Category Archives: News and politics

From the Associated Press this afternoon, datelined Bristow Oklahoma:  Former Judge Donald D. Thompson, a veteran of 23 years on the bench, is on trial on charges he used a penis pump on himself in the courtroom while sitting in judgment of others. 

I have heard of being screwed by the Justice system, but this is stretching it.

From Reuters:  Condoleeza Rice calls the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov a drunken pissant.  At the G-8 meeting in Moscow, CNN was hooking their sound gear up to the PA system while Rice, Lavarov and the rest of the G-8 suit brigade were gabbing over the ice water.  Unfortunately the microphones were live and CNN recorded this exchange:

Rice:  I think it is a pity that we can’t endorse something that has been endorsed by the Iraqi’s and the UN, but ah…

Lavrov:  Condi, Condi, Condi. No one challenges the sovereign right to endorse them, but when you consider the assistance programs, the IMF, the World Bank, you do not automatically endorse what the government will endorse.  It is an important part of the exercise to consider specific features of an assistance program.

Rice:  If you think I understood one word you just said in that drunken slurred throat clearing you call a voice Sergey, you are a bigger asshole than Vladimir says you are.  Did you see the potato tractor that ran over your head when you were young, you worthless  pissant. 

The official communiqué of the G-8 was written months ago and said nothing about Lavrov actually being a pissant.

From the Dailymail.co.uk:  Inventors are on the verge of creating the first mobile ‘smellophone’, a gadget which can capture an odour and then replay it back later, just as camcorders do with images. Amateur chefs desperate to recreate perfectly a restaurant meal they have enjoyed could use the device to record its aroma.

Was I the only person who could image a group of nine year old boys random dialing a cell phone with the smellophone option, then playing back a fart?  Or adding a gut-rattling belch of beef nachos and Dr. Pepper to Mom’s outgoing message?

New York (AP) — Stock prices shot higher Thursday after the Federal Reserve indicated it was standing by its policy of raising interest rates as needed to contain inflation. 

“I just jackin’ wit ya” said Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, who then slapped a New York Mets baseball hat on his head and climbed into a tricked out Cadillac Escalade. 

Bernanke’s departing comments to the financial press; “Spark dat fattie up my man!” were taken to mean the measured increases in the Federal Reserve rate will continue for at least the next quarter.

Sacramento (AP) —  The Bush administration has been unable to muster even half of the 2,500 National Guardsmen it planned to have on the Mexican border by the end of June. 

As of Thursday, the next-to-last day of the month, fewer than 1,000 troops were in place, according to military officials in the four border states of Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona. 

Odds are it is because they went to American Public Schools and can’t find it on the map.  The other 1,500 troopers are guarding the international borders in Utah and Rhode Island.

Washington (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees, saying in a strong rebuke that the trials were illegal under U.S. and international law.

The ruling raises major questions about the legal status of the approximately 450 men still being held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba and exactly how, when and where the administration might pursue the charges against them.

Rumour has it the CIA is annoyed at Airbus for delaying the delivery of the A380 Super Jumbo.  The Secret Rendition Flight Division was looking for something that could take all 450 Guantanamo detainees to Romania for a ‘Happy Hour Club Jet-Away Weekend Sponsored by Corona’

MEMPHIS, Tenn.(AP) — Junichiro Koizumi and President Bush can hang around the Jungle Room all they want.  Japan’s prime minister can even warble another rendition of “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You,” as he did at a birthday party for Bush last year.

As a guest of the president and first lady Laura Bush, Koizumi will visit the Presley home on June 30, and they’ll pretty much have the run of the place.

But Presley’s private bedroom and the adjoining bath where he collapsed and died in 1977 will remain off-limits.  “You can’t visit the upstairs at the White House, either,” said Jack Soden, chief executive of Elvis Presley Enterprises.

We should hold UN Security Council Meetings in the Jungle Room.  The US would never have invaded Iraq if Saddam Hussein had paid a state visit to Graceland.  The Dixie Chicks CD’s would have been another issue.

Bristow, OK (AP) —  UPDATE Creek County jury late Thursday convicted a former judge who was accused of exposing himself by using a sexual device while he presided over court cases.

The panel deliberated more than five hours before returning a guilty verdict against Donald Thompson on all four counts of indecent exposure. The jury had requested a dinner break around 6:30 p.m. and sent a note to the judge at 8:49 p.m. that a decision had been reached.

Jurors recommended one year in prison and a $10,000 fine on each count against the judge, 59, who served more than 20 years on the bench in eastern Oklahoma before his retirement in 2004.

Sometimes the screwing you get, isn’t worth the screwing you get.

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I have no fear of tackling ugly things with a pragmatic point of view.  Most things on our planet can be handled with a little compassion, some common sense and a good general knowledge of how things work. 

There are some subjects I don’t like:  Michael Moore in a pink ballet tutu, sitting on a photocopier, drinking a beer and eating stadium nachos comes to mind.  The real horror starts when he punches 99, selects double-sided and presses the green “Copy” button.  I shouldn’t have to confront that image in my lifetime, as Mike seems discreet enough, but you never know.

The Middle East is the other one that gives me The Fear.

You’ve got two sides who have brutalized each other since the dawn of time.  The real, down in the DNA hate, goes back thousands of years, passed through generations like the gene for brown eyes or a propensity for bad haberdashery.

Neither is right and neither is wrong. They’re behaving like children.

Sibling brothers, around the age of 7 to 15 years of age, behave the same way.  With three sons, my father developed that extra arm joint that would allow him to wallop all three of us in the backseat of the car, without taking his eyes off the road.  All three of us would get nailed in unison.  Then the happy and loving, “Shut up now or I’ll Stop The Car.”  We became quiet immediately. 

Father got so good at it (three sons means you get a lot of practice) that he could also take a sip of his coffee and light a smoke at the same time he was slapping us silly.  It isn’t the same skill set as playing the cello or being able to sink one from mid-court for three, but it was his talent and he was good.  I still hate sitting in the back seat of a car.

In the Middle East, it is exactly the same deal.  They all deserve a quick, firm slap of International Corporal Punishment to make them stop for a moment, if only to break the cycle of knee-jerk stupidity on all sides.  I have a possible solution though.

The UN has to do some typing:  They issue a simple press release:  The Middle East will now sit down and shut up for a week, or we, the rest of the world, embargo the whole damn area. 

Ask Dubya, Zhong and Vladimir to send as many warships as they can for next Thursday.  Line’em up in the Med, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Suez Canal and have them all run a blue UN flag.  Canada will send our ship if we could borrow a set of jumper cables.  Holland would be in, so would Burkina Faso.

Fly a few quick sorties using the fancy ordinance.  An America J-DAM on a Chinese fighter dropped by a Russian bombardier strikes the right note of internationalism.  Shut down the electrical grid, jam the cellphones, radio and television.  Anything flying, other than the UN has ten minutes to land and park.  Nothing in.  Nothing out. 

After seven days of no electricity, no phones, no planes, no communications and no outside influences, Kofi Annan drops by and says “Shall we talk now?”  It might take a year or two, but a solution will come out when the kids see the grownups are not kidding.

Dubya, Zhong and Vladimir will do it for two reasons:  One, saving the world is a great legacy, regardless of your political stripe.  Promise the boys a Nobel if you have to, plus the cover of Time and an endorsement deal from Rolex:  Whatever it takes. 

Two, Dubya, Zhong and Vladimir know the groups in the Middle East are as crazy as outhouse rats who will blow up the world if we don’t step in.

I can come up with thousands of picayune diplomatic, logistical and political reasons why this won’t work.  There are two compelling reasons why it will work that cancel out all the others. 

First, it is international in scope and we do it fast, without spending years flapping our gums about it.  We’ve tried dialogue with these idiots and dialogue doesn’t work. 

Second, if we don’t do it, we’ll see the Middle East blow itself up in one ghastly superheated explosion.  The last thing we’ll hear is some dick yelling “See!  They started it!” 

The cynic in me says the nuclear winter will average out the global warming.

Now, all I have to do is get that image of Michael Moore on the photocopier out of my mind.

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I keep seeing various politicians standing up on their back legs, demanding the NY Times be drawn, quartered, shot and pissed on for breaking the story on the Department of JustUs spying on financial records.  I’ve written about the tedious events earlier. 

The rhetoric coming out of the pundits, pols, and press wanks is astounding.  You hear the same kind of mindless rehashing of White House speaking points:  Despicable.  Treason.  Execution.  Jail Time.  Giving Comfort to the Enemy.  Thwarting the War on Terror.  National Security. 

Please spare me the deluge of drama:  The NYT didn’t publish the nuclear missile launch codes.  If someone had asked the NYT, nicely, to sit on the story for a few weeks, odds are the NYT would have played along precisely for reasons of National Security.  The JustUs folks figured they could bully the New York Times and the reporters involved, because they DoJ was sloppy and got caught. 

What bothers me is that the NYT found out about the program.  Reporters find out about this kind of bad madness via a leak that says “look over here, or under that rock”.  The leak probably happened because an individual saw just how far SWIFT was reaching.  Perhaps the monitoring has crossed that line from investigating cement heads and the war on terror, into hardball domestic spying.  I don’t know. 

I do know that good security people, doing a righteous job, don’t talk about this stuff with their families, let alone reporters, unless something is very wrong and the bosses won’t stop it.  That is the little sidebar that, I hope, a reporter is chasing hard right now. 

Unlawful groups determined to wreak havoc already assume that the US government is spying on them.  Skilful criminals assume that everything is being looked at by the police.  This is rudimentary field-craft:  A mindset of complete paranoia is what a criminal has to assume to act outside the law. 

I hate to break it to the various operators from the US government, but skillful criminals don’t have a file folder on the top of the desk, labeled “Plans For World Domination”.  That is over the top, even for Austin Powers, or James Bond. 

Following the money, which is the ostensible excuse for fishing in the SWIFT banking transaction database, is sensible.  It is sound reasoning and a good investigative tool.  Not The Only Tool, just A Tool.  Informants are a tool.  Perusing websites are a tool.  Reading the paper is a tool.  Surveillance on a house, a person or an apartment is a tool.  Wiretaps are a tool.  Opening snail mail, or email is a tool. 

With one pesky caveat, I don’t mind the security forces using the tools.  If a warrant is required, then you have to get a warrant that details exactly what you’re looking for, where, when and why.  A judge eyeballs the warrant and says yea or nay.  Any judge looking at that kind of warrant will keep it quiet.  If an investigator can’t find a suitably compliant judge to sign off on it, then they’re pathetic, lazy and  the kind of pud who should be guarding the torn tickets at an Andy Williams matinee concert in Branson, Missouri. 

If the DoJ has asked for a warrant to go fishing for two months to see what they could shake out, I could live with that, barely, but I’ll let it slide as it is time-limited.  There are no absolutes here.  Occasionally the rules might have to be bent, or stretched a bit and each case on its merits. 

I’ve heard the argument of “If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear from the government, as they’re trying to protect the world from terrorists”.  I can’t buy that for a Mississauga Minute, which is about 11 seconds, for those who don’t know how long a minute is in Mississauga. 

This is the same argument that the Senator Joe McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities used to drag anyone they didn’t like into open Senate Committee session.  McCarthy used the waving of paper at witnesses as his ‘proof’ that the witness was a Communist.  He never actually let people see the evidence on the paper, only the waving of paper for newsreel and television cameras. 

Anyone called by the Committee was asked, in closed session, to name all their friends, relations, acquaintances, or passers-by whom they thought might be suspect.  If they couldn’t come up with names, their career was over, as they were a ‘hostile’ witness and Sen. McCarthy would start the paper waving and ranting.  This was later quoted in Hollywood as “Not only must you have talent, but you must have informed too!". 

There was a certain Ioseb Jughashvili used to do the “You have nothing to fear” and paper waving act too.  You might know Ioseb Jughashvili by his more common, westernized name:  Joseph Stalin. 

A vigorous, slightly suspicious media will keep tabs on the bullies who wrap themselves in the flag and ask citizens to swallow that kind of poison from the buffet.

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The US Supremes have put their dribbling rubber stamp on the Texas electoral redistricting as pushed by disgraced Rep. Tom DeLay, he of the Gumby hairstyle.

Gerrymandering is the purposeful redrawing of electoral districts to make sure that your candidate gets all the votes in the district, while your opponent gets none.  This harkens back to voter profiling and I’ll apologize up front if you’re offended by the stereotypes associated with ethnic and racial groups:  These aren’t my conclusions.

African-Americans tend to vote for liberal Democrats.  So do Hispanic-Americans.  Volvo-drivers who wear Birkenstocks tend to vote Green or Libertarian.

Rich white folks tend to vote for Republicans.  If your congressional district includes only rich white Topsider scum and you’re a Republican reptile, then you have a beautiful district that you’ll probably win.

If you have some yacht pigs, some poor folks and recently-beaten then-laid-off middle class minivan meat in your district, then count the numbers.  You might not win, or you might have to actually work hard to win as a Republican.  The Democrat might very well win, if you can be painted as a bought-and-paid-for-limousine-jumpseat-slut for Lockheed.  That isn’t too hard a picture to paint, especially when dealing with Texas Republicans.

DeLay jiggled the Texas electoral map so that Hispanics were underrepresented in as many districts as he could get away with.  District boundary lines were drawn through whole neighbourhoods to split the Hispanic vote into as many parts as could be rigged.

Still, the Supremes let it stand. Unfortunately the Supremes also said that Texas could fiddle with the maps any time they felt like it.  Texas Democrats wanted re-districting limited to once every ten years, as noted in the Constitution, not every time some incumbent was in danger of losing his seat.  Texas jiggled the map twice in 2000. 

This makes me doubt the wisdom of the Supremes.  Gerrymandering is the crudest form of election rigging known, aside from Nicaraguan “Dignity Battalions” shooting at voters with automatic weapons. 

This also tells me if an aggressive media finally catches Cheney and Dubya cuttin’ up the cash in the East Wing, then the Supremes won’t do jack.

Israel is starting a major military assault into Gaza right now.  Air strikes.  This is in retaliation, at least so far, to the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Palestinians a couple of days ago.

Israel has been rattling the sabers for a few days.  Their message to the Palestinians was pretty clear:  Give us back our guy, or we’ll destroy your cities.  Pure Middle-East punk attitude, except Israel can back it up, has backed it up in the past and will back it up in the future. 

I’m not going to solve the Israel-Palestine thing, except to say that when Britain handed over the keys to the UN in 1947, the Brits conveniently forgot there were 3 million people already living there.  Britain and the UN also forgot that Jerusalem was important to Muslims, Jews and Christians for various religious reasons.  All three groups have as much right to be there as the other. 

Hindus and Buddhists don’t give a green fig about Jerusalem.  Shinto devotees are peeing their robes right now, laughing at us fighting over this petty stuff.

I do know that there is a commonly held rule that if you’re attacked by someone with a stick, you should fight back with a stick:  That’s fair, or at least gives the appearance of vaguely fair.

Attacking Palestinians with jet fighters, missiles, helicopter gunships and long range artillery is like bringing an armed-up Abrams tank to a bar fight:  Not fair.  Playing to Win, sure, but it escalates things beyond all sense or sanity.  It just perpetuates bullshit grievances on both sides.

I’ve never expected sense from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.  Both sides are monomaniacs who won’t change the subject and can’t talk about anything else.

On Friday it came out that the US Federal Government has been monitoring financial transactions with the same zeal as they have been monitoring email and phone calls.  The database that the Department of JustUs (Their motto:  “It’s Just Us”) tapped into is called SWIFT or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Transactions.  

SWIFT is the clearinghouse for, as the name states, the electronic moving of money from A to B.  They handle about 11 million messages a day.  Not the actual transfer, but the details about the transaction.  From whom and what account, how much and to whom into what account, in what currency, at what time.  It is essentially the log of the bank transactions. 

The idea, post 9/11 was to track the cash to and from Al Qaeda, identify the various cells and put names to the cement heads involved.  The Department of JustUs didn’t want this to be commonly known.  Part of surveillance is to not let those who are being watched, to know that they are being watched, so you can see who plays with them, supports them and the various goings on.  I can buy into some secrecy on a limited basis.

We know that the US Feds have been spying on domestic citizens’ phone calls, emails and financial records for several years, without warrants, as part of the Patriot Act and a couple of Executive Orders.  This, of course, is contrary to Amendment IV, ratified December 15, 1791, of the US Constitution, which reads thusly:  

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.  

Incidentally, the lads who put this little gem into the US Constitution had just come through a war they eventually won.  The British would routinely intercept mail, bust down doors, terrorize families, cart off the husbands under various ‘charges’, burn down barns, pay informants to eavesdrop and do everything in their power to crush the Rebellion as it was an issue of Colonial Security.  

What the DoJ is doing is data mining.  The data piles into a big database, Rob Scrimger can comment on how to do it.  Next, a clever bit-head writes a stored procedure to ask the following questions:  Find me all the bank transactions from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Yemen, Qatar and Afghanistan to the US, or to an intermediate country that winds up in the US.  

Then, of that group, find me all the transactions that are less than $10,000 in value.  Ten thou is the threshold that all US banks must report, by law, to get around money laundering.  A good financier of cement heads would make sure that the transaction won’t set off the RICO trigger for compulsory reporting. 

Now, find any transaction that is readily divisible by 2, 5 or 10 and throw them out.  This is the Rule of Expense Account Padding.  If you put in for $300 worth of expenses, all the auditor bells go off, but $309.43 must be true, as it is too strange a number to be anything but legit.  Nobody with a brainstem would transfer a round number to a cement head.  But just to be sure, check where the transactions came from.  If the transaction is from an individual, not a bank, flag it for me, even if it is divisible by 2, 5, or 10.  

Last step:  Print out all the transactions left over.  Show me the names, addresses and account information with that transfer:  Turn the list over to the G-Men with simple orders:  Watch these people closely and cross names off the list as we go.   

Invariably you will find the vast majority of transactions are benign:  Tuition payments, bills, lending cash to a relative, charitable donations and such.  Odds are most individuals do this once a month, or only a few times a year.  Banks shoot big numbers back and forth, hourly.   

This is data mining at its simplest.  It is what the DoJ is doing with the SWIFT data.  Add in a list of phone calls to and from known cement heads and email to and from cement heads, all gong to the same address then you have what would be described as a person of interest.  

Was the test of no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized fulfilled? Ummmm.  

Today, Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., said he would write Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging that the nation’s chief law enforcer "begin an investigation and prosecution of The New York Times _ the reporters, the editors and the publisher."

"We’re at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous," King told The Associated Press.  

This is called trying to muzzle the media to get them to stop looking too closely at what the government is doing.  I shouldn’t have to quote the First Amendment, but I will:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.  

In 1972 Richard Nixon and the Committee to Re-Elect the President used the IRS and the FBI to put the screws to publishers, activists and enemies with either overt actions, or the threats of actions to muzzle dissent and force the media to not look too closely.  

The Washington Post ignored the pliers to the scrotum approach and brought us Watergate:  A sitting President, Richard Nixon, resigned in disgrace two years after winning the biggest plurality in Presidential election history.  America was appalled beyond belief at what went on.  

So, back to the title:  Uppity Canadian.  Why is an uppity Canadian explaining this stuff to a partially American audience?  I have a hidden agenda I’m going to tell you about.  

In Canada we‘ve elected a Dubya jock-sniffer and Cheney-wannabe called Steven Harper.  Harper is watching what Dubya is getting away with.  He’s going to try to get some of that.  I don’t want a government microphone in my apartment.     

Judging by the media coverage, the American public does not care that their cherished rights as enshrined in their Constitution are being eaten whole by a government and a President who have repeatedly proven that they cannot be trusted to make photocopies, let alone respect important rights.  

If I can remind you folks south of the 49^th about your constitutional rights, you might do something about it.  If your media grows a set and starts to poke into the really illegal, really stinky things your government is doing, then I can benefit. 

The outrages being done today make the Watergate heinousness look like a five year old pinching a Dubble-Bubble at the supermarket.  This isn’t stain-on-a-dress impeachability.  We’re talking stuff even a grade four student in a US public school can see is truly wrong.  

Our government will see Dubya and his cronies get tossed out on Blue Box day at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Then Steven Harper will back down and take his brownshirt bund back to the Tar Sands where they belong.  

See?  I told you I had an agenda.

Some catchup from previous posts.   

The seventeen Canadian terrorist suspects have, or have not, been charged with all kinds of things, or not.  The judge slapped a publication ban on all the proceedings.  This means that the media can’t report on the trial or trials.  Consequently, we can’t tell if it was a righteous bust or not.  

I understand and respect the publication ban on the Young Offenders, as that is how the Young Offenders Act is written:  Zero Coverage allowed.  However, for the other dozen, I’d much prefer to see the goods.  Not that I don’t have all the faith in government and the justice system required by a good citizen, but there are times when good citizens should apply a bit of scrutiny.  This is one of them.  

I haven’t written, except parenthetically, about the Stanley Cup Playoffs, as I am a poor excuse for a Canadian:  I don’t give a suede-covered flying copulative act about ice hockey.  I think the Edmonton Petroleum Workers and the Carolina Atmospheric Disturbances are playing in the last game.  

My understanding is the Carolina Atmospheric Disturbances won.  I missed the game: I had to go out and buy a comb last night. 

The World Cup is taking up the time of several dozen fellow employees in the Mothership cafeteria.  They are glued to the tube.  I appreciate soccer/football, as there is an element of skill to the game and this is their Big Show.  Good for them.   

I also see hundreds of cars driving around the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) with little fan flags flying from their windows.  You’ve seen them, the flag of Togo, or Brazil, or Croatia on a little plastic antenna that you wedge into your rear window.  

There are other, more dedicated, fans who have painted their entire car with the colours of their team.  I can only hope they did it with water-based paint that will scrub off, or there will have to be some explaining to the Significant Other about the state of the automobile. 

Dubya has gone off script again.  Today he’s demanding UN Security Council action on Iran (the one next door to Iraq, that isn’t invaded, yet) and their nuclear weapons insanity.  His henchmen are flogging the possibility that Al Qaeda cementheads were going to poison the New York Subway with cyanide.  

I’ve been in the NYC Subway.  New Yorkers wouldn’t notice that everyone around them was keeling over unless they dropped their Starbucks and some of it splashed on them.  Then, there would be hell to pay:  “You’re payin’ for the dry cleanin, motherfu…gak!”  Thud.   

What is actually happening is the scare-mongers are trying to get you cranked up some more.  It is the usual Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Al Qaeda, Box Cutters on City Busses, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and unidentified Black Man with a Gun rap.   

I forgot the last coda of that rap:  Al Gore is a putz and Global Warming is a hoax.  Hillary Clinton wants to force your daughter to have an abortion.  A Mexican Illegal Alien is coming to kick you out of your house.  Someone from India is gong to take your job.  

A frightened populace is a compliant populace. You can make 280 million people demand to be ear tagged, tattooed with a number and cavity-searched daily, if you frighten them often enough.  By my take, the American population is nicely compliant right now. 

Racing with street cars is amazingly exciting.  Look at the film franchise “Fast and the Furious” who glamorize street racing.  Watch “Pinks!” on the Discovery Channel if you want to see street performance.  Or look at the drifting phenomenon to see that young people, horsepower and a certain lack of brains is a thrilling, but potentially dangerous confluence.   

Every year innocent bystanders get killed by street racing.  Street racing crashes are almost always at high speed, usually fatal to at least one person and cause significant damage to the rest.  The Canadian Federal government has brought in legislation that makes street racing a Criminal Code offense, with up to 14 years in prison for killing someone while street racing.  

The Deity knows I love performance cars, hot rods and sports cars.  There is something indefinably beautiful and perfect about the Dodge Daytona in Petty Blue.  Or a ’49 Merc lead sled that has been slammed and shaved with frenched headlights and lake pipes.  For those who just said “Wha??” type those terms into your favourite search engine and see what I mean. 

I’m not coming down on those who peel out, or burn out, or lay a patch at the local Burger Hut parking lot in their muscle car.  Amish kids probably compete to see who can get the horse-drawn buggy out of the meeting house parking lot first.  It is normal.  Dumb, but normal.  Racing is something else. 

The only place to actually race is on a track with a helmet, firesuit, rollcage, competition belts and a full safety, fire and ambulance crew on site, ready to go.  These things are needed when, not if, an amateur driver exceeds their imagined driving talents. 

Some provinces have or are considering banning nitrous oxide injection systems on street cars.  It is essentially the same nitrous oxide your dentist would feed you, except in a car engine, it does amazing things.  

Take a Ford Taurus, Built With Pride in Chicago by Ford.  From the factory it has 155 horsepower.  Apply $1,000 for the nitrous kit, a day and a half of a mechanics’ time and you have a 250 to 400 horsepower Taurus.  If that can’t get you to the IGA in half the time, then you’re not trying.  There are no legitimate technical reasons for nitrous oxide injection on a street car except for street racing. 

I would like to see what I call a “Pinks!” law passed for street racing.  It isn’t Zero Tolerance, but it sets reasonable standards for those who want to own a hot rod or a performance car, which is perfectly legal to own and enjoy. 

A “Pinks!” law works like this.  If the cops stop you for suspected street racing, there are two checks. 

First, is there working nitrous on the car?  This is not hard to spot with two or three hours training.  Cops have rudimentary automotive technical training:  They can seize your plates if your car is judged unsafe.  Running nitrous?  Lose Your Ride. 

Second, how fast were they going?  If the vehicle was more than 49 kilometers per hour over the speed limit you Lose Your Ride.     

I don’t mean lose your ride for a week, or thirty days or three months.  I mean you Lose Your Ride.  On the spot, no negotiations, no tearful appeals, hand over the keys, Insta-Justice.  Show up at the court date and fight the charge.  If you win, you can have it back, otherwise it belongs to the police. 

It would take, oh, maybe three confiscations for the word to get out:  They Ain’t Kidding. 

If you want to drive your high performance street rocket to a race track, I have no problems as long as the vehicle is legal and you obey the usual laws, speed limits and stop signs.   

At the track you can sign the waivers, hook up the nitrous bottle, put on the racing slicks and whip out your badboy attitude.  Race until your brain is fried and your wallet is flattened.  I’ll even come and watch some summer night.  Run what ya brung.  

I do appreciate the run what ya brung ethic, performance cars and street racing. 

In 1972, some people, whom I may or may not know, believed very deeply in run what ya brung.  What they brung was an A/Fuel Altered to Carling Avenue in Ottawa. 

The car was called Bad Science and it ran on a combination of liquid nitromethane and Sunoco 260 gasoline.  It was no where near vaguely legal to be on a city street.  There were no front brakes, limited rear brakes, no lights, no signals, no mirrors and no speedometer.   

It did have a tubular welded steel chassis, one seat, M/H racing slicks and a parachute.  Other options included a 427 cubic inch Chevy big block with a 6-71 Roots supercharger.  From each cylinder, the exhaust pipes were as big around as a coffee can.  There were no mufflers. 

It is rumored that someone I may or may not know, put a mixture of chlorine bleach and gasoline under the rear wheels.  The driver, it is alleged, spun the rear wheels in the fluid, igniting it in a ball of flames and smoke to warm the tires before the start of the run.  This would have purportedly happened in the parking lot of the Fairlawn Plaza, but I wouldn’t know about that. 

I would also suspect that several hundred people in the neighbourhood, trying to sleep, with the bedroom windows open on an August night, sat bolt upright in bed thinking the World Had Ended.  A fuel car in those days would make a noise like 6300 artillery cannons going off in your bedroom every minute, with about the same amount of flame and smoke. 

It was also alleged that Bad Science left two long, smoldering streaks of rubber for 1000 feet along Carling Avenue.  I also have no information about Bad Science being hustled into a covered trailer immediately after the run.  Or the trailer being spirited away before the police showed up. 

Street race?  Never.  We need a “Pinks!” law.

Track race?  If I had the money and the car, I’d be there.  Allegedly.

North Korea is ‘close to testing’ a long range ballistic missile.  So says Dubya’s meat puppet, Tony Snow in a story on the Associated Press today.  If Snow isn’t full of it and Kim Jong-Il is for real, then you and I have a problem. 

Here’s the short geography lesson to get you located:  The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is North Korea, the unfriendly one.  It is owned and operated by Kim Jong-Il, the guy with the bad perm, heel lifts and the movie addiction.  It has not been confirmed that North Korea has nuclear weapons, but a lot of the sideband chatter says they either do, or are so close as to make no difference.  North Korea has one side of the 38^th parallel, too many people, not enough food and a standing army that wants to do something other than standing at attention in the morning, then executing political prisoners in the afternoon.

The Republic of Korea, the one we know as South Korea, isn’t terrifically friendly either, if truth be told.  South Korea does understand that countries turned into glowing, radioactive, glass lakes don’t buy enough ships, cars, marine engines, HDTV’s, cell phones, computers, clothing and home appliances to make it profitable for Hyundai, Samsung and LG.  South Korea does not have nukes.  They have a lot of American troops, the other side of the 38^th parallel and some UN folks standing around looking important in their blue hats.

North Korea is kissin’ buddies with China.  South Korea is kissin’ buddies with the United States.  Both those countries have nukes.  China has an international dialing plan for their missiles:  The US can reach out and touch anyone, anytime, anywhere.  North Korea might be able to hit Alaska with a limited payload.

The standoff is the old Cold-War-Mutually-Assured-Destruction-SuperPower-War-By-Proxy game of Don’t Blink. 

Unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, or NATO and the Warsaw Pact until 1990, we aren’t eyeball to eyeball with reasonably pragmatic, approximately sane, Soviet leaders:  If the technology works, the US will be eyeball to eyeball with Kim Jong-Il and by proxy, whoever is on the big chair in Beijing this week. 

The US cannot preemptively bomb North Korea, even with conventional bombs.  China would be very unhappy with the US doing anything in the backyard.  South Korea can’t do anything about it, as that tweaks China’s nose too.  Japan might have the tools and the moxie, but if Kim Jong-Il’s Taepodong-2 missile can reach the US, then hitting Japan is dial 9 for an outside line easy and puts a damper on Japan hitting first. 

England and France are too far away to care.  India and Pakistan are more concerned about making grumpy noises at each other.  Israel may or may not:  They’re being coy.  Russia has re-aimed the four or five missiles they have left at Beijing, figuring, hell, if we’re going to go, let’s all do the Apocalypso.

All it takes is one jittery, unstable, none-too-bright, warmonger Daddy’s Boy with a grudge, to escalate this beyond all sense.  This narrows our choices down to Kim Jong-Il and George Walker Bush.  We know how one of them responds to ‘foreigners’ and threats, real, imagined or manufactured.

Here’s my prediction:  Within three months expect to see a Presidential “Cuban Missile Crisis” type of briefing on television.  If you think you’re frightened now about terrorist Al Qaeda cells looking to bomb your local Wal-Mart, imagine how North Korean and China will be demonized.  The Terror Alert Pez Dispenser is going to be pinned on Red.

This is a great way to get your Star Wars II program funded for your buddies.  What?  StarWars II?  Originally a bad hashish dream of Ronald Regan who had been taking too many hits off the bong with Nancy, StarWars was shown to be a complete technical hallucination.  Dubya trotted it out in 2004 as a way to defend the US from “rogue nations” like Indonesia, Libya and, drum roll please, North Korea.    

StarWars II, more properly, the Missile Defense Shield, never went away.  The US doesn’t have the cash to shovel into it right now as they have boots on the sand in Iraq.

But an invisible threat by crazy, Godless communist yellow people a half a world away in a country that you can’t actually invade with expensive troops?  This has promise.  They can pull the troops out of Iraq with impunity and bring them home, freeing up some serious money for StarWars II. 

Keep in mind that it won’t be the top 1%, Dubya’s base, who will take a huge tax hit to ‘protect our homes with an umbrella of American technology to defend us from those evildoers of the Axis of Evil with their nukleer missiles who mean to do us harm.”  The top 1% own the companies that are going to make a bundle.  You are going to be frightened into paying for it.

It puts any Democratic Presidential candidate in a box for the next ten years.  The Republicans could exhume Richard Nixon’s remains and win, as long as the press release said he was in favour of StarWarsII  to protect the US of A and be a ‘beacon of freedom to all the freedom loving peoples of the world”

North Korea doesn’t want to attack or invade North America.  They can’t take the ground, they can’t hold the ground if they did invade, and they wouldn’t know what to do with North America if they could take it and hold it.  North Korea needs us as a place to sell things to earn enough money to get by.  They can’t feed their own people, let alone take over another country.

You could cut a deal and get North Korea to sit down and shut the fuck up, with four freighters of Canadian wheat and a tanker of oil.  A quiet negotiation and a simple settlement is not the War President’s way. 

He must have a Legacy.  And his buddies must have more money.