Friday, May 30, 2008

Friday Morning Great Tits Blogging

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, I was just over to POGGE again. The head PoggerBlogger hisself has a funny boog post with the catchy title of "Friday Morning Booby Blogging." For some strange reason, there's a lot of attention on boobs, these days. Well, there's always a lot of attention paid to boobs but lately, the blogs and news sites and newspapers is all about tits and cleavage and Maxime Bernier gettin' all distracted and forgettin' his briefs at poor little Julie Couillard's love nest.

So, just to play my part in the juvenile, misogynist, prurient publication of sexy, salient and salacious blog titles, I'm postin' up these pitchers of great tits.



Both pitchers is from Wikipedia.

UPDATE: A Trashy Tit Pitcher. Speaking of tits and biker chicks, I just took ol' Spot down to the corn field for a run. It's garbage day in my little town and while I was walkin' ol' Spot, I noticed one o' my neighbours had these items set out by the road.
I'm pretty sure the garbage guy won't pick up that small dead animal. Some small dead animals ain't even worthy of ridin' in the back of a garbage truck. Here's a tip: If yer tryin' to get the garbage men to take away SDA, use a garbage bag and make sure the feet ain't pokin' through.

JimBobby

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Taking it Seriously Now, Steve?

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, I was just over to POGGE's fine boog and I left a comment that I thought the best quote from the Biker Babe Bungle was when ol' Steve Harpoon said he didn't take the subject seriously. A few hours later, he's up in front of a microphone talkin' about a serious breach of security. Of course, we all know he wouldn't have been there if the Biker Babe wasn't about to go on the TV and blab all about how Marvelous Maxime left top secret cabinet documents layin' around her boudoir where any biker or mafioso might get a peak.

Well King Steve's words sure come back to bite him in the ass. Squirrel bites hurt, too.


JB

Friday, May 23, 2008

Greens Up Across the Board: Nanos

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, pollster NickyBoy Nanos has some new figgers and since I'm just as much a hack as the next guy, I'm only too happy to mention polls when they say good things for the Green party. Green Party support is up in every region and among committed voters. The GPC is the only party that was up in every single category and region.

Here are the numbers:
Committed Voters - Canada (N=847, MoE ± 3.4%, 19 times out of 20)
Liberal Party 34% (-2)
Conservative Party 33% (-3)
NDP 15% (+1)
BQ 11% (+3)
Green Party 8% (+2)
(*Note: Undecided 16%)

Committed Voters - Ontario (N=266, MoE ± 6.1%, 19 times out of 20)
Liberal Party 43% (-7)
Conservative Party 33% (+1)
NDP 17% (+4)
Green Party 7% (+1)
(*Note: Undecided 16%)

Committed Voters - Quebec (N=223, MoE ± 6.6%, 19 times out of 20)
BQ 40% (+5)
Conservative Party 23% (NC)
Liberal Party 22% (-1)
NDP 5% (-8)
Green Party 9% (+3)
(*Note: Undecided 11%)

Committed Voters - West (N=279, MoE ± 5.9%, 19 times out of 20)
Conservative Party 42% (-9)
Liberal Party 33% (+5)
NDP 18% (+2)
Green Party 8% (+2)
(*Note: Undecided 18%)

Committed Voters - Atlantic (N=80, MoE ± 11.1%, 19 times out of 20)
Liberal Party 42% (-9)
Conservative Party 26% (-5)
NDP 22% (+8)
Green Party 10% (+7)
(*Note: Undecided 18%)
The big surprise for ol' JB was the big jump we got in Atlantic Canada. The Dippers got a big jump down east, too. I'm thinkin' our good showin' might be on accounta the gal I adore, Earth Mother Lizzie May, is a down east gal and she's runnin' against the increasingly unpopular Petey MacKay in Nova Scotia. Us Greens is also gonna hold our Annual General Meeting in New Glasgow, NS. I had thought our anti-seal hunt stand might hurt us in this region but the numbers say no.

Another interesting thing about these new poll numbers is that the Con's an' Grits mostly went backwards. Most of the support picked up by both Greens and Dippers is comin' at the expense of the Grits and Cons. I reckon this speaks to a desire for that most precious political commodity: change.

I reckon Canajuns have realized the HarpoonTossers is as corrupt and secretive and unaccountable and opaque as the Grits were. The Grits have been doin' everything in their power to turn off voters with the abstentions and incoherent policies and lacklustre leader.

Now, the Grits are tryin' to turn around their fortunes with a bold, new plan aimed at winning Greenies back over but Canajuns who care about ol' Mother Earth ain't about to jump at that baitas quick as the Libs are hopin'.

JB

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Dion in Limboland, How Low Can He Go?

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, pore ol' Stephane Dion is doin' worse than ever. The Trawna Star's got a poll out that says he's only got a 10% approval rating. They say that's the worst ever for a Liberal leader and even John Turner never went below 14%.

If I was a Liberal, I'd be talkin' about how to raise up Dion's popularity. I'd be suggestin' the Liberals make dang good use of the summer BBQ circuit to explain the tax-shift. Trouble is, when you're explainin', you're losin'. Like I said yesterday, Dion made a bigass goof when he leaked the carbon tax instead o' leakin' the other side of the tax-shift coin, massive income tax reductions.

If I were a Liberal and tryin' to sell the tax-shift, I'd make sure the phrase "tax-shift" was used way more than the phrase "carbon tax." I'd also try to invent a catchy slogan that captures the essence of the tax-shift. Maybe somethin' like "Tax what you burn, not what you earn."

If I were a Liberal, I'd have my ear to the ground and I'd be lookin' for counterpoints to every piece of negative spin that the opposition parties and pundits and skeptics are tossin' around. Since the Grits ain't already divulged details, they got time to make 'em up to suit whatever mud's comin' their way. End o' June, we're hearin'. That gives the Grits 6 weeks to cram all the necessary details to counter all the pre-emptive attacks. It'll make the pre-emptive attackers look dang stoopid, too.

If I were a Liberal, I'd make sure they get their most eloquent and polished speakers out on the hustings deliverin' a simple, concise and easily-intelligible tax-shift plan. Bob Rae and Iggy and Goodale gotta be stumpin' hard. I'd have plenty of hypothetical examples showin' how the plan affects average families, single parents, rural folks, small town folks, city folks, farmers, fishermen, seniors and the disabled.

If I were a Liberal, I'd make sure Dion goes to his English classes every week and I'd coach the hell out of him. Anybody else got trouble understanding what Dion's sayin' on that Mike Duffy Live commercial? I heard it 4 or 5 times before I figgered out he's sayin' "Watch Mike Duffy Live." Ma seen it for about the 10th time the other night and she sez to me, "What's he sayin'?"

Then, I'd get Dion and his polished English out there makin' the news all summer long.

I ain't a Liberal and the gal I adore, Earth Mother Lizzie May, is already ridin' high on approval. If Dion'd just be more like Lizzie, he'd maybe turn it around. Then again, if voters like the tax-shift plan Dion adopted from Green Party policy, maybe they'd rather get the real thing along with a real dynamic, credible leader.

JimBobby

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Carbon Tax or Cap-and-Trade or Both?

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, everybody's talkin' about Stephane Dion's tax shift plan. Right? No, they ain't. They're talkin' about Dion's carbon tax. Dumbass Dion shoulda come out and leaked the idea of a bigass change in the way the gummint collects taxes. First thing he shoulda leaked was a massive reduction in income and business taxes. Then, when everybody asks where the money's gonna come from, he comes clean an' tells 'em it's gonna come from a carbon tax.

But the absent-minded perfesser didn't think about politics and how the adoption of Green Party policy was gonna get spun an' twisted an' misrepresented. He shoulda thought o' that and the fact that he's bein' so dang clumsy in how this is comin'out might make some people question his political acumen.

Now everybody's talkin' carbon tax and the Con's an' Dippers is goin' all out with the attacks on carbon taxes. Nobody, so far that I seen, has gone on the attack against tax-shifting.

The Con's is playin' up the fact that Dion went flippety-flop on carbon taxin'. They're usin' a lotta scare tactics an' tellin' everybody that the carbon tax is gonna mean poor, old seniors are gonna freeze in the dark, starvin' on account they can't afford gas fer the chugmobile. I reckon they never heard-tell of rebate programs to create a safety net for the weakest or least financially secure in society. Social safety net stuff ain't something the Con's is familiar with -- except when it comes to dismantlin'.

The Dippers is at least talkin' an alternative to carbon taxes. They're sayin' we gotta tax the crap out the big polluter corporations and create a cap-and-trade system to reduce GHG's. Now, taxin' the crap out polluters ain't a bad idea. The carbon tax, as I understand it, is designed to do exactly that. Yeah, it's also gonna tax Joe SUV Driver and Ma & Pa TurnUpTheThermostat. If they're hurtin' they can apply for a rebate. Almost every single one of us can reduce our CO2 output. That means we can all reduce our taxes, if we have a carbon tax.

The Dippers say they don't want a revenue neutral tax shift. Instead they want to increase taxes. Now, who doesn't think increased corporate taxes are gonna trickle down and make increased prices? In a revenue-neutral scheme, there's a corresponding reduction to help the conscientious consumer offset the increase in fuel costs. In a non revenue neutral set-up, like the NDP proposes, costs are passed on to the consumer without any corresponding reduction in taxes.

The Dip's also say they want a marketplace solution. The marketplace has been such a successful vehicle for social change, after all. The marketplace created the dotcom boom and bust bubble that saw thousands of Canadians lose millions on Nortel and other tech stocks. The marketplace was instrumental in creating the US housing boom bust bubble that has thousands of working class Merkins gettin' foreclosed on. The marketplace is dictating the price of oil and we all know how that's helpin' regular folks. The marketplace has pushed the price of basic food stocks so high that 25,000 people are starvin' to death each and every day.

Here's a bit from a Wired article on cap-and-trade and carbon offsets:
Nationally managed emissions-trading schemes could do a better job than Kyoto's we-are-the-world approach by adding legal enforcement and serious oversight. But many economists favor a simpler way: a tax on fossil fuels. A carbon tax would eliminate three classes of parasites that have evolved to fill niches created by the global climate protocol: cynical marketers intent on greenwashing, blinkered bureaucrats shoveling indulgences to powerful incumbents, and deal-happy Wall Streeters looking for a shiny new billion-dollar trading toy. Back to the drawing board, please.

While I was diggin' around this mornin' for info about carbon taxes, I come across a year-old Washington Post article that I found interesting.

Tax on Carbon Emissions Gains Support
Industry and Experts Promote It as Alternative to Help Curb Greenhouse Gases

By Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 1, 2007; A05

As lawmakers on Capitol Hill push for a cap-and-trade system to rein in the nation's greenhouse gas emissions, an unlikely alternative has emerged from an ideologically diverse group of economists and industry leaders: a carbon tax.

Most legislators view advocating any tax increase as tantamount to political suicide. But a coalition of academics and polluters now argues that a simple tax on each ton of emissions would offer a more efficient and less bureaucratic way of curbing carbon dioxide buildup, which scientists have linked to climate change.

"We want to do the least damage to the growth of GDP," said Michael Canes, a private consultant and former chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute, who led a Capitol Hill briefing on the subject in late February sponsored by the conservative George C. Marshall Institute. Between a cap system and a carbon tax, "a carbon tax will be the much more cost-effective way to go," he said, though he added that there are other ways to reduce emissions.

Robert J. Shapiro, a private consultant who was a Commerce Department official in the Clinton administration, agrees. A cap-and-trade system -- involving plant-by plant-measurements -- would be difficult to administer, he said, and would provide "incentives for cheating and evasion." And the revenue from a carbon tax could be used to reduce the deficit or finance offsetting cuts in payroll taxes or the alternative minimum tax.

A carbon tax offers certainty about the price of polluting, which appeals to many economists and businesses. William A. Pizer, a senior fellow at the centrist think tank Resources for the Future and a former senior economist for President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, estimates that the benefit-to-cost ratio of a tax-based system would be five times that of a cap-and-trade system.

"You're going to pay one way or another, whether it's a tax or a permit program," Pizer said, adding that while a cap would provide more certainty on how much emissions would be cut, "the consequences of being uncertain about emissions over any short period of time just aren't that serious."

Under a cap-and-trade system, the government would set an overall limit on emissions and allocate permits to emitters. If one plant reduces its emissions more quickly than another, it can sell its credits to the other emitter. A carbon tax would simply increase the cost of emitting each ton of carbon, which could then be passed on to consumers.

While Democrats have vowed to push through some sort of carbon dioxide control in this Congress, Bush has consistently opposed mandatory limits, so it remains unclear whether the United States will adopt any system before the next election.

Moreover, the fact that many economists back the tax approach is no guarantee that it will prevail over the five cap-and-trade plans already proposed in the Senate.

The complexity of the cap-and-trade system is part of its virtue for some politicians, since it may mask the system's impact on prices. Such a system also appeals to conservative lawmakers who like the idea of letting the market determine the price of carbon, while keeping revenue out of the hands of government. Some economists say it would channel capital to the most economically worthwhile projects first.

Environmentalists are split on a carbon tax. Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense, which is handing out baseball caps emblazoned with the slogan "Just Cap It" on Capitol Hill, called such a tax "an interesting distraction."

"It doesn't give us the guarantee the emissions will go down," he said.

But Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, said: "It will be more effective if people know that in year 'X' they will pay this much. Companies are highly motivated by costs." Moreover, he worries that rationing carbon allowances based on historical emissions would reward companies that spew out the most greenhouse gases now and did the least to limit them in the past.

Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's program on global warming, said the nation may need to adopt a carbon tax in several years but "we're not there yet."

Some industries that have historically opposed carbon limits embrace the idea of a tax because their sectors would not be singled out for regulation. "A poorly constructed cap-and-trade system can be as punitive as a regressive tax," said Scott Segal, an electric utilities lobbyist.

Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum Institute, told a National Press Club audience in February that his industry prefers that lawmakers explore a range of policy options before imposing a cap.

"A cap-and-trade system isn't necessarily the be-all and end-all," he said. "A carbon tax, everything, should be on the table from the beginning."

Few lawmakers, Democrat or Republican, have the stomach for a carbon tax, however. Some are still smarting from a vote in the early 1990s when President Bill Clinton persuaded the House to adopt a BTU tax -- a tax on the heat content of fuels -- only to abandon the effort in the Senate.

Democrats such as House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall II (W.Va.) say they have no desire to revisit the issue. "I'm not an advocate of a carbon tax," Rahall said. "That's going to be passed on; the consumer would end up paying for that."

Some analysts said former vice president Al Gore's endorsement of both alternatives in testimony before Congress last week was so politically unpalatable that it was a sign that he is not seriously thinking of running for president.

Only one House Democrat, Rep. Pete Stark (Calif.), has drafted a carbon tax proposal. Stark, who first proposed such a tax 16 years ago as a way to ease the nation's energy crunch, plans to introduce a bill in April that would levy a tax of $25 per ton of carbon released for five years.

"It's more efficient, more equitable, and it's less subject to gaming, I might add," Stark said, estimating that it would raise the cost of gasoline by 10 cents a gallon.

As Congress debates how to regulate greenhouse gases, however, several European officials have said it would be a mistake to choose anything but a market-based trading system that could be linked to the emerging carbon market in Europe.

"Political leaders in the United States need to make a decision, and make it quickly, whether they want to be left behind in a market that is going to evolve, or whether they want to get involved quickly," said Stephen Byers, a member of Britain's Parliament who helped establish the European Union's trading system. "Wall Street could become the world center of carbon trading."

And Stavros Dimas, the E.U. environment commissioner, speaking at a recent lunch hosted by the D.C.-based European Institute, called it ironic that the United States would question the cap-and-trade system, because U.S. negotiators essentially forced Europe to agree to such a system in the Kyoto Protocol negotiations in 1997.

"There was suspicion about market-based instruments," Dimas said. "In a way you did us a favor, because now we also are familiar with these market-based activities. It's functioning very well, actually."

"If we would go together into a world tax regime, that would be preferable," Jos Delbeke, the top E.U. official on climate change, said after a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing Monday. "But practically speaking, it is not a likely way to go. Emissions trading is a very solid second best."

Now, as suspect as I am about marketplace solutions, I ain't completely unsold on cap-and-trade. I think that it could be a valuable addition to a carbon tax policy. I don't think it's an entirely either/or proposition and there's some consensus that both systems have value, even if each claims to have better value.

If the NDP wants to help ol' Mother Earth, they'll join forces with the Libs and Greens on the tax-shiftin' carbon tax. If they make their support conditional on the establishment of a cap-and-trade system, I think the Greens and Grits'll be willing to play ball.

JimBobby

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Cons and Dippers: Suzuki Tells 'em

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, it's drippin' down rain an' I just had a lazy Sunday hour of watchin' TV. I was watchin' ol Craig Oliver an' JaneyGal Taber on CTV Question Period. They was mostly talkin' about Dion's carbon tax policy.

Baird came on and cheerled for the HarpoonTossers' enviro non-plan. He yammered on about forcin' polluters to reduce but he was blowin' hot air like usual. He trotted out a buncha cliches and called Dion's idea "Plan Number Nine." Kinda funny, like "Plan 9 from Outer Space". He said Canada's gonna study and study and study polar bears. Studies and commissions = stall tactics. "We're waiting for the full science."

There was a commercial break where Gary Lunn popped up an' told us how it was a great "business decision" to throw in the towel on the Maple reactors we spent $680 million bucks on. He made a sales pitch fer AECL. I ain't sure any prospective buyers was watchin'. AECL CANDU = AVRO ARROW.

Dalton Ginty's brother was on, too, tryin' to sell what he don't understand. The dumbass Liberals sure went at this whole carbon tax thing in a ass-backwards way. Since they just lifted the idea from us treehuggin' Greens, they may as well steal all our well-thought-out details, too. They shoulda boned up on it before they went shootin' their mouths off. They got everybody definin' for 'em an' they're caught tryin' to counterspin.

Best part of the show was when ol' David Suzuki told Janey what's what. (you can watch it) He ain't runnin' fer office an' he ain't lookin' fer votes like most o' Janey's victims. He lets loose with both barrels. One barrel is pointed at the HarpoonTossers and the other barrel's pointed at the Dippers.

Seems the Dippers got a different plan that they don't got any details on, neither. Peggy Nash was on yammerin' about how the Dips is against the idea of a "revenue neutral" tax. She sez they want to tax the bigass polluters with a tax that ain't revenue neutral. The Dips want to raise taxes. Peggy was ever-so-vaguely alluding to a cap and trade system. She said "cap" but wouldn't actually usin' the word "trade". The Dips want a marketplace solution.

I can't blame ol' Suzuki fer blastin' the Dippers. I think he nailed it by suggestin' it was politics over good policy. The Dips oppose this idea because the Grits proposed it, pure an' simple. If the Grits is gonna carry the Green Party's carbon tax, the Dips are against. Doin' the right thing fer Ol' Mother Earth be damned, I reckon. Yeow!The Dips wantin' higher taxes and a Bay Street cap&trade marketplace. Extremists, sez I.

Now that the Grits are spoutin' GPC policy, some Greens might be all worried about losin' votes to Dion. That could happen but I ain't losin' any sleep over it. The Cons'll do a good job of tellin' everybody how the Grits don't walk the walk. Nobody doubts the Greens when it comes to stickin' with what we believe in. We been talkin' carbon tax fer years. A few months ago, Dion said he'd never bring in a carbon tax. The Cons'll make sure you see a lot of video clips of Dion sayin' that.

Dion's gettin' some good press on sheer ballsiness. They're sayin' he's bold by talkin' carbon tax. Well, the gal I adore, Earth Mother Lizzie May's been talkin' carbon tax since the day she started leadin' our merry band of treehuggin' Greenies. I leave it my thousands of readers to decide who's the ballsier.

CTV's got a write-up on Suzuki's slap down.

JimBobby

Friday, May 16, 2008

AECL Throws in the Towel - Medical Reactors Scrapped

Whooee! Well, friends an' foes, the chickens is comin' home to roost. Everybody remembers the big Isotope Crisis where the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission blew the whistle on AECL's mismanagement of the reactor at Chalk River and that led to a shut down and that led to Harper callin' all MP's to override the safety folks and start up the nuke plant despite non-compliance with safety orders. We all remember how Linda Keen was fired in the middle of the night a coupla months later.

Underneath all that was the assurance that Chalk River's aging NRU reactor was to be replaced by two shiny, new specially-designed medical isotope reactors: Maple 1 and Maple 2. Back in February, those reactors were 8 years behind schedule and $400 million over budget. But, don't worry, AECL assured us.

Experts and informed observers were saying that the Maples had a serious design flaw and would likely never come online. Hogwash, said AECL. The new reactors would be churning out isotopes by late 2008. There were just a couple of minor problems, they said.

Greg Weston wrote about it for the Sun.

The old Chalk River reactor has been patched and repaired since it was first tagged for the scrap heap almost two decades ago -- after a serious accident in 1991 when a broken weld spilled 18,000 litres of contaminated heavy water into the reactor building.

The reactor was formally scheduled to be taken out of service the minute the new Maple reactors were in service which, 17 years later, still has not happened.

The federal agency that owns and operates all three reactors, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., still claims the first of the new atomic marvels will be ready for service by the end of this year.

But government sources told Sun Media both of the new reactors -- called Maple 1 and 2 -- have a serious design flaw, and would cost taxpayers a fortune.

A source close to the issue says flatly: "You can bet you will never see those in service. Ever."

The growing consensus that the new reactors are duds is the latest chapter in what may be one of the longest-running government boondoggles in history.

In 1996, MDS Nordion, a Canadian company that markets medical isotopes, agreed to pay Atomic Energy $140 million to build two Maple reactors that were to be in commercial service no later than 2000.

MDS would own the reactors, and Atomic Energy would get a share of the proceeds from the sale of medical isotopes across Canada and around the world.

But by 2005, costs had spiralled out of control, and still the Maple reactors were plagued with technical and other problems.

In 2006, after a lengthy legal fight with Atomic Energy, MDS Nordion did something that should have sounded alarm bells about the reactors.

The company simply wrote off the staggering $345 million it had invested in the Maple reactors, and handed Atomic Energy the keys -- and all future financial responsibility for the project.

In return, MDS got a guaranteed 40-year supply of isotopes.

MDS Nordion's share price went up on the announcement.

At that time, Canadian taxpayers had at least $150 million in the Maple project, bringing the total project cost to just over $500 million.

In 2007, officials at the federal agency predicted it would cost the public purse another $130 million to get the new reactors in service.

But senior government sources say the figure is closer to another $400 million, bringing the total cost to around $900 million -- an overrun of about 650% from the original contract price.

"There is no way those (reactors) make any economic sense for commercial isotope production," says one federal official close to the situation.

"Taxpayers would be subsidizing them forever."

Sources also warn that even investing $400 million more would not guarantee the reactors would actually work.

The biggest technical problem, in simple terms, causes the nuclear reaction to speed up as the reactor speeds up, creating a cycle of ever increasing power that may not have a happy ending.

Atomic Energy officials argue that the problem is only slight, and can be rectified.

But one federal official points out the world has already seen the phenomenon in action once, albeit on a far larger scale than anything that could occur at Chalk River.

"It was called Chernobyl."

Well, folks, AECL has finally thrown in the towel. They are scrapping the $600 Million white elephants. They're gonna walk away from the Maples just like MDS Nordion did in 2006, after MDS had invested $345 million.

AECL is a crown corporation and all the losses associated with this colossal screw-up have been at the expense of the Canadian taxpayer. They've spent 12 years collecting hundreds of millions in welfare while building a coupla pieces of junk. We can't sue them because we ARE them.

AECL aborts reactor development

The Canadian Press

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. — Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. is scrapping development of its two new MAPLE medical-isotope reactors at its Chalk River, Ont., laboratories.

The decision “is based on a series of reviews that considered, among other things, the costs of further development, as well as the time frame and risks involved with continuing the project,” the federal Crown corporation said Friday.

The MAPLE reactors, described as the first in the world dedicated entirely to medical isotope production, were intended to be capable of supplying the entire global demand for molybdenum-99, iodine-131, iodine-125 and xenon-133.

AECL said the decision to abort them “will not impact the current supply of medical isotopes.”

It said contracts with MDS Nordion provide for production to continue at AECL's existing National Research Universal reactor in Chalk River.

So, we're not only tossing out the two flawed Maples, we're planning to honour the 40 year supply contract with MDS. I guess we're planning on keeping NRU Chalk River running for another 38 years. The reactor was built in the 50's and was scheduled for decommissioning in 2000, when the Maples were to have replaced it. Now, they'll never replace it.

Let's all remember that Dalton Ginty has AECL on the short list, along with General Electric and Areva, to bid on $40 billion dollars worth of new nuclear power generation in Ontario. They are said to be the hometown favourite with their newly-designed, never-built ACR-1000 CANDU.

Harper wants to sell all the crown corps. AECL's been on the block for a couple years. Looks like somebody'll be able to snap up a bargain. Confidence in and value of AECL must be at an all time low.

Disgustin', sez I.

JimBobby

Friday, May 09, 2008

JimBobby & Keith Richards: Separated at Birth?

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, when Ma seen my pitcher that I use on this boog and on my Facebook page, she sez, "It makes you look like Keith Richards." The other day I seen this here pitcher o' the ol' Rollin' Stone an' I couldn't help but agree. Dang!

Friday, May 02, 2008

Food Crisis: Praise for George W. Bush

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, I like to give credit where credit's due an' right now, I'm gonna tip my tuque in the unlikely direction of Merkan President George W. Bush. Now, I'm gonna set aside all the dumbass stuff Dubya's done like waste a half a trillion dollars on a fiasco in EyeRack or oversee the collapse of the Merkan banking and housing sectors or suspend human rights in a trumped up War on Terror. Fer just a few minutes, I'm gonna look the other way and pat ol' Dubya on the back.

Yesterday, Bush asked Congress to dole out another $770 million in food aid. The Merkans already pumped an extra $200 million into food for the hungry a coupla weeks ago. Before that, they added an additional $350 million to the $1.6 billion the Merkans put into food aid every year.

The World Food Program has been asking for $755 million to get it over the hump in this food crisis. A coupla days ago, Canada stepped up with an additional $50 million on top of the $185 million we'd already pledged.

So, I say good on you, Georgie W, fer diggin' in and findin' that extra $770 million. It oughta go a long way in stavin' off a few million deaths by starvation.

Okay, now I'm gonna quit lookin' the other way.

When we talk about $770 million bucks, it sure sounds like a whole lotta dough. You might ask yerself what George Dubya coulda bought with that money if he hadn't decided to feed a few million hungry people. Well, here's one thing he coulda bought. He coulda bought one more day of war fightin' in EyeRack.

That's right, boys'n'girls, the Merkans spend over $700 million bucks in EyeRack every single day, 365 days a year.

Golly-gosh gee whiz, do you figger the war in EyeRack might be somehow connected to the food crisis?

Hmmm... could be... All that war spendin' without any ROI is one of the biggest reasons the US dollar's in the pooper. The low US dollar is what's drivin' up the price of oil. The high fuel costs affect transportation and grocery prices that are a part of the reason so many Merkans can't keep up with their mortgage payments. And, the collapse of the US mortgage market has driven speculators into commodities. And, along with high oil prices, commodities speculation has been another big factor in the food crisis. High oil prices have created a demand for biofuels. Biofuels are competing with traditional grains and are driving up the cost of food.

Now, everybuddy knows that hungry people are angry people. Even George W. Bush knows that. The Merkans got their CIA intelligence fellers an' gals stalkin' 'round every hellhole on the planet. I reckon main CIA headquarters' phones been ringin' off the hook the past few months. There's been food riots and violence in countries all over the world. Anybuddy don't think the CIA had somebuddy in most of those countries reportin' back to Washington?

The food crisis threatens to unleash a wave of violence that would multiply the EyeRack and Afghanistan and African and South American conflicts to worldwide chaos. The Merkans don't have enough riot police in their mighty military to quell that sorta new world disorder. The smartest strategy would be to make sure the poor bastards don't get so hungry that they storm the Bastille.

So, I'm givin' praise to George W. Bush for strategy. I can't say fer sure whether it's strategy dressed up like charity or charity with a strategic motive. It's a welcome additional $770 million whyever it got there.

JimBobby