and broader tax credits for industrial training and corporate research.

And let's not forget who Harper put in charge as Minister of Human Resources.

And there is a Conservative former MLA and anti-union candidate running in former Conservative MP John Williamson's federal riding here. After all Alberta has the worst labour laws in Canada. And is home to the Right To Work Movement which was once headed by Conservative MP Rob Anders.

As Jean Charest once said, back when he was leader of the Federal PC's, "Alberta sets the agenda for Canada."


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Labour

Unions

Temporary Workers

NAFTA

AFL





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Capitalism Caps Tarsands Expansion

No need for the Blogging Tories, Harpocrites or Fast Eddie Stelmach to get all in huff over the need to cap or reduce the rapid expansion of the tar sands.

Capitalism will take care of that.....for a while... until oil prices go up again....

Low bids stymie Petrocan oil sands auction

But with the price of oil down more than 20 per cent from a peak in 2006, passion for the oil sands has lessened, in part because of the high cost of developing projects in northeastern Alberta.

Interest in the oil sands can vary from week to week. On Jan. 10, the Alberta government said exploration rights for about 200,000 hectares of oil sands territory generated $134-million. Two weeks later, oil sands rights raised only $500,000 for less than 6,000 hectares. Another sale will be announced Wednesday, which is expected to attract more interest, as are more sales in March.

Another Fire Sale of Alberta's resources, with a 25 year exemption on Royalties!!!

Lougheed was right we need a plan for expansion of the oil sands, but that is not likely to happen as this is the same government that sold off its assets like liquor stores, highway construction, etc. at fire sale prices.

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Stelmach

NEP

TarSands

Alberta

Environment



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Where's That Damn Calculator

Lyle Oberg the man who would be Premier but ended up as Treasurer can't find his calculator so the Spring sitting of the Alberta legislature will be delayed.

The session, Ed Stelmach's first as premier, was originally slated to begin in the last week of February. But the date is now being pushed back to March 7 to give the government more time to prepare. The delay comes less than three weeks after finance minister Lyle Oberg admitted the 2007 budget would not be ready until April, rather than March, as is the norm.

Apparently the session will be delayed because he is counting all the billions on his fingers and toes.

No big deal they do all the real business in Cabinet. After all the only deficit in Alberta is a democratic deficit.

The May 2006 report Fiscal Surplus, Democratic Deficit by the University of Alberta's Parkland Institute, not only correctly predicts this year's actual surplus, it also points out that the Alberta government has been wrong in its revenue projections for at least the last thirteen years.

More specifically, the report calculates that in each of the last six years, the government has underestimated revenues by an average of $4.3 billion per year.

This attitude was confirmed by Mr. Klein last fall when he told the media that the unbudgeted surplus was none of the legislature's business. Given Alberta's track record in budgeting, what the premier was saying was that the legislature should have no say in how to spend 20 to 25 per cent of the province's revenue.

For more on Alberta's democratic deficit see Daveberta's review of Kevin Tafts new book democracy derailed.

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Democratic Deficit

Ed Stelmach

Lyle Oberg



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Poll Predicts War On Iran

It's a good thing that the Bush White House doesn't develop its policies and strategies based on polling. American Majority Predicts War with Iran


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PC=Liberals

I was always a Progressive Conservative, I am a Progressive Conservative and the Liberals are Progressive Conservative, said Garth Turner in his press conference with Liberal Leader Stephane Dion. And Dion didn't blink.

Well that settles that. We now know what 'progressive' means when Liberals and Liberalbloggers use it. Small p for progressive, small c for conservative.

The Big Red Tent is home for Red Tory's; Turner, Stronach, Brison.

I look forward to Garth blogging at Liberalbloggers and Progressive Bloggers since he was unceremoniously kicked off the Blogging Tories several months ago.

Of course it won't be the same old principled independent Garth of the past year because he has agreed to abide by caucus and party solidarity, Dion said so. Well maybe, I couldn't see Garths hands he may have had his fingers crossed when he said Yes, when asked by reporters.

And while there are few tears being shed over at the Blogging Tories, well lets just say they are the hardline right.

And while Garth may be a maverick, his sharp knife jabs at Harper and the Conservative party, at the press conference, claiming they abandoned their PC and Reform roots for the politics of fear, well that says a lot.

The centrist politics of the Dion Liberals bodes ill for the Harpocrites. After all as Garth said his choice was Liberals or Green. NDP never crossed his lips.

So folks if ya want to really be progressive and not just PC well then ya gotta move left.

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Garth Turner



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Groupthink

We sometimes overlook the most obvious connection between deniers, those who deny global warming, those who deny evolution and those who deny the holocaust.

They suffer from the same kind of groupthink and conspiracy theories.

Its not denial they say, it's debate they want, the facts are not irrefutable, there is evidence to the contrary.

For a long time Bradley Smith has tried to present himself as an honest chap, a champion of intellectual freedom simply seeking an "open debate"about the "holocaust controversy [sic]." But this debate is a sham. The so-called holocaust controversy does not exist. It is the invention of a collection of long-time anti-Semites and apologists for Hitler.

On the surface, Holocaust deniers portray themselves as individuals and groups engaged in a legitimate, dispassionate quest for historical knowledge and "truth."

Dressing themselves in pseudo-academic garb, they have adopted the term "revisionism" in order to mask and legitimate their enterprise. After all, the ongoing challenge to and revision of previously accepted historical interpretation is one of the hallmarks of the professional historian's craft.

Of course most holocaust deniers are right wing kooks that even other right wingers disavow or do they? Not so. Once upon a time they had powerful business backers, and in many cases still do today.

Like Robert Welch Jr. who founded the John Birch Society. Today the Birchites focus their criticism on immigration, legal or illegal and the UN. There are many in a variety of right wing movements, like the Minutemen, whose roots go back to the sixties and the World Anti-Bolshevik Movement which gave succour to post WWII fascists.

The right wing is inundated with conspiracy theorists, holocaust deniers and neo-fascists. And ideological differences aside they are part of the 'mainstream' right, they are backed by private business interests and the tactics they have developed over fifty years of lobbying in the United States remain the same.

Because they are effective. Deny that your opponents have evidence, claim something is a theory, not a fact and viola, their views are challenged for there creditability.

Thus the same argumentative tactic used to deny the holocaust is used to deny evolution and used to deny climate change. It is groupthink on the right. And the argumentative style does not change, the subject of the attack does.

And it is always tinged with conspiracy theory, that the scientific or historical facts are being foisted on us because it is consensus reality, consensus of those in power it is not the 'real thing'.

So all the historians that accept the holocaust are establishment historians not 'real' historians. Scientists that accept evolution or global warming are not 'real' scientists.

The only place that a climate change science consensus exists is in what Essex and McKitrick call 'Official Science', the collective voice of governments and other so-called 'science authorities'. But this is not real science.

The Climate Change Deniers have money and powerful connections they have used to discredit their opponents, in this case other scientists and academics. And sometimes do so to end careers, literally terrifying their opponents into silence. Certainly a form of fascism.

"There is a strategy to single out individuals, tarnish them and try to bring the whole of the science into disrepute," he says. "And Kevin [Trenberth] is a likely target." Mann agrees that the scientists behind the upcoming IPCC report are in for a rough ride. "There is already an orchestrated campaign against the IPCC by climate change contrarians," he says.

Many of the IPCC's authors, some of whom asked not to be named, say this is a smokescreen. They claim there is an extensive network of lobby groups and scientists involved in making the case against the IPCC and its reports. Automobile, coal and oil companies have coordinated and funded past attacks on them, the scientists say. Sometimes this has been done through Washington lobby groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), whose officers include Myron Ebell, a former climate negotiator for George W. Bush's administration. Recently, the CEI made television advertisements arguing against climate change, one of which ended with the words: "Carbon dioxide, they call it pollution, we call it life." CEI's past funders include ExxonMobil, General Motors and the Ford Motor Company.

The money trail

Some sceptical scientists are funded directly by industry. In July, The Washington Post published a leaked letter from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA), an energy company based in Colorado, that exhorted power companies to support the work of the prominent sceptic Pat Michaels of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Worried about the potential cost of cleaning up coal-fired power plants to reduce their CO₂ emissions, IREA's general manager, Stanley Lewandowski, wrote: "We believe that it is necessary to support the scientific community that is willing to stand up against the alarmists... In February this year, IREA alone contributed $100,000 to Dr Michaels."

The Fraser Institutes response to the IPCC report was a long time in the making, and a coordinated effort between them and the anti-climate change lobby, the flat earthers, in the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. And the organizations, front groups really, are all interconnected.

It was planned years ago, as new front organizations sprung up over the past three years in preparation for the IPCC report. While the Fraser Institute like its American counter-part the Cato Institute have existed since the seventies, groups like Canada's Natural Resources Stewardship Project, and the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition are all relatively new lobbying groups. Even the older Friends of Science. was only created in 2002.

The push was on by the right and their big business backers when they saw the writing on the wall after Kyoto was signed. One faction of capitalism endorsed Kyoto, another was ambivalent, and a handful, but a powerful handful, vehmently opposed Kyoto.

Having lost the war they now engage in a protracted series of battles to attempt to inundate doubt in the public mind, using fronts like Junk Science.com and Fox News, various assorted right wing media mouthpieces in Canada, Europe and America. They know they have lost, but if in anyway they can hold back radical changes required to deal with the heat death of the planet, to save their industries they will. Victory to them is to delay change.

And they will never go away, another issue will come to the fore that they can delay, attack, undermine, and deny. And the consipiratorial politics of denial will once again be used.

The Right Wing exposes the Janus nature of the ruling class. One face appeals to the public as liberal, seeking to ameliorate the worst excesses of capitalism, the other jingoist, nativist, reactionary seeks to dominate through demagoguery and populism. One is enlightened capitalism the other is fascism. Both are false choices.

The alternative is, as it has always been for the past one hundred years, Barbarism or Socialism.



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Fraser Institute

Environment

Conspiracy Theory

Fascism

Anti-Semitism


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Echo Chamber

Here we have more of the same echo chamber of the Flat Earth society of climate change deniers quoting each other without referencing they belong to the same old boys club.

For instance we get this right wing column in the London Free Press, a Quebecor/Sun newspaper,

Kyoto penalizes those trying to do good
The not-so-green cynics at the Small Dead Animals blogsite have dubbed Suzuki's tour, Flakes on a Plane, and worry about the amount of emissions-spewing fossil fuels Suzuki himself will burn up by the time his tour wraps up in Victoria.

Cynics? Cynics? Rightwhingnutbars is more like it. But of course this columnist is a member of the SDA fan club so he puts them in a charitable light.

And we have this report published in the Canadian Free (sic) Press

Asking the right questions about climate change

And the folks asking those right questins are

The Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP), a Canadian non-profit group, including a number of leading climate change sceptics, was launched October 12, 2006.

And they quote their pals in the Fraser Institute. As I pointed out here when they quote each other they fail to say they all belong to the same small circle of friends. Which is journalistically and intellectually dishonest, to say the least.

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Fraser Institute

Environment


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God Created Global Warming

Yep when you break down the arguments from the right that's what it comes down to.

Global Warming, like AIDS, is all part of Gods plan.

Global warming is a given. The cause of global warming is questioned. Some scientists blame man, just as many other scientists contend we are undergoing one of Earth's natural warming cycles.

Our planet has been cooling and warming since God created it.


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Creationism

Environment

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Al Gore A Tory?

File this under all is fair in love and war and politics...

In answer to a question in Palrliament today, Environment Minister, and Mouth that Roared, John Baird, he who is never without a newspaper to quote from, quoted Al Gore saying that Canada punched above its weight when it comes to championing the environment.

(source unkown and you will have to wait till tommorow for the exact quote to appear in Hansard)

My, my will wonders never cease. It's the Jolly Green Make Over of the Tories.

Of course we know this is all this recent conversion on the road to Paris, they still deny Kyoto, is superficial.

After all remember the last time a Tory Minister quoted Al Gore.

I hope they all plan to attend this event, if not to embrace Gore at least to get his autograph,

Former US vice-president Al Gore will give a public lecture at the University of Toronto Feb. 21, addressing the threat of global climate change. ...

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Baird

Environment



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Principles and Independence Fini

It's the last time you will see this.....principles, gone, independence, gone.....looking forward to his new banner spin...

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Garth Turner



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Who Said It First

The echo chamber of the Blogging Tories, the National Post and the New Canadian Government, having all the Alberta MP's , have now gotten through to their pals in the Media Room of Premier Ed Stelmachs office. Which prompted his latest Klein like outburst.

But before Mark Holland of the Liberals said anything about the need to slow down tarsands development this guy said it first, and not a peep, nary a word, not a comment from the BT's or the Harpocrites, heck not a word from Fast Eddie either.......


Former premier, Peter Lougheed criticizes oil sands development

CALGARY, Jan. 24 /CNW/ -The next episode of Energy-TV includes a candid
interview with former premier, Peter Lougheed following his keynote address at
the Oil Sands Supply & Infrastructure conference in Calgary. Lougheed
delivered a speech that was critical of both the petroleum industry and the
provincial government's management of oil sands development.
In an exclusive Energy-TV interview, Lougheed bluntly discusses his
concerns about the rapid oil sands development including a call for a review
of the capital expenditure aspect of oil sands projects and how the rising
cost overruns are impacting the royalties collected from oil sands reserves.
He also examines alternatives for cleaner oil sands development, such as not
using natural gas for bitumen production, alternative energy sources and his
views on fresh water use.

Former premier says bitumen should stay in Alberta

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Lougheed told delegates at an energy conference in Calgary on Tuesday that the provincial government should firmly link the licensing of new projects to the processing of bitumen at home.

"I just find it completely unacceptable that our resource involves shipping jobs down the pipeline with bitumen to the United States."

Lougheed, the keynote speaker at the two-day Oilsands Supply and Infrastructure conference at the Hyatt Regency, said shipping bitumen south is a temporary solution in an overheating economy, but it shouldn't be part of the long-term plan.

Note the dates, and this is not the first time Lougheed has said this......

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Stelmach

NEP

TarSands

Alberta

Environment



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Shower With A Friend

That is Alberta Preimer "Fast" Eddie Stelmach's suggestion to Albertans. Big Oil is not responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, no siree, its you and me he says.

Stelmach promised that his government will set mandatory emissions intensity targets this spring, but he suggested individual Albertans can help by conserving electricity and hot water.

And of course following that logic we all use much more water than the TarSands do, NOT, so we should all shower with a friend to help save Alberta's water. Can you spell goof; EDDIE.

The premier said it's wrong to place all the blame for greenhouse gases on the energy sector.

"The energy sector is number 1 (in emissions), but of course every time you put on your lights in the house or turn on your TV, you're using electrical energy," said Stelmach.

"So it's going to require all Albertans working toward one common goal."

In dry Alberta, conflict over water has been going on for years, fuelled by an industry that, it's estimated, requires between two and 4.5 barrels of H2O to produce a single barrel of crude. Moreover, while Canada boasts 20% of the world's freshwater, Alberta gets by with only 2.2%.

As I said here before when Conservatives accept the need to do something about Global Warming they will say it is an individual problem, not a problem of capitalism.

The reason for the outburst is Fast Eddie is all upset over comments made by the Liberals but was deafeningly silent over threats from his pals in the New Conservative Government of Canada to introduce a new NEP.

And Eddie claims voluntary caps are working!! Funny that's not what Harper and Baird say.

But Mr. Baird did say something of great note, something that those in the business community, especially oil and gas, have been lobbying successfully against for 15 years. Said Mr. Baird: "Voluntary compliance is not enough. We actually have to regulate. Those regulations have to be enforceable." And, he said, these regulations will be tougher than anything the Liberals ever proposed.

Someone should get the Federal and Provincial Tories on the same messaging page.

Oh wait they are, the Feds want to cap "emmision intensities", which will NOT result in a decrease in Greenhouse gases as Alberta has already shown.

And Fast Eddie needs his newly appointed Tory Media hacks to properly brief him, they are no longer working for the Sun.....

Stelmach also threw out some figures Monday suggesting Alberta has taken a leading role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

"Alberta is the only province on record that has actually reduced CO2 emissions by 16 per cent," he said.

But the premier later conceded he was talking about so-called emissions intensity, which is a measurement against the growth in industrial production rather than a total measurement of what's coming out of the smoke stack. If a company increases emissions at a slower rate than it increases production, then emissions intensity is reduced even though absolute emissions have increased.

An Alberta Environment official later confirmed that total emissions have increased by 40 per cent since 1990, but emissions intensity is down by 16 per cent over the same period.

Ouch!!!

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Stelmach

NEP

TarSands

Alberta

Environment



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Bye Bye May, Hello Dion

MP Garth Turner joining Liberal caucus: CTV

I guess this answers which is greener, since the Greens sucked up to Garth and Garth sucked up to the Greens, and despite the opportunity to make history and give the Greens their first seat in Parliament Garth goes Liberal.

So does that mean Dion is greener than May?

It just goes to show despite Garths blather on importance of independent MP's he succumed to good old fashioned political opportunism.

And for those who think there is a difference between Conservatives and Liberals, well Garth proves it just ain't so.

Though one does wonder what the Liberals will do with Garth since he supports Income Trusts and Income Splitting. The liberals support the former and the Conservatives suppor the latter.

This is truly a marriage of convinence, it gets the Liberals a seat back, but the balance of power remains in the NDP hands.

Garth had an opportunity to do something historic and he blew it by just being opportunistic.


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Man Made Volcano

As if Indonesia did not have enough environmental problems; 340000 flee deadly floods in Jakarta, now we find out that the mud spewing volcano that erupted last year is a man-made phenomena.

The Indonesian volcano, known as Lusi, has been spewing steaming mud since May last year, causing 13,000 people to flee their homes (Image: University of Durham)

Drilling for gas most probably caused the eruption of an Indonesian mud volcano, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people, scientists report.

"[The eruption] appears to have been triggered by drilling of over-pressured porous and permeable limestones at depth of around 2830 metres below the surface," says the study, the first published on what caused the eruption.

The study, which appears in the February issue of the journal GSA Today, adds that the volcano has been disgorging 7000-150,000 cubic metres of mud every day since it erupted in May last year.

Such pressures, coupled to the local geology, suggest the flow "will continue for many months and possibly years to come", warn the UK researchers, led by Professor Richard Davies from the University of Durham.

In the coming months, sag-like subsidence several kilometres wide will occur, and around the main vent there is likely to be "more dramatic collapse", forming a crater, the study adds.

An area of at least 10 square kilometres around the volcano will be uninhabitable for years, and over 11,000 people will be permanently displaced, it says.

Add to that the wildfires started by slash and burn operations for palm oil plantations and the continuing disruption and displacement from the 2004 Tsunami and Indonesia is an ongoing environmental disaster.

But do plan to take your holidays there, I hear it is quite nice otherwise.

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Environment Minister MIA

I am having a flashback.

The new Conservative Environment Minister has become just like the old Environment Minister.

John Baird has bowed out of appearing before the Parliamentary Environment Committee, twice now, reports CBC reporter Julie Van Dusen on Newsworlds QP.

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Jack Alliterates

Jack Layton on the partisan politics in parliament around the environment bill C-30.

"We have ditherer's, deniers and delayers"




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Jack Layton

Environment


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Crack The Whip

Tonights vote in Parliament on the Liberals Kyoto motion will be whipped for the Tories says Don Newman on CBC. Yep them Tories who promised free votes in the House. And that they would only whip votes on fiscal bills. Another broken promise. No wait, they already broke that one.

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Polyandry And Butterflies

This is a male fantasy, one male for forty females.....but wait it's butterflies we are talking about.

The fact that female butterflies could even find mates in the presence of male-killing Wolbachia stunned scientists. In some islands there was only one male for every 40 females. One would expect this type of sex imbalance to leave females deprived of a mate, explains Hurst.“To our knowledge we’ve never heard of female promiscuity being caused by fewer males,” he says.

What were they supposed to do remain childless spinsters? That ain't natural.

Another example of the birds and the bees, well butterflies anyways, and polyandry

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Polgamy

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Not Man Enough To Be PM

Stephane Dion is a girly man says the Ottawa Citizen.

Everything about Dion seems soft, from his handshake to his policies. His appearance at the Citizen editorial board Friday confirmed the fears I had when the Liberals chose him as their leader. Dion is a verbose, mild-mannered academic with a shaky grasp of English who seems unfit to chair a university department, much less lead a country.

Randall Denley
The Ottawa Citizen

Yep not man enough to be PM unlike our current Manly Man PM Stevie boy.

What a cheap shot, and it has the Blogging Tories all a buzz. Well at least Dion doesn't suffer from baby fat.


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Twisters and Trailer Parks

What's with Tornados and Trailer Parks?

When Edmonton was hit with its first ever Tornado it took out Evergreen Trailer Park.

Last weekends three Florida Tornadoes took out Trailer Parks.

David Demar stands in the remains of his mobile home at Lake Mack early Saturday, Feb. 3, 2007 after a killer tornado struck the Paisley, Fla. neighborhood Friday.(AP Photo/J. Pat Carter)

My partner suggested that it is because of location and heat, that is trailer parks are on the outskirts of cities, and that buildings and other urban developments give off heat patterns that do not attract the Tornados.

Mobile homes are cheap housing for the working class, and are not made to the same specifications or building codes as houses.


They are deliberately placed in the path of tornadoes by a sinister conspiracy of capitalists to kill off excess members of the working classes whom they call white trash. (just kidding).

It is actually just that capitalists can't be bothered to build cheap afforable homes, and place them in safe areas.

Picture of the "double tornado" that hit the Midway Trailer Park in Dunlap, Indiana, killing 36.

Here's what some other folks think.

Back in Kentucky, we always called trailers "tornado magnets."

Tornadoes and hurricanes are indeed most frequent in states with many mobile homes. For instance, eight states are in the top eleven for both prefab homes and tornadoes. Furthermore, Florida leads the nation in violent storms and is third in manufactured home purchases.

Statistics from the National Severe Storms Forecast Center in Kansas City show
that from 1975 to 1991 nearly 36% of all tornado deaths occurred in mobile
homes. Tornadoes don't hit mobile homes more often than conventional homes,
but mobile home are just that - mobile.

Is it not within the realm of thinking that the reason trailer parks garner
the most television exposure in regards to tornados, is because
of the higher mortality, and injuries sustained in mobile home vs.
a home of standard construction.
The most significant difference in their construction I would
contend is the "basement", or lack of a basement.

i should also point out that in many places of the southern states, the
water table is too high for houses to have a basement and not have it
flood. in the case of texas, the ground is so hard, u'd need dynamite
and jackhammers to dig a basement. trailer parks and houses on slabs
are more economical to build.

One in 25 Americans live in some kind of mobile structure, mostly in states where there are dozens and dozens of tornadoes each year. Places like the great plains, in general, have lots of folks living in these structures, which are just not built strongly enough to withstand even your run of the mill wind storm, let alone a tornado.

Okay, okay, so if trailers don't attract tornadoes, why do so many trailer parks get hit by tornadoes?
There are probably hundreds(maybe more than a thousand) very small tornadoes that touch down in the USA every year, but are not recorded because they do no damage. However, since a mobile home flips over so easily in even the weakest tornado, trailers probably act as "mini tornado" detectors. This makes it seem like tornadoes are attracted to mobile homes, but that is because trailers are the only things that reveal the presence of what would otherwise be an unrecorded event.

Another reason for trailer homes to pop up as the victims of tornadoes, is that trailer parks are often situated on flat plain-like areas. If you have a valley, more often than not, the trailer park will be situated in its flattest part. Tornadoes also enjoy these same geographical areas.

I don't know about anywhere else, but back in Tulsa, there was a period of time when it seemed like just about every tornado would actually change its path on approach to the city in order to accomodate the position of the trailer parks. Thinking about it later, I realized that it might have been just were the trailer parks are located in the city -- cheap land adjacent to or right near the Arkansaw river. Because of this, you have two contributing factors: 1) the river was on the west side of town and almost every storm (especially tornado producing ones) moves in from the west and 2) the river acted as a barrier against the tornadoes (storms/tornadoes that would tear up towns to the west would effect much less to little damage on Tulsa) so that if a tornado did hit the Tulsa area, the position of the trailer parks ensured that they were set receive a fully powered storm.

I was thinking it could be the history of the areas. Like noone wanted to build houses/buildings in that area because of all the tornadoes, so that made the land cheap enough for someone to start a trailer park there.

Trailer Parks are usually located on flat open ground. Tornadoes travel easier in this type of land. Also trailers are built of cheaper, much less sturdy materials than houses. It does not take nearly as much wind to damage a trailer. Plus most of them have flimsy underpinning. Trailers are built up off the ground a bit. Strong winds can destroy the underpinning and get under a trailer tossing it up and over. The trailer that gets tossed then becomes a weapon when it hits somebody or another trailer.

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