A bit like the Queen’s birthday [Queen Victoria, that is, no getting all modern around here!] which we celebrate on a day that is specifically, by statute, never her actual birthday, May 24th, Canada day is a holiday dedicated to outdoor eating and drinking. Fireworks, yes, but mostly drinking and eating. Like July 4th, but with hesitant polite patriots. And a lovely neighbour, who hails from the U.S., who has managed to fill in enough paperwork again to get us barricades so we can block off our block, almost legally.
Setting the ambience for this public display of eating and drinking, much waving and wearing of the Liberal Party colours will be evident here in Ottawa, the nation’s capital, ostensibly picked by said Queen because that is where her finger landed on the map … not really, just a bad Ottawa joke … there are three rivers that intersect here that were of significant navigational and economic import at the time. And speaking of said Queen, I just have to add, she seems to have enjoyed her eating and drinking, as they can date her underpants by their waistband, having what one might call an expansive photographic record of their owner’s expanding waist: Queen Victoria’s ‘big pants’ to be sold at auction in Wiltshire:
The liberal government of the day cleverly remade our national flag into essentially a Liberal Party sign, removing any trace of blue, the colour associated with conservatism here, and any symbols other than the maple leaf, during one of our spasmodic attempts to reinvent our past and create a national story by destroying all remnants of our colonial history. But I am proud of our slow shedding of our colonial yoke and the use of argument over weapons and will raise a glass of not Canadian wine in thanks for wonder at being born at all, let alone into such a magically lucky setting.
Replacing the flag at the cottage, May 2013
Bonne Fête, Canada, and Santé, which we could all use a little bit of, to go with our dwindling sanity.
Holy crap! That is one amazing sky!
I hit a bit of a downturn but think it is passing – and we are forging ahead with plans to drive off in the hippie van to Miramichi to join up with eldest offspring and her posslq and his family for a week and then back to go up to the cottage, towing the boat, for first the in-law’s 60th and then a week at Go Home. It seems both impossible and imminent and possible and far away … but I think it will be good for blogging! Stuck in chair in nauseated cloud is not good.
Now if a bank fails in Greece and nobody cares and then they do it again two years later and still nobody cares … or did I miss something. Just drop another crayon in the pot, to reference an obscure peanut’s cartoon in which weak hot chocolate is improved with the addition of a crayon … a meta cartoonist joke bridging the age gap … But sure just print some more of this paper money … nobody even knows how much there really is or who actually gets bailed out, so whose to notice?
we had very unusual weather last evening. i took video also, but it did not come out too well.
the situation in Greece is a disgrace. it is not true that nobody cares. it is just that the western news media doesn’t think it is a good idea to discuss people dying for lack of medicine, or no doctors, or no shelter, or no food in a former first world country, and one that is still part of the so called European Union.
Happy Bastille Day. À la lanterne!
But printing presses still work … they just keep on churning. It is that old joke about when you owe the bank a thousand dollars you have a problem, but when you owe the bank some 800000 gazillion euros, they have a problem. And now everyone has a problem.
Bank of Canada just cut rates. Go ahead Yellen, make my day. will the charade never end? un f real.
the Greek saga is the same story as in the USA, but they are just further down the neo-liberal road to hell.
this is good. this is real world action. no politics, no theory, no spin.
and probably no comment. 😕
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/07/14/santa-cruz-county-votes-to-cease-doing-business-with-five-tbtf-mega-banks/
how about this one then?
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2015/07/china-and-greece-wobble-canada-dips-into-recession-yellen-unfazed/
Whenever I sign in again always reminds me of some older/other times. (My oh My how time goes bye)
Tomato plant update coming shortly.
And Neil drifted in.
So here’s the rundown: 2 better bush (1 tomato each so far and looking pretty puny) flowering very slowly…limping along basically. Still hopeful.
1 mountain pride or some similar word,..grows fast and tall and put leaves on late, flowers baked and dried at first but tomato’s now and flowering well.
1 Cherry that is just happy and going nuts.
Worst looking plant to start with ( a rescue from wally world) and likely given my most attention.
How does a flower grow.
One of those random lost lyrics that just pops in (from an old Cat Stevens song).
Good Morning. Not only does Santa Cruz get a comment, it got forwarded. That is great news. And the article about Canadian exports, etc., and the delayed debt reckoning also bang on. I suspect that Americans get more and more buy American too as the depression sets in.
We are about to go off on our Miramichi trip and it is an interesting economic tourism moment to head east, which in Canada in general means into more and more so-called poverty, although our poverty is pretty nice as far as world poverty goes. But we are going to pretty much drive straight through Quebec, whose potential campsites included many a “naturiste” camp, one of which advertised its “naturiste-ness” by showing an aerial photo of people playing tennis, yes tennis, in their birthday suits. I could hear the slapping of body parts just looking at the photo. Hockey would be a silly nude sport, and bowling would be especially goofy, what with only the shoes. But tennis? Ugh. New Brunswick though is a resource extraction province mostly but huge and lots of unspoiled land, few people, many of them Acadians. Ontario used to be what we called a “have” province, Canada being divided into haves and have-nots according to these weird federal agreements where we try to support poorer provinces and end up creating regional hatreds. But we have slipped and I think the engine of Canada is not grinding apace. Much of that wealth was an off-shoot of the auto industry, and with 40% of youth choosing not to drive, let alone everybody going broke, those days are gone.
Good luck with the tomatoes – last year every single thing that I started to grow got eaten by sneaky rodents. But nothing beats fresh tomatoes. Glad to hear about your garden – perhaps the sun has been shining a tiny bit on you – which I mean metaphorically.
We are doing our best to take things in stride, but my stride is super wobbly!
it has been cooler than normal here but we are supposed to be getting into a more summer like pattern now – hot and humid. so my tomato plants are doing well, just way behind schedule. i am noticing too that i have plenty of flowers, but not many are setting fruit. it is not too hot here which can cause that, so i suspect it is because there are so few honeybees for pollination. i am not sure, but it’s a guess. my tomatillos however have plenty of fruit, but are way small yet. starting to get a few chiles to pick. all my pepper plants this year are stunted, even the ones i bought after June 1st! so they must been exposed to too much cold before i bought them. i am really “Jonesing” for home made Pico de Gallo.
sorry for the stream of bummer articles. it is that i am really disappointed with what just happened in Greece. i really had thought that the referendum there marked a turn. call it what you want, neo-liberalism, Thatcherism, supply side, Reaganomics, it has not worked at all. how miserable does it have to get before enough people wake up! do we really have to get to the point of nothing left to lose? i am afraid so. so instead of reform, we will get revolt. but we are talking about the entire “western” world this time.
edit: we crossed in the mail. glad you are back Xty!
Oh and I might add it has been a great weather year for my garden which is chock a’block with flowers and has needed almost no watering or weeding. Got some crucial things done puttering after mum passed and before this dumb-ass set-back, and finally seem to have achieved a fairly good round of constant colour – lillies and bergamot flowering, hostas starting, daisies coming along … very satisfying (only took 20 years) and if it were all dry I would be in despair. And the homemade suet has been a massive success – 4 weeks that ball lasted and through hot weather and interminable starling attacks. Once saw 3 little woodpeckers on the tree from which it hangs at once! The beed suet stays much harder at room temperature than the pork lard and that seems to have made all the difference. Suet, crunchy peanut butter, oats, walnuts and raisins chopped up (because that’s what I had) and a few cups of bird seed. Awesome entertainment.
That is meant to say beef – what the heck is beed that spell-check is not offended?
As to bummer articles … I had been going to make some facetious comment before the Greek thing about how they would just print more money and expand the debt, and then they did. It is really now a question of when … and we cannot know. There is an incredible amount of wealth in North America that can be absorbed still that insulates us from what is coming. The substitution economy is a huge impossible to measure aspect of this.
Oh and I keep hearing about how great Scott Walker has been for this state called Wisconsin … did I miss something? (Just trying to cheer you up!)
as long as the Donald is pulling the clown car, the strategy of the democrats seems to be to save the dirt on Walker for later, should he “pull” into the lead.
there are real world examples of the failure of Kock policy real close to home. like the economic performance of Minnesota compared to Wisconsin; the two neighboring states have been run under different economic policies, or better said, philosophies.
then there is the dirty politics, real dirty, of Walker. and the gutting of education. and the sell out to corporate interests. i could go on.
but if our former governor, Doyle, didn’t suck so bad, we would not have gotten Walker. are you listening Obama? what an empty suit, hypocritical bastard. um sorry, i ramble. 😡
perhaps there is another way forward? what a dismal failure is this two party system. all choices land between two points on a line. but there are former partisans out there on both sides, that have seen the light, and aren’t afraid to tell the truth as they see it.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/07/15/greece-sound-fury-signifying-much-paul-craig-roberts/
The Trump. It really is worse than fiction. Blame the Irish! Oh, sorry, that was so last century of me. Hate everyone! And are there no mirrors in any of the Trump Towers? Or does he cast no reflection and thus fail to notice that he has not managed to match earth hair-styles and therefore his alien roots are showing?
Oh and I really must say congratulations on gay marriage. The harm done through discrimination outweighs any other consideration it seems to me. It always sucks when you give up privilege, and I can only assume, that as in Canada, getting married makes you a total tax sucker. I think we figured we could save $10,000 a year in taxes (this is about a decade ago) by getting divorced. But there seem to be some advantages … I keep looking for them … Just kidding – hubby has been the salt of both the earth and water lately – doing a lot of extra weight-bearing for his hampered and pampered first mate.
yup. the democrats truly have been reduced to social issues. and if the libertarians weren’t a quirk of far right idiocy in this country, they would be on the same side on the gay marriage issue. it gets no more hypocritical than that. or maybe it does. this quote (just change a few descriptors, and a few ((fake)) stats) could describe the Obama administration perfectly. but he is actually talking about the 4th Reich, er i mean the European Union…
“By a twist of fate, the Left has let itself become the enforcer of an economic structure that has led to levels of unemployment once unthinkable for a post-war social democratic government with its own currency and sovereign instruments. It has somehow found ways to justify a youth jobless rate still running at 42pc in Italy, 49pc in Spain and 50pc in Greece, despite mass emigration.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/11742624/EMU-brutality-in-Greece-has-destroyed-the-trust-of-Europes-Left.html
here’s one of the comments from the above article. you need not be a trained economist to understand the failure of the EU from a monetary point of view. one thing that i cannot stress enough is that Germany has a corporate controlled media, in fact all of Europe does, just like in the good old, and by the way great, US of A (and Canada). it is so sad to see that history has repeated, right on schedule (generationally)… there are very few Germans still alive that intuitively understand how propaganda has evolved into what is now benignly referred to as public relations.
well, here goes it…
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hellbent • a day ago
Anyone of any political persuasion who has not seen the light over the way Greece has been treated must be incapable of independent thought. All the talk of being a club and we are all in it together has been shown to be nonsense. There has been much talk of a two tier Europe but in fact there seems more levels than that even in the Euro zone.
At the top we can see Germany, that believes its destiny is to rule Europe. Then comes countries like the Netherlands and Finland who appear to be doing the best they can to keep their heads down and get on with it. Next is France who will not accept that they do not have the influence they think they have. Then comes Italy, Spain and Portugal who are suffering with a currency that,for them, is over valued and making it difficult for them to compete. The lowest tier at the moment is only occupied by Greece.
The other countries in the Eurozone can be fitted in at different levels almost on a daily basis. Ireland is doing its best to survive and to be honest has done well to survive. The ex Russian block countries are hoping that everything will hang together because they might not be doing well by European standards but it is a lot better than what they had before. Malta, etc. are just wondering what the thinking was that made them want to join in the first place.
The country doing the best out of the Euro is Germany which ignores all the rules about how big a budget surplus they are allowed to run while rubbing their hands on the way to the bank to deposit the huge profits they are making from what for them is a totally undervalued currency which allows them to continue to export to the rest of the world in a way that would not be possible if they still had the Mark as it would be so strong.
Simply put the only country benifitting from the Euro is Germany.
And Belgium … let us not forget Brussels – those pinheads actually rule the Euro-roost and live in castles to this day.
there is some truth to that Xty. you see the same in the USA, though the old money here isn’t quite so old. it is easy too for those living behind motes to justify the inequality. the PR is always self serving to someone. what happens when a society turns money or the pursuit of such into God, or a religion? it makes for some easy to sell PR. like the old saying goes, “money talks, and bullshit walks.”
here is another quote, and article. maybe the situation in Greece will mark a turn after all. the articles i am finding today are largely free of political bias. maybe finally people are waking a little to the partisan illusion? what i mean is that both parties in the USA are bought and paid for. movements like the Tea Party are infiltrated by the corporate cash almost at inception, or brutally shut down like Occupy. and the propaganda, i mean PR of mainstream media marginalizes the ‘crazies’ that often are simply unsophisticated people sick of the status quo.
this succinctly summarizes the PR campaign in Germany…
“A narrative emerged of southern borrowers as the victims of only their own incompetence, sloth, and greed.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/greece-crisis-banks-greedy/398603/
may i present Nigel Farage of the “right wing” UKIP party. yet i perceive him to be about as far to the right as that “commie” Tsipras of the “left wing” Syriza party is left. funny that one is driven to the fringe, far, far away from that soft, gooey and delicious neo-liberal center, should one seek out any opinion made based upon a modicum of common freaking sense.
and wow, sorry, i am on a roll today. again unemployed, and it is hotter than hell outside. so enjoy…
remember when “Turd” Ferguson said he’d eat his hat if silver ever got below 22? right about now i would like to kindly suggest that he eat shit. yes, sorry for the language, but it is so very appropriate.
I pop in and look at that site about once a month these days and wonder about some of the decent people that were there ( Murphy, etc), everyone is gone.
So we’re polishing turds here, but the positive take away is having made a few good friends.
I haven’t looked at the price of silver for about 6 weeks now and i think i have 42 silver eagles hanging out at my brothers place and 1 in my wallet( super negotiating power for the apocalypse )
I’m amazed that he has kept what he has kept, especially after that HOH! fiasco.
More boring stuff about my tomato plants. I’ve noticed that the flowers that have leaf cover progress well, so the exposed ones just fry (no chance..it really has been 90’s here for around 5 weeks, worse than August which is normally the hottest but not even this intense and buckets of rain with t’storms quite often)
The older i get, the less i like the extremes..80’s will be like spring, and i’m really not complaining, just really love the spring and fall stuff.
u toob once had some good Dylan tracks that i guess he scrubbed for monetary reasons but some seemed to have creeped(crept) back in. There was a live track of “Shelter from the Storm'” that was very good. Gonna try my luck on
this ain’t it but closest i could find. why are there better Japanese versions of this on that monopolized site?
anyway, i’ll likely be irritating tonight.
Mr: Green (he’s gone again Xty) and a brazilian fermented sugary mix with key limes and a glass full of ice that my body hasn’t decided to reject yet.
that song reminded me of this road i drove in Colorado – my wife was riding shot gun. she kept freaking out because i was trying to look at everything despite the curves, often no guard rails, and in spots if you approached another vehicle, someone was backing up. at one point i lifted my hands off of the wheel and said, “look honey, no hands!”, and she completely lost it. still makes me grin ear to ear. i almost hit some mountain sheep coming around a sharp bend about 10 minutes later too.
and was reminded of this song too…
wanted to send begonias to Xty. Closest i could find.
is back (that dude must have a full blown benefit package from the moderator, massive time off with pay and complete apathy)
Happy Flowers!
big Natalie crush. incredible voice and everything.
for those not well versed in finance, a pretty decent and above all, truthful explanation. maybe a bit of hyperbole. but i just love the “NWO” reference near the end. Occam’s razor applies to conspiracy theory as well.
http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/greece-what-you-are-not-being-told-by-the-media/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QF3Cjbk1zU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QF3Cjbk1zU
i really hope this works. and i love you STEVE.
