So Much Fail…

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper said Wednesday he will allow the release of a report on the cost of the Afghan war, despite concerns it could sway voters in the federal election.

Parliament’s budget officer, Kevin Page, tallied the full cost of the mission since it began six years ago and wanted to make his findings public this month.

But after Harper called the Oct. 14 election, Page put off issuing his report, saying he would first seek all-party consent to allay concerns that its release would interfere with the election campaign.

The leaders of all opposition parties gave their blessing Tuesday and demanded the Conservative leader give his approval.

Thanks for letting us see a report we paid and have bled for, Stephen. Way to man up there, kiddo.

With cross border raids by American troops, Pakistan greenlighting their troops to shoot back and a continuously failing government on Karzai’s part… why are we still there? I do recognize that we have made a commitment to NATO and the UN to remain until 2011, but this is deteriorating rapidly into a larger conflict which we never signed on for.

We agreed to stomp a hole in the Taliban and provide security during reconstruction, not to take part in what is becoming a war between Afghanistan and it’s nuclear armed neighbour. As of today, ninety-eight Canadian men and women have been killed and by any sane look at the situation, it’s going to explode. Bring our soldiers home.

Ontario’s Special Investigation Unit has been called in to investigate the death of a man from Brampton, Ont., who died Wednesday morning after being jolted with a stun gun while in police custody.

The SIU is a provincial agency that investigates cases of serious injury or death involving police.

Sean Reilly, a 42-year-old carpenter, was arrested on Tuesday afternoon at his home and charged with assault with a weapon.

Peel Regional Police took him into custody at a police station on Dixie Road without incident.

At that point, according to an SIU statement, police say Reilly got into a “struggle” with four officers in or near a holding cell. They used a Taser on him, trying to incapacitate him with an electric shock.

So… he went in alive and came out dead. Four on one and they had to resort to electro-shock torture.

As of today, that’s nineteen Canadians who’ve been murdered via the Taser. It is time to ban the use of these things. When a child cannot behave and throws his toys, we take them away. Given the lack of respect for human life and basic humanity shown by Canada’s police officers in regards to the use of this weapon, they deserve to be treated the same.

Yes, let’s bring the fantastically successful War on Drugs(tm) to the Downtown Eastside

Tough policing is the answer to solve the problems on Vancouver’s crime-ridden and drug-addled Downtown Eastside, according to Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City.

He also said it was a “terrible mistake” to have facilities such as Insite. At the small government-run operation in the Downtown Eastside, heroin addicts can inject the drug under the supervision of a nurse or a physician.

Needles are supplied but heroin is not and the program’s principal purpose is to stem the spread of infectious disease and offer counselling about rehabilitation.

“You should not encourage the use of drugs, that’s a terrible mistake. It’s just going to make your drug problem much worse,” Mr. Giuliani said in response to reporters’ questions, before he spoke Thursday morning at an economic-development conference in Surrey, near Vancouver.

Why they even let this neocon wingnut across the border I’m not sure… yet here he is, running his mouth. Insite works. Period. It is not pretty. It is not ‘tough on crime’. It is a line in the sand where we choose the safety of the population and the spread of disease over a body count and how many people we can stuff into a prison.

Friendly reminder, this is the dude who spent $50 million for exactly one delegate in the Republican primaries… he was to evil even for that lot! That takes talent.

I thought he got confused… turns out he just wants war with everybody…

Senator, finally, let’s talk about Spain. Would you be willing to invite president Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to the White House? To meet with you?

I would be willing to meet with those leaders who our friends and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion. And by the way, president Calderón of Mexico is fighting a very tough fight against the drug cartels, and I am glad we are now working in cooperation with the Mexican government on the Mérida plan, and I intend to move forward with relations and invite as many of them as I can of those leaders to the White House.

Would that invitation be extended to the Zapatero government? To the president himself?

You know, honestly, I have to look at the relations and the situations and the priorities, but I can assure you, I will establish closer relations with our friends, and I will stand up to those who want to do harm to the United States of America. I know how to do both.

Perhaps he thought it was in reference to the Zapatistas? Why he wants to hate on Sub-Commandante Marcos, I’m not sure, because the dude is pretty cool. Not many people can pull off the pipe and balaclava combo. His campaign then decided to weigh in on what should have been a ‘funny senior moment’…

If elected, he will meet with a wide range of allies in a wide variety of venues but is not going to spell out scheduling and meeting location specifics in advance. He also is not going to make reckless promises to meet America’s adversaries. It’s called keeping your options open, unlike Senator Obama, who has publicly committed to meeting some of the world’s worst dictators unconditionally in his first year in office. - Randy Scheunemann

That dude is his foreign policy advisor. You literally cannot make shit like this up. Meeting with Zapatero is now a ‘reckless meeting with America’s adversaries’? They’re in NATO, they have troops deployed in Afghanistan. Can this guy even find Spain on a map!?!

Upgrading the ‘Do Whatever the Fuck We Want’ doctrine to ‘You’re All Pussies, Come Get Some’, truly a shining moment in American foreign diplomacy.

Shorter: Pakistan greenlights shooting American soldiers crossing the border, Bush and co still douche bags.

Oh you beautiful, cheetos stained bastards…

“This is a shocking invasion of the Governor’s privacy and a violation of law,” said Rick Davis, campaign manager for the McCain-Palin campaign, in a statement. “The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these e-mails will destroy them. We will have no further comment.”

FBI spokesman Brian Hale said, “The FBI is aware of the alleged hacking incident involving Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and is coordinating with the United States Secret Service on the matter.”

That’s some ribald shit coming from people who think it’s cool to violate the privacy of the average citizen without warrants or due process. Apparently, Wikileaks has the entirety of her emails, where she was conducting government business from a personal email account. That should be a violation of The Hatch Act… but fuck son, that’s just a law and those really don’t apply to Republicans.

What a difference twenty four hours makes…

The Federal Reserve just kicked in with an $85 billion loan. You can read about the details here. The bad loans, the CDS sideshow and everything else can be found there, in part at least. I just don’t think it’s relevant and it just won’t work in the long term.

My take on the AIG mess and how this may not get better…

They’re primarily a property and casualty company who just got kicked in the ass by a market they, for the most part, ‘just dabbled in’. I’m pretty sure the personal and commercial insurance lines are the only income stream AIG have left, outside of plane leasing and lift ticket sales, and I’m just not sure how high confidence is in that market at this point. Insurance is more an act of faith than a business contract when all is said and done.

AIG resides in Texas, which was just devastated by Hurricane Ike. They’re the primary insurer, either through themselves or subsidiaries, in that area and are going to be on the hook for huge payouts in the next few months. That’s just the tip of this ice burg though.

Maybe the Federal Reserve is already busy hacking up the property and casualty lines, shifting the risk around to different companies… but no company in their right mind is going to take on Ike’s damage willingly and they honestly have no reason to. Given the lack of care given to the financial market end of the company, I don’t see Allianz or ING believing for a second that any care was given to the property and casualty lines. Any company that does try to take these risks on is going to get jackhammered by Standard and Poor as well, since their rating is based partly on how well the company could respond, if at all, in the event of catastrophic loss. The more risk you take on when measured against profit, the lower your rating goes and most policies do not turn a profit for upwards of ten years, home and auto insurance being the longest.

At best, they’re asking a lot of companies to buy a book of business, or a part thereof, with highly dubious merits, while at the same time wiping out AIG’s ability to make money. Seeing as how the Fed just bailed them out, the other major insurers in the world really don’t have a horse in the race anymore… at least for the time being… and it’s not like you can coerce or force foreign companies into a shotgun wedding. Maybe there’s enough of a domestic market to absorb the policies, but AIG got where they were by buying out most of the domestic market.

At worst they keep the policies, then start defaulting or even refuse to pay for a few months and that income stream starts to dry up anyways. Maybe there is cash on hand to take care of the claims, maybe the Fed will just print more money to do it for them. Between Ike and the winter months being a serious ‘burn season’ for any insurer though… and they were the largest.

That’s a helluva lot of ‘maybes’ for an industry that functions entirely on trust between the insurer and the insured.

For what it’s worth, the people saying that it’s still solid and profitable are pretty much getting paid to say that. It’s like they’re so caught up in the bad loans and credit crunch aspect of the business and trying to bail that out, they’ve forgotten what AIG actually does or how it actually works. They’re telling people how absolutely screwed the company is and that they’re hacking it up while at the same time asking them to remain confident in them and keep on making those monthly payments.

Shorter: I stand by my previous words yesterday, if you have paper with AIG on it, CUT THE FUCKING CORD. Protect yourself, your family and your investments/property. I know words like ‘meltdown’ and ‘apocalyptic’ are scary as fuck, but don’t let them terrorize you into blind loyalty of a company that just betrayed you. Get yourself a quality broker or CFA you can trust and discuss your options, in depth.

An NDP government would forgive the student loans of new family doctors who remain in general practice at least 10 years, NDP Leader Jack Layton pledged on Monday.

The debt amnesty is part of the party’s proposed health-care plan, which calls for $1 billion over five years to increase the number of medical students across the country by 1,200 annually and the number of nursing students by 6,000 a year.

The increased number of doctors would ultimately improve patient care and reduce wait times for Canadians, which, Layton said, was a key policy promise broken by Conservative Leader Stephen Harper in the last federal election.

Full Story via the CBC.

You can buy all the fancy machines you want, but without the staff to operate them or even provide basic care, they are useless. It’s really not a question of bed space or wait times, we lack the bodies and the commitment to those who care for the sick to get our health care system back on track.

We created it, I think we might know a little bit about fixing it.

South American leaders at a crisis summit in Chile have issued a statement strongly supporting Evo Morales, the Bolivian president, and rejecting any break-up of Bolivian territory.

The meeting, where the statement was released late on Monday, was convened as part of efforts to resolve the political turmoil in Bolivia, which has left at least 18 people dead.

On Tuesday, Bolivian troops arrested Leopoldo Fernandez, the governor of the restive state of Pando, in connection with the deaths, the state media reported.

This is great news. Not only have the presidents and prime ministers of South America rallied to Evo Morales side, and by extension the indigenous people of Bolivia… they are enforcing this by rule of law, not the rule of the gun. Looks like co-operation and the constitution are finally winning out over the death squads and CIA backed dictators in South America and that honestly makes me so happy. May Leopoldo Fernandez rot in his cell.

The people, united…

Union officials are outraged after a group of migrant farmworkers who were harvesting vegetables in Abbotsford were sent back to Mexico after filing papers to unionize.

United Food and Commercial Workers Canada alleges Floralia Plant Growers in Abbotsford put 14 migrant workers on a plane back home the day after the owners found out about their plans to join the union.

Problems started when 29 workers at Floralia Plant Growers filed an application to unionize, according to UFCWC organizer Lucy Luna.

The men were scheduled to vote to certify the union on Monday, and their contract with the farm was supposed to run until October, but Luna was shocked when the men called her from Mexico instead, she told CBC News.

“The application was put in on September fourth. The workers were notified late Friday night, which is September the fifth, that they were leaving on Saturday at 1 p.m. … that fast,” said Luna.

B.C.’s Labour Relations Board is looking into whether the farm violated the province’s Labour Code by sending the workers back before they could vote. The case is expected to be heard at a hearing scheduled for later this week.

If we are going to provide visas for migratory workers, then we should expect them to receive equal protection under the law when it comes to the right to organize. Tossing them out of the country half-way through harvest season is pretty low… though I’m sure Floralia already has another box of human cargo on their way up to rectify the situation.

Give’em hell, Jim, give’em hell!