The Secrets Of Vancouver BC, Canada

The HST – A Hideous Sales Tax Awaits

Get ready for the sledgehammer called HST.

Gordon Campbell’s HST, which blends the federal GST with the provincial sales tax (and applies it to pretty much all  goods and services) needs to be stopped.

It’s going to all but kill the housing market, force a sales declines onto already struggling retail and service businesses, and raise the cost of living from ridiculously high to prohibitively high.

And once Campbell figures out that the provinces revenues are in steep decline, you know he’ll do what any good Liberal would do… raise taxes again.

The real reason Campbell has decided to hammer us is the $1.5 Billion bonus (bribe) her gets from the Federal Government for doing so. This bonus allows him to hide a deficit, that at election time, he conveniently forgot to tell us about.

The Hideous Sales Tax expands taxes to everything we pay the Godawful Sales Tax on now.

The way they are trying to sell it to us, is telling us that merchants will pass along savings… which is compete Bullsh*t.  Notice how prices of gas and merchandise has dropped now the Canadian dollar is equal to US? We pay the equivalent of $4.50 for a US gallon – almost double what they do just across the border.

They advertise that home buyers purchasing homes under $400,000 will pay approximately the same as the current system… the bad news is that you can’t actually buy a house for $400,000 in the Vancouver area, or in any BC city a person could actually make a living in.

Imagine – a tax of only an average year’s salary for the privileged of buying a home!???

So Gordie, if you are determined to take the next step in the tax-rape of BC taxpayers, here’s an idea to make it more like a molesting:

Drop provincial sales tax to 5% and make HST 10%… it may stand a chance.

Or, better yet, kill provincial income tax and up it to 15% overall – you’d have a much better chance of acceptance, and maybe a small hope of stopping the recall movement, and staying in power.

I know.. the chances of a tax ever going down in BC are about as likely as me buying a Smart Car.

Oh, and by the way Gordie – now you’ve awoken the political dead…. He’s Back!!!

Go here to stop the HST.

photo credit: Rich Anderson

Tortious Interference – Mighty Big Words From The Unemployed

From D.C. Douglas – the (former) Geico voice-over guy:

Four things need clarifying. 1) Please DO NOT call GEICO. If you read the blog carefully, you’ll see I hold no animosity toward them, only FreedomWorks. 2) Some readers seem to miss the fact that I did apologize for my words. Please read carefully. 3) I was NOT the gecko or the main vo tag announcer. That was a conflation by Matt Kibbe. 4) Comments have been closed because the server can’t handle it, man. Please go here to enjoy a debate: HuffingtonPost Article.

This video explains why Mr. Douglas would leave such a message… and reflects the fear of the left on the rise of middle America.

Here’s his video if you want to understand where he is coming from. All part of the Obama campaign to crush the tea party.

Here’s hoping for a start of a movement within Canada’s silent majority.

(Yes, I just finished my taxes )

Not sure what it will take before we speak out against the HST, the carbon tax, the environmental fees, the hidden taxes… and start demanding a downsizing of government. Living costs that are 40% more than the US haven’t seemed to get any reaction.

They bank on the belief that Canadians never met a tax they don’t like.

Hitler Gets The News Of The Hitler Parodies Being Removed From YouTube

Ironic that the Hitler parodies have been taken down by YouTube. The video meme, which has run its course, has now found new life. This video parodies actually have made the movie a huge success.

Constantin Film AG is having YouTube remove re-subtitled clips of Hitler’s outburst scene in their film Downfall, even though they have no right to do so. Probably everyone on the planet has watched at least one parody based on Hitler in the bunker from the German film Downfall. The joke is to replace the subtitles with your chosen text.

There’s no doubt these parodies have sold more DVD copies of Downfall than any amount of marketing could have come even remotely close to. And it’s cost Constantin Film AG absolutely nothing. Someone over at Constantin apparently doesn’t get it.

Muhammad Bear Causes Death Threats

At least there are two people who aren’t afraid of radicals:

“In the 14 years we’ve been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn’t stand behind. We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn’t some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle’s customary final speech was about intimidation and fear. It didn’t mention Muhammad at all but it got bleeped too. We’ll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we’ll see what happens to it.”

Hollywood Reporter: Now “South Park” can’t even say the words “Prophet Muhammad.”

After last week’s episode of the Comedy Central series sparked a threat (and yes, it was certainly a threat) from a radical Islamic website, the network has cracked-down-for-their-own-good on creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone during last night’s continuation of the show’s storyline.

This Friday in Canada (we get delayed) , the show’s 200th episode last week mocked the one “celebrity” that the series has been largely unable to depict, the Prophet Muhammad, who was hidden from view in a bear costume. A U.S.-based website RevolutionMuslim.com then warned Parker and Stone they could end up like Theo Van Gogh (the Dutch filmmaker who was murdered by Muslim extremists after depicting Muhammad on his show) and even posted the address of the show’s production office. The site has since been shut down.

Last night, “South Park” continued the controversial Muhammad storyline, but with a key difference: every instance of the words “Prophet Muhammad” was bleeped out, making the episode practically incomprehensible, especially to anybody who missed the previous week.

The character of Muhammad was once again also hidden from view, covered by a large block labeled “censored.”

A Comedy Central spokesperson confirmed it was the network’s decision to bleep the words.

A message on the site states: “We do not have network approval to stream our original version of the show. We will bring you a version of [episode] 201 as soon as we can.”

Ironically, “South Park” apparently shows an image of the Prophet Muhammad briefly in its opening credits that has gone largely unnoticed.

CNN Covers the story… and stands firmly behind freedom of speech:

“We are commanded to terrorize the ones that don’t believe.”

“I think Comedy Central totally fucking pussed out. Now, they weren’t any different than anyone else, so it’s not like you can single them out. But I think it would’ve been an important statement for one media outlet in America to stand up. That was one of my most disappointing moments as an American–the American press’s reaction to the Muhammad cartoons. It was completely wimpy. Cartoonists, people who do satire–we’re not in the army, we’re never going to be fucking drafted and this is our time to stand up and do the right thing. And to watch the New York Times, Comedy Central, everybody just go ‘No, we’re not going to do it because basically we’re afraid of getting bombed’ sucked. I was so disappointed.”

So What Would Happen If China Cracked Google?

Wondering just how badly Google has been compromised? And if I should be worried as a user of a ton of Google apps.

Always more to the story …

… losses included one of Google’s crown jewels, a password system that controls access by millions of users worldwide to almost all of the company’s web services, including e-mail and business applications.

The program, code named Gaia for the Greek goddess of the earth, was attacked in a lightning raid taking less than two days last December, the person said. Described publicly only once at a technical conference four years ago, the software is intended to enable users and employees to sign in with their password just once to operate a range of services.

The intruders do not appear to have stolen passwords of Gmail users, and the company quickly started making significant changes to the security of its networks after the intrusions. But the theft leaves open the possibility, however faint, that the intruders may find weaknesses that Google might not even be aware of, independent computer experts said.

The new details seem likely to increase the debate about the security and privacy of vast computing systems such as Google’s that now centralize the personal information of millions of individuals and businesses. Because vast amounts of digital information are stored in one place, a single breach can lead to disastrous losses.

The theft began with a single instant message sent to a Google employee in China, according to the person with knowledge of the inquiry, who spoke on the condition he not be identified. By clicking on a link and connecting to a “poisoned” Web site, the employee inadvertently permitted the intruders to gain access to his (or her) personal computer and then to the computers of a critical group of software developers at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Ultimately, the intruders were able to gain control of a software repository used by the development team.

The details surrounding the theft of the software have been a closely guarded secret by the company. Google first publicly disclosed the theft in a Jan. 12 posting on the company’s Web site, which stated that the company was changing its policy toward China in the wake of the theft of unidentified “intellectual property” and the apparent compromise of the e-mail accounts of two human rights activists.

Rest here.

What’s interesting is that this morning there were a rash of stories on US web security. Here’s a sample of the warning.

Sunday Night Classic

Hard to improve on this country classic… but this song does it.

You Picked a Fine Time to Lead Us, Barack by Jonathan McWhite

Cooking Shows We’d Love To See

If you really want to see the left go crazy… a show that could only be done in Alaska.

Vancouver’s Green Guys

If you’ve been watching our Canucks in the playoffs, you had to notice those two green guys. The Green Men who mock opposing players as they sit in the penalty box, became infamous after their gyrating performance for penalized Nashville Predators became a YouTube classic last December.

They have their own Facebook page here, The Green Guys Behind The Canucks Penalty Box, with over 45,000 friends (a little more than all of Moose Jaw).

The Green Men were revealed by the Vancouver Sun as British Columbia Institute of Technology students Ryan Sullivan and Adam Forsythe, whose Green Men alter-egos go by Sully and Force.

The inspiration, according to Sully in an interview with Nucks Misconduct:

After watching an episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” which is where the Greenman originates from, we both looked at each other and I do believe we actually yelled “Eureka” at the same time. It was a little weird, but we knew it was fate. We knew we had to become Greenmen and go to a Canucks game. As for hesitations, there was a few … I mean we aren’t really wearing anything so that was a concern… and the first game we went to, it was about minus-5, so as we walked from our car to GM Place, it was quite tempting to bail out. I’m sure glad we didn’t though!

You can read more about the Green Men on the Canucks’ Web site.

Question Of The Day For European Airlines.

The scream: A radar image shows the crater of Eyjafjallajokull in southeast Iceland, which looks like the nightmarish face painted by Edvard Munch

As the cloud thickens, some pilots are asking… Why can’t we just fly beneath it?

We have been scared into believing that to fly would be madness, but part of the rationale that is keeping us grounded is an economic equation rather than simple personal safety.

To fly beneath the cloud until clear of it would mean burning more fuel. But not flying at all is surely burning money more swiftly.

Low-flying to simply avoid the danger of ash being sucked into the jet engines is a temporary solution gaining currency on professional pilot’s forum Pprune. One pilot writing there yesterday pointed out: ‘The chances of it even appearing at puddle jumper altitudes is negligible’.

It isn’t just daredevil pilots who are beginning to question the necessity of the current stalemate. Steve Wood, Chief Pilot at Sussex and Surrey Air Ambulance, yesterday described the measures being taken as ‘a complete overreaction’.

Modern jet aircraft engines are amazingly robust. And indeed they must be so. They have to face not only the hazards of bird strikes, but rain, hail and even salt spray on take-off from coastal airports.

All of which can potentially wreak havoc on engines. Furthermore, sand is a common hazard from dust storms and from desert airfields.

Some aircraft are better equipped than others to deal with high-dust conditions, and consultation with aircraft and engine manufacturers might have enabled more precise restrictions to be imposed, rather than a blanket ban.

But a spokesman for NATS admitted: ‘We don’t really deal with particular manufacturers.’ They were more concerned with ‘applying the international regulations’ rather than working on a specific plane-by-plane, make-by-make basis.

The blanket ban under clear blue skies and glorious sunshine is making some wonder whether this ‘one-size-fits-all’ regulation is appropriate to a situation that the regulations did not foresee.

And there will be many among the 200,000 Britons currently stranded abroad, who would be quite happy to take the risk.

In the final analysis, despite the scares, no one has actually been killed in a volcano incident – something which cannot be said for the much more hazardous drive to the airport.

Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures.