West Coast Can-Am Politics

USA Today reports " Some Megachurches Closing for Christmas ": "Even though the holiday falls this year on a Sunday, when churches normally host thousands for worship, pastors are canceling services, anticipating low attendance on what they call a family day ." (emphasis added). The article mentions that these churches are holding many Christmas worship services in the days up to and including Christmas Eve, but quotes one source that " church leaders decided that organizing services on a Christmas Sunday would not be the most effective use of staff and volunteer resources . The last time Christmas fell on a Sunday was 1994, and only a small number of people showed up to pray, she said." Your host here, SpaceNeedleBoy, is speechless at the thought that churches would actually CLOSE THEIR DOORS on Sunday morning worship, a tradition among most Christian churches for over two thousand years. It's one thing to reduce the Christmas schedule to a single...

A scant two weeks ago, North American mass media were inundated with horrific images of a deranged gunman holding hostages in a Tacoma, Washington shopping mall. A Seattle alternative media paper, The Stranger, has an interesting view of this situation. The alleged gunman, Dominick Sergio Maldonado, demonstrated a reckless lack of personal responsibility as well as engaging in criminal trespass - but somehow I have doubts that the Washington State criminal justice system is going to give him the kind of correctional punishment which he so richly deserves. In the meantime, the story reinforces the ridiculous stereotype many folks in the Northwest (and throughout the States) have that Tacoma is an abnormally dangerous city. I'll post some more story links here, and more blog links on the story about Mr. Maldonado's attack on the lives and liberty of other citizens just because he wanted to punish the rest of the world.

Over the past decade, American banks and credit unions have aggressively promoted usage of VISA or MasterCard "check cards" for debit purchases, even though VISA and MasterCard don't provide PIN-based security for their cards. Some good information about VISA/MasterCard "debit cards": Fatwallet Finance , U.S. PIRG , Clark Howard , Privacy Right , Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco , and more. By contrast, Canada's financial institutions developed the integrated nationwide Interac PIN-based debit system which is almost universally accessible across Canada. Interac Direct Purchase seems more secure for consumers than the signature-based, non-real-time U.S. MasterCard/VISA debit system. However, a few stories have surfaced in Canada regarding organized fraud and criminal activities to "swipe" cardholders' PIN numbers. Here are a few links: January 2005 CTV W-Five debit card fraud investigation January 2003 CBC News "Debit Card Frau...

General Motors announced a drastic manufacturing capacity reduction, reducing 26,000 U.S. jobs and 3,900 Canadian jobs with the automaker. Bad as these cuts are for beleaguered American auto industry workers - since each GM manufacturing job essentially translates into 6 to 7 jobs for other auto-industry-dependent employment, including parts suppliers, vendors, and also the ripple effect of GM employees' consumer spending in their local communities - it's proportionately worse for Canada and for Ontario in particular. The per-hour compensation for Canadian workers doesn't require paying bloated amounts for private-sector health care benefits. Worse for Canadians: In March 2005, the Government of Canada contributed $200 million of taxpayer funds towards the GM Canada's $2.5 billion Beacon Project Among the Beacon Project's goals: The project includes an investment in state-of-the-art equipment for an all-new Oshawa Car Assembly Plant paint facility, which will p...

Sony/BMG (the giant recorded music conglomerate formerly known as CBS Records/Columbia Records and RCA Victor Records , has created an enormous controversy throughout the blogosphere and technology world with its recent release of "copy-protected" music CDs that can over-ride your home PC's security firewalls. In many years of purchasing and collecting legal copies of albums on LP, CD, cassette, and even the venerable 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel tape formats...I've never seen a record company go to such lengths to demonstrate CONTEMPT for its paying consumers. Since March 2005, Sony/BMG has encoded some of its music CDs with Digital Rights Management (DRM) software which is intended to restrict "burning" and copying of music CDs. Playing these audio CDs on a PC forces a "rootkit" software download onto the user's PC, without their explicit knowledge and consent, creating a huge potential security violation for the PC user who simply ...

Thanks to Stepnan Scharansky at Sound Politics - City Journal offers some superb intelligent critical dialogue on urban topics from a conservative or moderately-conservative Manhattan perspective. The articles are well thought through and don't take a condescending "I told you so" perspective. Highly recommended reading.

Residents of BC's Fraser Valley have been deeply concerned for over 5 years about the controversial proposal to construct a 660MW gas-fired power plant in Sumas, Washington, directly on the U.S.-Canada border . National Energy Systems Company of Kirkland, Washington put forward its proposal to American and Canadian regulatory authorities in late 2000, during the "electric power crisis" which now has been seen as largely associated with Enron's manipulation of electric power markets. Almost five years after the unveiling of the project - which was successfully lobbied through various Washington State and U.S. regulatory agencies even with strong opposition by environmentalists - SE2 appears to be facing a final series of legal challenges by Canadian authorities. In 2003, the National Energy Board of Canada effectively vetoed the SE2 project from proceeding by denying SE2's request permission to construct a power line, through British Columbia, connecting SE2 with...