The end of genealogy…

Customer: (pause) Greek Feta?*
Owner: Uh, not as such.
Customer: Uuh, Gorgonzola?
Owner: No.
Customer: Parmesan,
Owner: No.
Customer: Mozarella,
Owner: No.
Customer: Paper Cramer,
Owner: No.
Customer: Danish Bimbo,
Owner: No.
Customer: Czech sheep’s milk,
Owner: No.
Customer: Venezuelan Beaver Cheese?
Owner: Not *today*, sir, no.
Customer: (pause) Aah, how about Cheddar?

No.

Dilemma…

How high can you score?
(h/t reader Leslie)

Darcey responds to the latest brainwave to emanate from the Gated Community Community;

Note to self: If ever given the opportunity, don’t walk around Vancouver Island at night unless your wearing a Christmas tree.

The same prairie grain farmers who are not told by the CWB what their grain is actually sold for can relax in the knowledge that they at least know the exact amount of a fat bonus for Wheat Board employees this week;

OTTAWA — The Canadian Wheat Board is handing out $1,000 Christmas bonuses to its 500 employees in recognition of the “stress” and “strain” they have been under during the Winnipeg-based agency’s fight with the Harper government.
The special payout was announced to staff Thursday morning by board chairman Ken Ritter and newly minted president Greg Arason, who was appointed to the position Tuesday by Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl.
However, the bonus is not only raising concern among farmers, but also among CWB employees who are wondering whether it is “hush money” designed to buy their silence in what has become a pitched political battle over the future of the world’s largest marketer of wheat.
“The whole thing was really quite surreal,” one employee said of the announcement in the cafeteria of the wheat board’s Winnipeg offices. “One moment we are locked in a battle with the government, and 24 hours after our very popular president (Adrian Measner) is fired, we are told we are getting $1,000 bonuses. Is this hush money? Am I supposed to abide by a new president’s rules, which are contrary to what this company has always been about?”

Or is it hush money from the board? Them’s the folks that approved the payment. If you want surreal, check out this quote from Manitoba director, Bill Toews;

“If farmers are concerned about what we did (authorizing the bonuses), they will have to place that responsibility on Mr. Strahl, not the board.”

Oddly enough, there seems to be no mention of this $500,000 expenditure at the CWB website. One would think that an announcement applauding “the generosity and gratitude of western grain farmers” would be front and center!
More – A commentor at Agri-ville;

Is this for real??
I hope this was a early April fools Day joke!! Wake up all you CWB supporters!!
I just got my final payment today for LAST YEARS CROP (could you imagine if you sold Canola and got paid for it a year later), anyway I got a final payment on my #3hrsw for $1351.19, and on a thirteen hundred dollar cheque I had $50 deduction for Wheat & Barley Research, and a $30 adminstration charge.

And he still doesn’t know what his wheat sold for.
Good catch by commentor “Charles” –

One employee said, “Am I supposed to abide by a new president’s rules, which are contrary to what this company has always been about?”
If non government employees said this to a reporter, they would be fired before the next day,of course you abide by your president’s rules thats what presidents are there for.

This didn’t take long. Elizabeth May gets a taste of the left’s famed appreciation for nuance;

As you know I was very supportive of your running as leader of the Green Party and despite my differences with some of the platform of the Party I have up until now felt that your presence added a great deal to the federal political scene. But now you have questioned the most important victory of the women’s movement of my generation.
If you had said that you personally oppose abortion but you support a woman’s right to choose, I would have been fine with that. Instead you said that a woman’s right to choose, something tens of thousands of Canadian women fought for for decades, was trivializing an important issue. It felt like a slap in the face.
Since you have so little respect for me or for the women’s movement which mobilized for so long to win this hard-earned right, I hope you will understand that I ripped up the cheque I had written to the Green Party and you can no longer rely on me for support.
There is no middle ground on the abortion issue as you are no doubt finding out. The organized opposition to abortion in this country as in the United States does not care if women die. Of course, there are many people who are opposed to abortion for religious reasons but here I am talking about the anti-choice activists.

More at Big Blue Wave
Dec.22 Update – May responds. I don’t think she’ll be getting that cheque. The usual suspects lose their ever-tolerant minds over “the yucky theology”.

SaskPower

… is the third largest producer of greenhouse gases. So, while Dion speculates aloud about taxing oil, gas and coal what will he do about a Crown Corp? How do you tax a province? Transfer-payments? Income tax?

Related: Here’s Alberta’s response;

Backbencher MLA Ted Morton, who finished third in the recent Tory leadership race, is the new minister of sustainable resource development.

Update: reader Bart F. clarifies in the comments;

Sustainable resource development is more about trees and fish etc. than oil and gas.
Mel Knight, new energy minister would be a key guy if Beaker et al attempt a resource raid. A low keyed but solid biography. Likely more than able to rip a strip off Beaker:

Isn’t Islamic jihad, or global warming climate change, or RCMP investigators infiltrating mail servers looking for photos you took of your grandson in the bathtub.
It’s the never-ending quest by bureaucrats and university academics to devise new means to justify their own continued employment;

Oversize clothes should have obesity helpline numbers sewn on them to try and reduce Britain’s fat crisis, a leading professor said today.
[…]
Prof Sattar is calling for more political intervention.
He and his colleagues say food manufacturers should also display energy content of all meals and snacks at retail and catering outlets.
The saturated fat content of all ready meals and snacks should also be clearly labelled.
New urban roads should only be built if they have safe cycle lanes and new housing complexes should be constructed only if they have sports facilities and green park areas, he says.
He also wants to see adviceline numbers attached to all clothes sold with waists above 102 cm for men, 94 cm for boys, 88 cm or size 16 for women and 80 cm for girls.
Such measures would affect comedian Dawn French who runs her own clothes shop Sixteen 47, catering for women up to a size 47.
Prof Sattar also wants ads for slimming services without independent evaluation banned, TV ads for sweets and snacks stopped before 9 pm, higher tax on high fat and high sugar foods and tax breaks for genuine corporate social responsibility.
In this week’s British Medical Journal, Prof Sattar says education should be provided at all levels to change behaviour towards diet and physical activity, and obesity made a core part of all medical training.
“People clearly have some responsibility for their health, but society and government have a responsibility to make the preferred, easy choices healthier ones,” he said.

It’s a crisis, they tell us.
Or is it? (link fixed)
One thing is certain – now that the Great War On Smoking is drawing to a close, the day that retailers will be legislated into hiding candy behind shower curtains may be closer than you think.

Exhibit A

Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces, which replaced the military that existed before the Cuban Revolution, traces its roots to Dec. 2, 1956, when 82 rebels landed on the island on a yacht — the Granma — that sailed from Mexico.
The Castro brothers were among fewer than two dozen rebels who survived the landing to reach the mountains, where they launched a guerrilla war against then-president Fulgencio Batista. Their revolution triumphed on Jan. 1, 1959.
Fidel Castro purportedly sent a message to those celebrating his birthday earlier this week, telling a crowd of 5,000 supporters at the opening event Tuesday at a Havana theatre that he was too sick to meet with them.
“I direct myself to you, intellectuals and prestigious personalities of the world, with a dilemma,” said a note read at the event. “I could not meet with you in a small locale, only in the Karl Marx Theater where all the visitors would fit, and I was not yet in condition, according to the doctors, to face such a colossal encounter.”
More than 1,300 politicians, artists and intellectuals from around the globe were attending the tribute to the man who has governed Cuba for 47 years, including Bolivian President Evo Morales, Haitian President Rene Preval and Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Noticably absent: any mention of repression, disappearances, political prisoners, jailed journalists, the shattered economy of Cuba.
Exhibit B

He had been taken to a military hospital in Santiago early Sunday after suffering an “acute heart attack” and a buildup of fluid on his lungs, his son, Marco Antonio Pinochet, told reporters.
“We are now in the hands of God and of the doctors. My father is in very bad condition,” Marco Antonio Pinochet, said earlier.
He said that doctors “virtually rescued” his father from death by performing an angioplasty to clear his arteries.
Pinochet has used a pacemaker for several years and was diagnosed with mild dementia caused by several strokes. He also suffers from diabetes and arthritis.
In the past, he has been deemed too ill to stand trial on charges of murder and kidnapping.
Last week, he was indicted and ordered to remain under house arrest for the execution of two bodyguards of Salvador Allende, the freely elected socialist president who was toppled in a 1973 coup that brought Pinochet to power.
Around 3,000 people were reported missing or killed and some 28,000 were tortured during Pinochet’s rule in Chile, which lasted until 1990, when Pinochet transferred power to a democratically elected president.
He marked his birthday last week by issuing a statement in which he accepted “political responsibility” for abuses committed by his regime.

The Washington Post has noticed the Dictator’s Double Standard;

Like it or not, Mr. Pinochet had something to do with this success. To the dismay of every economic minister in Latin America, he introduced the free-market policies that produced the Chilean economic miracle — and that not even Allende’s socialist successors have dared reverse. He also accepted a transition to democracy, stepping down peacefully in 1990 after losing a referendum.
By way of contrast, Fidel Castro — Mr. Pinochet’s nemesis and a hero to many in Latin America and beyond — will leave behind an economically ruined and freedomless country with his approaching death. Mr. Castro also killed and exiled thousands. But even when it became obvious that his communist economic system had impoverished his country, he refused to abandon that system: He spent the last years of his rule reversing a partial liberalization. To the end he also imprisoned or persecuted anyone who suggested Cubans could benefit from freedom of speech or the right to vote.
The contrast between Cuba and Chile more than 30 years after Mr. Pinochet’s coup is a reminder of a famous essay written by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the provocative and energetic scholar and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who died Thursday. In “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” a work that caught the eye of President Ronald Reagan, Ms. Kirkpatrick argued that right-wing dictators such as Mr. Pinochet were ultimately less malign than communist rulers, in part because their regimes were more likely to pave the way for liberal democracies. She, too, was vilified by the left. Yet by now it should be obvious: She was right.

$20bn gas project seized by Russia;

Shell is being forced by the Russian government to hand over its controlling stake in the world’s biggest liquefied gas project, provoking fresh fears about the Kremlin’s willingness to use the country’s growing strength in natural resources as a political weapon.
After months of relentless pressure from Moscow, the Anglo-Dutch company has to cut its stake in the $20bn Sakhalin-2 scheme in the far east of Russia in favour of the state-owned energy group Gazprom.
The Russian authorities are also threatening BP over alleged environmental violations on a Siberian field in what is seen as a wider attempt to seize back assets handed over to foreign companies when energy prices were low.

*

While the poor get new portable DVD players. Why taxes on consumption may be more fair to the poor than income tax, after all – but not for the reasons you think.

Larry Weber, from Weber Commodities;

The CWB Election is in the books for 2006. Four candidates for the single desk emerged victorious with one candidate for pro choice winning the other seat. It is apparent that fear and rhetoric are alive and well in western Canada but one must respect the voters who did manage to take the time and mail their ballot in.
If this was only a vote on the single desk and that is what it will be portrayed as, the break out will look like this: District 1 at 56.4% in for a choice candidate with 43.6% for the single desk. District 3 was 66.2% in favour of single desk versus 33.8% for pro choice. In District 5, 59.2% voted for single desk while 40.8% voted for choice while in district 7, 55% voted for the single desk and 45% voted for pro choice. In the Manitoba District 9, 65.9% voted for the single desk, while 34.1% voted for choice.
The former Canadian Agriculture minister, the Hon. Otto Lang was on my radio program on the weekend. It was apparent that nothing has changed in farm policy debates. In 1974, when he wanted to change the CROW rate, the resistance to change was so strong that he backed away. He also said on the weekend that his biggest regret was not following through on the Crow change. The number that he used on the weekend in 1974 was a $7 billion dollar payout. It had Cabinet approval.
The fear mongering continued for 20 years – rhetoric flew, and farmers ended up with $1.3 Billion dollars. Because farmers were lied to by farm groups, corporations who were not ready for change, it cost farmers monumentally. The dollar amount is bad enough; however, it was 25 lost years that hurt the western Canadian economy the most.
The Western Producer of the day, the NFU, the Pools, WAYNE EASTER was the President of the NFU from 1982-1993 all said that it could not change, but it did. Wayne Easter fought vigorously to oppose the payout of the CROW and WGTA. Otto said on the weekend that the after a change he made to quota allocations in the 70’s the NFU issued buttons that said Otto Lang is 4 letter words (I’ve also seen one that said HANG LANG) and that the NFU was going on and on about he was going to kill the family farm. Nothing has changed.
Enter the Pools. Otto said the CROW had become sacred. So much so that people forgot where it came from and what it represented. Media can do that. Organizations with ulterior motives can do that. And today when Wayne Easter stands with the Leader of the Opposition and the President of the CWB, everyone forgets what he did to the western economy. For the majority of farmers, it is like nothing happened and all is forgotten.
A line that I like and use is this: Those who do not study history are bound to repeat it.
The next time you see a politician, elected official or organization standing up for farmers, please ask yourself three questions:
1) What proof do they have to take that position?
2) What is in it for them?
3) Does this sound like the CROW/WGTA debate?
For half of the CWB districts, you had a vote on nothing but rhetoric and fear. And the rhetoric came from both sides. Demand better. Demand proof. Demand accountability. You are the CEO of your farm. You would not make a decision to buy anything without facts. You are accountable to your family who are your shareholders.
Remember the only one that is looking after you is you – no one else gives a damn. And if you ever want a refresher – take a look at the CROW/WGTA debate.
Ken Beswick, the now deceased former Commissioner of the CWB, may have been right. This industry does deserve itself.

Larry hosts a weekend agricultural radio program that’s both informational and highly entertaining. He can be reached by email here.

Last evening, CTV’s Jill Macashon did a segment (web version) on the Canadian Wheat Board debate that had all the depth of a sixth grade book report. Watch it if you like. About all you’ll “learn” is that Alberta wants the monopoly gone, while Saskatchewan and Manitoba farmers function as a Borg collective.
But here’s a neat tidbit a reader sent along a few days ago, contained in a this 2005 federal court document: Renova Holdings Ltd. et al. v. The Canadian Wheat
The plaintiffs argued “that the Board issued direct export licences for wheat to producers outside of the designated area and that the revenue from the direct export sales by those producers did not become a part of the pooled revenue from sales held for all who farmed in the designated area and provided wheat for the Board to sell. However, and this is the crux of the cause of action, the Board incurred expenses in granted the direct export licences which it then, wrongfully in the view of the Plaintiffs, deducted from the pooled sales proceeds account held for all producers of wheat in the designated area.”
In the CWB statement of defence:

[3] The Defendants seek to strike out the Statement of Claim on the basis that the Board is accountable only to Parliament and that neither the Board nor the Crown owe any duty to or are accountable to the Plaintiffs as producers of wheat.

If it’s wrong

… to poke your child’s eyes out because you want them to become a member of the blind “community”, then it’s equally wrong to use preimplantation genetic diagnosis to increase the possibility a child will be born crippled with a disability.

Stephane Dion has announced that if elected, he will “reinstate” the Canadian Wheat Board should the Conservatives dismantle its monopoly as promised. Farmers in Quebec and Ontario would, of course, continue to enjoy the same freedoms to market their grain that they always have.
Related – Alberta farmers jailed over wheat exports
I’m learning to love this guy already.
Reader “Barc” asks a great question in the comments –

Restore the CWB if it is dismantled? Despite my support for the CWB that is the stupidist policy decision I can think of.
The CWB is considered gov interference (or gov crown/monopoly) under NAFTA.
Under NAFTA you cannot create such a organization without paying penalties to every business or other organization wishing to claim compensation for damage to their business market.
Is Dion proposing to withdraw from NAFTA and destroy the Canadian economy? Or is he proposing that we pay billions in penalties to North American companies for the reinstation of the CWB.

Another reader (Dwight) shares this response to a very good question;

“In response to your question regarding the legal action, all CWB costs are paid from the pool accounts. Any expenditures incurred for legal proceedings will be derived from this source”.
If you have any further inquiries, please e-mail us or call us toll free at 1-800-275-4292.
Charlotte
Business Centre Representative
Farmer Relations and Public Affairs

The Dutch are issuing an insignia to honour their UN peacekeeping force from Srebrenica.
h/t Captain Ed.

Because no one should ever be without food simply because they lack the ability to pay; (link fixed)

The B.C. government won a showdown with a new, private “food rations super-market”, reaching an agreement with the facility that will bar the foodstuffs depot from charging citizens.
But for the first time in Canada, the private rationing centre will also allow community members to get rations for which they would normally have to go to a public food ration distribution node.
The high-tech, American-style “super-market”, which opened Friday, will now operate like any other food rations centre. It will charge the government for the rations rather than billing shoppers potentially hundreds of dollars, Food Minister George Abbott said Saturday.

Wins re-election. Takes 100% of the 175 year old vote.
(link fixed)