2009 was an interesting year for the Federal Political Parties.

One thing that is interesting is the fundraising.

According to Elections Canada…The Tories bring in about 4 million a quarter.

The Liberals are at about 60% of the Tories.

The NDP are at about half the Liberals.

Now compare that with a recent poll that showed the Tories at 39.5% Liberals at 30% and the NDP at 19%.

1 million a quarter gets you 19%.

2.3 million gets you 30%.

4 million gets you 39.5%.

Perhaps there’s a chicken/egg arguement to be made, but if Harper can pull together another million a quarter maybe he’ll hit the low 40’s?

Harper Prorogues….

The mainstream media is going bonkers over this because they think Harper is dodging some issue involving Afghan detainees and torture at the hands of Afghan officials.

First of all…who cares if the Canadian government knew for sure whether or not some scumbag terrorist was punched up by the Afghan nationals?

Second of all…ANY time Parliment is prorogued it’s a good thing.

The less done…the better.

The system is in place and everything is working fine. The last thing I want is a bunch of dim wits down east “doing stuff”. That’s a recipe for busy body big spending statism…we don’t need more of it.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/proroguing-parliament-a-travesty-yet-clever/article1415391/

Is the Mainstream Media over? No it is not.

Will it still be around for years to come? Yes, it will. In the same way that vinyl records are still “around”.

People were getting fed up with Big Media decades ago, but if they wanted to stay informed about the world they had very few sources with which to explore.

With the explosion of the internet, news sources are almost infinite.

There are many topics to touch upon with this issue, but for this post I want to explore the top ten reasons why 2009 marks the end of mainstream media domination.

#10. Iran and Youth.

 I was working on a story earlier this year in regards to the Iranian election protests http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Iranian_election_protests.

In Calgary the Iranian community held a rally in support of the Iranian protesters.

When the reporter I was with asked one of the twenty-something girls how she kept up to date about what’s happening in Iran, she stated…”You Tube, Facebook and Twitter”.

Now, with Iran flaring up again, I saw today that mainstream television broadcasters were reporting the incidents.

What were they showing for visuals..?

Footage from YouTube.

Thanks for coming out guys.

#9. You Tube Direct is introduced.

YouTube, obviously paying attention to the fact that news organizations regularly rip them off…(Although crazy reporter outtakes are pretty awesome on YouTube so…fair play) decided to officialize the whole notion and launched this…http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/16/youtube-direct-gives-news-orgs-a-way-to-accept-user-submitted-videos/

Isn’t it a matter of time before people just cut out the middle man and watch YouTube?

#8. The Failure to Cover ClimateGate.

ClimateGate…http://www.climatedepot.com/ was the story of the year. The mainstream media sat on it for two weeks before caving in…

This story broke on the internet and was covered by Bloggers.

The mainstream media either didn’t care…or just didn’t get it.

Either way, this was the biggest fail I’ve ever seen in media.

#7. The H1N1 pandemic that wasn’t.

In my newsroom, our boss ordered an H1N1 story EVERY day. Regardless of whether there was anything to tell.

The mainstream media hammered this thing like it was Y2K meets SARS.

People in my newsroom questioned it and bemoaned the coverage, but simply went along with it all.

Pandemics that aren’t are becoming far too common. SARA, Avaian Flu and now H1N1.

The mainstream media loved it.

Easy stories, lot’s of hyperbole…zero value.

#6. Death of Michael Jackson

TMZ broke this story and it spread like wildfire on Twitter and Facebook. By the time the mainstream media announced that night…the story was over.

Even CNN with their helicopter coverage couldn’t keep up with a celebrity gossip website and a social media network.

People learned about Michael Jackson’s death through friends and word of mouth…not the mainstream media.

#5. Tiger Woods wasn’t that interesting

The mainstream media loved the whole Tiger Woods fiasco…but at the end of the day…who cares?

A black millionaire golfer fucked a bunch of white women behind his wife’s back. That’s the subtext right?

Stay tuned!!! Not.

#4. Balloon Boy.

A guy phoning in a report about his kid in a balloon became an international media event. Exploitation “journalism” at it’s worst.

Do I need helicopter visuals of a potentially dead kid in a balloon a thousand miles away?

No, I don’t.

#3. Ed Stelmach turning to YouTube.

Ed Stelmach is dropping in the polls and Albertan’s have written him off. What does he do? He gets the message out directly to the people via YouTube question and answer period.

It failed horribly, (sample?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFRzCJVNAE8) but when an old farmer like Ed Stelmach wants to by-pass the old media, you know the end is near.

#2. Ryan Jenkins

Remember the Ryan Jenkins story?

http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/09/03/millionaire-murder/

He cut his wife up and stuffed her in a suitcase. He was from Calgary and ended up hanging himself in a motel room in BC.

How did the Canadian media get info about the story?

TMZ

Why would you watch tv in order to get regular website updates from an American celebrity news site?

Sad.

#1. The Localtvmatters campaign.

Here’s the site…http://localtvmatters.ca/blog/

When the crash of 2008 hit, the television stations across Canada were hammered worse than anyone. Global was (is?) bankrupt. Revenues were down from coast to coast. Stations were closed.

What did the broadcasters come up with as a solution?

Force the government to force the cable companies to give them money!!!!

Yeah!

That’s a great business plan.

Nevermind that people have PVR’s and Tivo’s in order to skip commercials…the very commercials that pay for the broadcasts. Nevermind that people don’t need local television as a primary source of news anymore…since…you know…it’s 2009! Nevermind that the quality of “journalism” seems to have slid down the sliding scale with neverending cut backs and corner cuts.

Just get Rogers and Shaw and whatnot to hand over free cash.

It worked for Ford.

2010 marks the beginning of something new.

Hopefully something better.

Definitely something different.

The post-Ralph PC party is asleep at the wheel.

Check this quote from the Tory ag minister…

Groeneveld says he calls it a protest poll because he can’t see how the Wildrose Alliance can lead with only a leader and a single MLA.

http://www.discoverfoothills.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11112&Itemid=68

They won’t lead with only a leader and a single MLA…they’ll lead with a leader and 46 MLA’s.

Not that hard to understand is it?

For the Tories, appearently, it is.

You know how leftists try to smear Pope Pius as a Nazi sympathizer..?

Here’s something interesting…

In 2007, a former high-ranking officer with the KGB admitted that the smear campaign that has tarnished Pius’s reputation was deliberately orchestrated from the Kremlin to counter the pope’s anti-communist work. Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa, who defected from the former Soviet bloc, wrote in the National Review Online that in his KGB career, “I myself was caught up in a deliberate Kremlin effort to smear the Vatican, by portraying Pope Pius XII as a coldhearted Nazi sympathizer.”

“In February 1960, Nikita Khrushchev approved a super-secret plan for destroying the Vatican’s moral authority in Western Europe,” wrote Pacepa. “Eugenio Pacelli, by then Pope Pius XII, was selected as the KGB’s main target, its incarnation of evil, because he had departed this world in 1958. ‘Dead men cannot defend themselves’ was the KGB’s latest slogan.”

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/dec/09122107.html

Flaherty’s on it everyone…I’m sure we’ve got nothing to worry about…since you’know…Jim Flaherty is working on it.

Think of Canada’s housing market as a ticking time bomb. Think of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty as the unlucky bomb disposal expert called in to deal with the problem.

Flaherty is moving slowly — oh, so slowly — to snip a wire here and there in an attempt to defuse the mess. Problem is, the ticking is getting louder by the minute.

http://www.cbc.ca/fp/story/2009/12/21/2368295.html

Since the end of 1999, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index has lost an average of 3.3% a year on an inflation-adjusted basis, compared with a 1.8% average annual gain during the 1930s when deflation afflicted the economy, according to data compiled by Charles Jones, finance professor at North Carolina State University. His data use dividend estimates for 2009 and the consumer price index for the 12 months through November.

Even the 1970s, when a bear market was coupled with inflation, wasn’t as bad as the most recent period. The S&P 500 lost 1.4% after inflation during that decade.

That is especially disappointing news for investors, considering that a key goal of investing in stocks is to increase money faster than inflation.

“This decade is the big loser,” said Mr. Jones. 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704786204574607993448916718.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Here is a small sample of dying countries in the world.

Their combined population is over 2 billion people and dropping….

Roughly half the countries in the world have below replacement fertility now.

The world’s population is expected to top out at 9.5 billion in 2050.

Yet, ask the average joe on the street and they still think overpopulation is a problem.

Canada is facing a massive demographic decline, with consequences ranging from a failed welfare state, to bankrupt pensions, to declining stock markets and soaring health care costs.

This combined with a need for hundreds of thousands of immigrants just to stem the decline is obviously a problem.

By the time people realize it is a problem it will probably be too late.

Maybe this is a good thing in a round about way.

Conservatives talk about the problems associated with the welfare state.

Maybe this is the conclusion….

Total Gong show…awesome…

No deal signed.

Chinese won’t do it.

Obama couldn’t do it.

Jim Prentice meandering around like a lost dog.

Harper hiding in the bathroom.

Protesters freezing their butts off.

This video sums it all up…

The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.

Thomas Jefferson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Components_of_the_United_States_money_supply2.svg

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has accused Barnaby Joyce of irresponsibility after the Opposition’s new finance spokesman suggested the United States may default on its debt and force the world into an economic meltdown.

The outspoken Queensland senator has also called for China to be banned from investing in Australia’s resources sector and says divestiture laws should be strengthened to break up the power of the big four Australian banks.

Mr Rudd has demanded Opposition Leader Tony Abbott confirm or repudiate Senator Joyce’s comments.

“For someone, as the alternative finance minister of Australia, to run around the place saying America could default, Australian state governments could default, that’s not responsible economic policy,” he said.

“That’s shooting from the lip, making it up on the run, I think being very, very irresponsible about basic Australian interests.”

In his comments, Senator Joyce questioned why the Copenhagen climate talks were taking place while there were other equally important issues to consider.

And he says Australia has to prepare for the possible fallout if the US defaults on its debts.

“You’d have to look at what would happen to world trade,” he said.

“What will be the effect then on the demand for Australian resources? Obviously that would go through the floor, and you know, how would Australia go forward in a position where the dynamics of the global economy are all changed?”

In reference to the banks, Senator Joyce says stronger divestiture powers would break up the four major banks……

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/11/2768572.htm?section=business

Debt is the real enemy. It takes quite a lot of debt to produce any income stream. Be it professional education (medicine, dentistry, law school), small businesses (think of franchises and mom/pop shops) or a vanilla real estate(strip malls, apartment buildings, commercial condos). A friend of mine who was laid off from an oil and gas company late last year has been unsuccessful at finding any work in his engineering profession. He’s looking at buying a small fast food type of business. For a small food business(think Subway Sandwich restaurant) that produces barely $100k of free cash per year, the prices are close to $500k. Why? Because there is plenty of debt available. Think of Canadian government’s pledge to help small businesses via number of its programs and the BDC. These loans all inflate the prices of underlying assets, just as CMHC based loans make real estate more expensive. Same with student loans. Cost of education keeps on climbing because the government wants to make education affordable. In the process, they are making education more expensive by throwing more debt at everyone. ‘Affordable’ in the government parlance means- we’ll lend you money so that you can afford something done by being debt slaves for the rest of your lives. Not unlike the targets of CMHC. In the US, this has reached a breaking point now with the recent riots in the Universities of California system. The government’s solution is simple- keep on increasing prices for homes, education, small businesses and keep on providing more debt. All the government entities do the same task. Instead of making things ‘affordable’, they make all these things accessible to joe public. At enormous price. And in a nation full of financial illiterates and ‘per month payment’ champions, accessibility means affordability….

http://albertabubble.blogspot.com/2009/11/weekend-open-thread_20.html#disqus_thread

Dem’s raising debt ceiling again…massively…

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/10/democrats-eyeing-elections-prepare-lift-federal-debt-ceiling/

Does no one realize that the United States is out of money?

This isn’t going to end well…

http://blog.american.com/?p=7572

The Alberta Tories have already demonstrated incompetence…now here comes the corruption.

 

In a remarkable interview Tuesday, Enmax’s CEO told of a private meeting where government officials advised utility companies not to question the need for new power lines.

Photograph by: Getty Images, Getty Images

The government wants Bill 50 to vanish into the dustbin labelled “last month’s problem.”

Enmax CEO Gary Holden isn’t about to let that happen.

In a remarkable interview Tuesday, Holden told of a private meeting where government officials advised utility companies not to question the need for new power lines.

In return for buying in, says the boss of Calgary’s city-owned utility, the companies would get commercial benefits from building new lines.

“When the participants at the meeting questioned the need (for new lines), they were told we should not question the need,” Holden said.

“When it was said that a regulator would certainly question the need, we were told: Don’t worry, a regulator won’t be part of the process.”

Other participants, including AltaLink, strongly deny there was any collusion or deal-making.

That doesn’t stop Holden from pressing Enmax’s campaign against Bill 50, and demanding a return…

http://www.calgaryherald.com/columnists/Enmax+raised+Bill+ethics+flag/2319621/story.html

 

What’s sad is that nobody really stops his arguments. He just seems to exist in a state of limbo and is ignored and ridiculed forever.

We’ll see….

Deaths from H1N1 in Alberta this year…62

http://www.health.alberta.ca/health-info/influenza-H1N1-cases.html

Deaths from Breast Cancer in Alberta this year…430

Deaths from Prostate Cancer in Alberta this year…440

http://www.cashandcarslottery.ca/media/2009%20Cancer%20Statistics.pdf

Deaths from car accidents in Alberta on average…about 400 a year

http://autos.canada.com/news/story.html?id=1833582

Deaths from workplace accidents in Alberta on average…about 100 a year…a bit more…

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2008/04/17/workplace-deaths.html

Read this…

The WHO says in the best-case scenario, two to seven million people will die in the next pandemic and tens of millions will need medical attention. But if the virus is particularly virulent, the number of deaths could be dramatically higher.

Here is the article…http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/avianflu/

Check the date…May 12th…2008.

For those who don’t understand the modern people hating environmental movement….check out this site….

highlight….

It would seem that humans need a common motivation, namely a common adversary, to organize and act together in the vacuum; such a motivation must be found to bring the divided nations together to face an outside enemy, either a real one or else one invented for the purpose.

http://green-agenda.com/globalrevolution.html

Follow this link and read…the guy takes ever increasing chunks of time based on ice cores in order to map out Earth’s temp.

Goes back tens of thousands of years…hockey stick indeed…we should be burning everything we can to stop global cooling…

http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3553