BT Calgary Blogs

This is icky to think about.  One study says your playground carries more germs than a public bathroom. EWW!! So, that’s why it’s important to try and prevent infection when your child gets a cut or scrape as soon as possible. There’s a simple protocol doctors are talking about, and there’s a new product available in Canada that’s pretty zippy and easy to use.

Here’s the story.

Lisa Rushka and her son Rylan go to the playground almost everyday.

“The playground is part of our daily routine,” says Rushka, “we’re always there, and he could stay for hours and hours.”
 ”I like going on the swings and I like going on the slides,” says Rylan.

But the playground isn’t exactly clean. One study says it has more germs than a public bathroom.

It makes sense, says Doctor Carlye Jensen. “Where does this bacteria come from? Our hands and children’s hands are dirty and they’re all over the playground with these dirty hands.”

That’s why Doctor Jensen says it’s a good idea to clean any scrapes and wounds kids get on the playground right away. “We have to feel comfortable letting them play on the playground  and know that they’re going to get a few scratches and scrapes or bruises. The important thing is to be able to treat them when they happen to prevent an infection down the road.”

The simplest way to prevent those infections, is to follow what Doctor Jensen calls the ‘clean , treat, and cover’ protocol.’ This starts with an antiseptic, because 80 percent of cuts and scrapes happen when you’re on the go – and there’s no clean water to wash the wound.

“A topical antiseptic spray would be a great thing to use. We now have this product called Polytogo from the people who make Polysporin which you can spray on right when the wound happens, starting the healing process,” says Dr. Jensen.

Then when you get home, you’ll want to “treat” the wound by putting on a topical antibiotic  and then “cover” the wound with a bandaid.

But Doctor Jensen says, “a lot of us think you should leave the wound open to let the air get at it, that actually slows down the healing process quite a bit and increases the risk of infection.”

Something Rushka hasn’t given much thought to, until now.

“I worry about his safety, but I want him to have fun and we sort of take our chances that way and trust he’ll be good for the most part.”

And with the Clean, Treat and Cover program he probably will.

ED!  I had a feeling Ed might make comeback.  Yesssssss!  The guy who plays it safe his whole life takes a risk for love.  *le sigh*  I love a happy ending. And I love valiant Jake (as much as he geeks me out).  Think he wasn’t looking for a rose because he already knows he might be the next Bachelor?!!

A few brief notes on the show Bachelorette fans:

Themes of the show:  great comebacks, awkward kisses, drunk moms, brothers who wreck game, and family living room parties.

1.  Reid’s hometown visit – greatest amount awkward kisses ever!  Either one party is pulling away or the other is.  He is such a calculated person it seems he can’t do anything without thinking about it first.  I actually think its endearing but SO awkward to watch.

Theme:  awkward kisses and brothers who wreck game (Brett, try to say nice things about your brother instead of flagging his commitment issues!  Totally threw Reid under the bus).

2. Michael, Michael, Michael – what a sweetheart and a heart breaker to watch the kid get dumped.  He is so genuine and totally the guy you want to set up with your single best gf because you know he will treat her like gold.  Unrequited love is so tragic.

Theme:  family living room dance party!  This one actually seemed genuine, not like a great “family moment” planted by the producers.

3.  Kiptyn – is a perfect specimen.  He is also the toughest nut to crack.  In the real world, I don’t really feel they would actually date.  Jill cares what he thinks about her though so the stakes are high here.

Theme:  drunk (and self-proclaimed overbearing) mother.  And I’m pretty sure the sister didn’t really approve of Jill.

4.  Jesse – does anyone else think Jesse wrecked his chances during the cricket moment on the hill?  Jill asked “are you ready for this” and he wasn’t exactly quick to respond. Think he blew it in that moment.  Or maybe it was his incredibly abrasive brother!

Theme:  family living room parties, drunk moms, and brothers who wreck game.  Jacob the Viking sure doesn’t mince on words does he?  And how hilarious was it to watch mom rock out to the boys family living room jam?  Hysterical.

5.  Wes – I’ve gotta write a whole page on him.  So many things to say.  But it’s time to run off to the Grandstand – I’ll post after the show!

  Working as I do in Calgary, some distance from Edmonton and the Alberta legislature, my encounters with Premier Ed Stelmach are infrequent and generally confined to perspiring media scrums in which questions about this subject and that, and then a half dozen more are fired at random.  There’s seldom any continuity, followup, no real theme struck and then pursued, which is how Stelmach’s minders like it because potential snares won’t snap shut.

  But even though he’s for the most part shielded by the scrum format, Stelmach doesn’t do very well.  The answers limp back to the horde, punctuated by long pauses, groping for words, a lot of ers and ums, and in fact Stelmach sometimes won’t approach reporters at all until the minders have taken him aside and re-briefed on what questions may be in store. 

  A Premier should know, you’d think, what might be coming at him, which is to say he should know the topics of the day, whether major or minor.  But Stelmach often blinks in apparent bewilderment, and will sometimes veer off into absurdity when asked why things in Alberta don’t seem to be going quite as they might be. 

  As in:  Would the Premier have something to say about a Fraser Institute survey in which oil and gas executives described the Alberta royalty structure as the worst of all the producing provinces in Canada?  It might have been expected Stelmach would respond with well…ah….the Fraser Institute y’know, well….ah….the Fraser Institute is just one man’s opinion and y’know ah…..the only opinion that counts is the um….voters’ opinion.  But instead he went gamboling off and said “our population is increasing and our birth rate is going up dramatically.  We’re delivering, I think, 140 babies a day, so that’s the positive side.”

  How nice that babies arrive in our midst while at the same time natural gas drillers depart, billions in provincial deficits loom, and banks eagerly await the arrival of Stelmachian envoys seeking loans. 

  I’m told and I’ve read that Stelmach, notwithstanding his bumbling public image (his speeches, especially in Calgary, are typically rewarded with reluctant murmurings of applause) is a remarkably cagey politician, very good on the streets, in the coffee shops, one on one, just talkin’ to folks, and that takes us back to December 2nd, 2006. 

  Edward Michael Stelmach, farmer, once-upon-a-time municipal reeve, Tory MLA, four-time cabinet minister, won the Conservative Party leadership against what on the face of it were very long odds.  He’d finished a distant third in round one of balloting to the front runner, Jim Dinning, but in the week between the first and second votes, Stelmach’s troops mounted a startling display of in-the-trench politics and put Dinning away. 

  (After Ralph Klein’s long stint as Premier, Dinning had the ABC thing   –  Anybody But Calgary  –  going against him, it’s true, but he also ran a dreadful campaign.  You can’t be a city slicker going out into the country with brand new boots, brand new western shirt, jeans, and a belt buckle gleaming like the headlight on a train.  Rural people see through that kind of mannequin in a microsecond and they don’t buy it.  Too smooth by half, was Jim). 

  But still, Stelmach had been just dimly in view after the initial voting and his recovery was the result of classic voter roundup:  collar them one by one, two by two, make sure, dead certain, they’re committed for a runoff (in effect, a third ballot) and then corral them for the showdown.   Stelmach and his campaign lieutenants did exactly that. 

  It was a euphoric moment that night up in Edmonton, and Stelmach then went on to obliterate the Liberals and NDP in the provincial election of March 3, 2008.  The Tories won 72 of 83 legislature seats:  game, set, and match. 

  But almost right away the fumbling started.  In late May that year, the Premier helped himself to a gigantic 30% salary increase  –  $159,450 a year to $213,450 just like that  –  and cabinet ministers got in on the act, too:  $142,000 to $184,000.  And then there was the contorted effort to revise the royalty structure in the oil and gas patches, in order that Albertans might get their “fair share” of energy wealth. 

  The whole royalty exercise, to which the Fraser Institute survey referred, was a page out of the Liberal policy handbook or worse, the NDP.  And as soon as the revisions became law, Stelmach and his ministers started backing off, mucking and stirring around with tax incentives because of “unintended consequences,” the most serious of which was legions of natural gas drillers abandoning Alberta for more welcoming regulatory enclosures in Saskatchewan and British Columbia.  Thousands of jobs lost, the energy business plummeting, and Alberta is turning out 140 babies a day. 

  But not to worry.  Even if Calgary oil and gas executives are alienated, en masse, by the provincial government the city itself is bedrock blue and certainly the rural stronghold remains intact.  The opposition parties, Liberal and NDP, have no chance in the countryside:  the mere party names are enough to make good rural Albertans shudder so Tory they are and Tory they’ll always be. 

  Stelmach should read a recent column by a man named Will Verboven, who’s the editor of Alberta Farmer.  It’s the largest circulation agricultural publication in the province, and Verboven’s piece is headlined “Rural Folk Angry with Stelmach.”  It goes on to say “this government’s arrogance has no bounds when it feels you are a captive voter,” and then cites a Stelmach policy which trampled all over the Alberta Beef Producers (ABP) and left them writhing in the dust.  The ABP legislation is not the only issue Verboven discusses, and he concludes there may well be an opportunity, now, for a somewhat right-of-centre party to take the Stelmachians on. 

  I’ve never met Will Verboven and I don’t profess for one second to be an expert on rural affairs, but I’m guessing this man is.  You don’t get to be editor of a major farm magazine without knowing the agriculture business and more significantly, the people who work in it.  (The Alberta Beef Producers has a membership of 28,000 farmers and ranchers). 

  But as I’ve already noted the NDP and Liberals are pretty well out of sight and out of mind in this province, so there’s no choice, right?  Right.   

  Stelmach had best watch out.  Things could change because the most interesting political story in Alberta is beginning to evolve around a woman named Danielle Smith.  She’s 38 years old, bright, articulate, a smart businesswoman, experienced in media, right of centre, and she’s looking to assume the leadership of the Wildrose Alliance Party. 

  Only a fool would predict, straight up, that if Smith takes over the WA on October 17th then it’ll be lights out for Stelmach.  But for the first time in living memory, there could be an opposition party out there which might just pull in some of those rural folks who’ve always voted Tory, but are now “angry with Stelmach.”

  Twenty-eight thousand irritated farmers and ranchers would be a start, and you can be sure Danielle Smith wouldn’t be arrayed in shiny boots, a new shirt, and big belt buckle while mixing in with them. 

  Smith has competition for the WA crown.  Calgary chiropractor Mark Dyrholm is in the race, but as of now Smith is odds on to win it.  Mind you if she does, it’ll be a bare beginning:  membership and fundraising drives will have to follow, and in particular Smith will need to subdue the Genghis Khan, nutbar, extreme right wing of the party. 

  But let’s assume for the moment she takes over.  One suspects Stelmach may try to brush her aside as a minor annoyance.  That’s what he did when Greenpeace set up shop in Edmonton a couple of years ago, and look what it got him:  “Dirty Oil” as the new Alberta logo.   

  Let me be plain.  I have no truck with Greenpeace types, but history verifies they’re relentless and masterful propagandists.  Stelmach and the Tories, and the oil boys for that matter had no idea what they were facing   –  and they’re still trying to recover.   

  Ah, well.  Look on the “positive side.”  Another 140 babies by day’s end.  Ed Stelmach says so.

Brad and Kellie are two of the most convincing people I have ever met.  They talked me into hopping on the back of a bike and Brad took me around the track at Race City at about 250km/hour. He said he went easy on me.  Beg to differ.

We snapped this shot after the ride – I think I was smiling through my nausea (but honestly the adrenaline rush was SO worth it!)  If you want to learn how to ride like a racer Brad is a wicked instructor – www.bgprschools.com. 

And check out the Parts Canada Superbike Championship all weekend long the athletes are really incredible!  Thanks to Race City for hosting BT on Thursday.

  There’s no need to dwell at length on the thick-witted tweeting of a man named Doug Elniski who until now has been a mute and anonymous Conservative MLA for Edmonton-Calder, but who this week was thrust into public view because of several monumentally stupid postings on Twitter, and on his blog. 

  Elniski, who’s married with three grown daughters, apparently considers himself qualified to counsel young girls and so he quotes from a speech he delivers at junior high graduations. 

  Listen up, girls:  “Men are attracted to smiles, so smile and don’t give me that ‘treated equal’ stuff, if you want equal it comes in little packages at Starbucks.”

  And:  “Ladies, always smile when you walk into a room because there is nothing a man wants less than a woman scowling because he thinks he is going to get sh– for something and has no idea what.”

  And then, venturing further afield with a Twitter tweet:  “Bikini car wash 82 129 Ave girls look cold (..)”

  So Elniski is evidently a bit of a voyeur  –  “The girls are gorgeous, not grown up but certainly getting there”  –  as well as a crude stumblebum of a misogonyst and for good measure not exactly up to speed on English composition. 

  Premier Ed Stelmach, whose misfortune it is to have Elniski in his caucus, called the man in for a stern lecture about watching one’s tweets on Twitter and for goodness sake don’t you be going on about leering at bikini car wash girls, whereupon Elniski babbled away to the media about how yes indeed, he screwed up and then, when asked directly about his rant on “don’t give me that ‘treated equal’ stuff,” screwed up anew. 

  “Public life is a real learning experience, and the biggest thing you learn when you’re in public life, first off, is that you are held to a higher level of expectation than you would be if you weren’t in public office.  That particular comment was a comment that would probably have been okay if someone was not in public office, but for someone who was in public office was not appropriate.”

  Oh, good.  It’s fine for men, if not holding elected office, to fling sexually suggestive comments into the Twittersphere, demean women, and worst of all stray into what for me is questionable territory.  Girls are “babies with pretty satin dresses, bouffant hairdo’s (sic) trying to walk in high heels.”

  Enough said and quoted about this dismal clown.  Stelmach should at once have fired Elniski’s can out of caucus, but didn’t of course, which will lead me next to some thoughts about the general state of governance in Alberta.  I’ll post tomorrow.

Imagine not being able to remember what you did just a few hours ago. That’s what life is like for Rob Rappel. He had a stroke in 2004. It’s his short term memory loss that’s the real challenge. He’s almost recovered most of the mobility on the right side of his body. Now his life is about his PDA and sticky notes. And researcher Teri Green wants to document this, so doctors who are talking to families of stroke survivors, know what to tell them about what life could be like down the road.

Here’s the story.

Rob Rappel and Teri Green have talked a few times. That’s because Green is researching what life is like for stroke survivors. And for Rappel – even though it’s been five years  since a blood vessel burst in his brain – he still has no short term memory.

He says, “I’ve done a lot of recovery in this time frame, I’m still recovering. I still don’t know what I did yesterday.”

At first he was paralyzed on the right side of his body, but after intense rehabilitation, physically he’s doing much better. Now, his focus is on how to live without remembering what he did just a few hours ago.

“I’m very explicit in what I enter into my PDA,” he explains,  “because this is my memory.”

So for many stroke survivors the physical disability is relatively easy to deal with – it’s the cognitive impairment  – the memory loss, the personality change, that is really a struggle.

Rob says, “the physical disabilities, that’s just minor right now, the biggest thing is the short term memory and lack thereof.”

This is the kind of information Green is collecting in her research. She’ll take the information back to the doctors who are talking to the families of stroke survivors.

Green says doctors “really didn’t know what to tell families, these are the people making decisions at the time, because the patient is unconscious, what to tell families about what the recovery process might look like over time.”

Rappel used to be an electrical engineer. He’s now unable to do that. Green has found that’s not uncommon.
She says, “very few of them have been unable to return to the work they did previously, simply because they couldn’t manage the need for the memory and the cognitive processes that you need.” And these changes are what can be very stressful for caregivers, Green discovered.
But Rappel doesn’t let this get him down. At least he lives independently and can drive a car.

“I keep focusing on what I can do, not what did I lose and that is what has allowed me to survive.”

Because that’s what he did.

“Everytime I get down on myself I say, Rob, you’re still around. You’re still here.”

First Ed…now THIS???

I cannot believe Jill let Jake go!  A HUGE upset on The Bachelorette last night.  Still stunned.

Questions for the morning after Bachelorette fans:

a) WHAT WAS SHE THINKING???!!!

b)  Is Wes *really* that charismatic that Jill can’t see through any of his snaky charms?  “I have records to sell…I have Jill wrapped around my little finger”?!!  And what country music lover is going to buy his album?! What goes around comes around Wes.  Hope comes around by the end of the season.

c)  Let’s say the elimination was between Mike and Jake, which one would you pick?

d)  Anyone else feel Jake is the perfect pick to be the next Bachelor?

e)  WHO is having “intimacy” issues?  I think from the promo it might be Jesse which saddens me.  Discuss.

The saving grace is that Jill still has Kiptyn and Jesse – the 2 remaining front runners.  Bet they aren’t feeling too bad Jake was sent home.  I’m going to throw Reid in there for top 3.  Eat the fondue Reid.  It’s not gonna kill ya.

P.S. It’s occurred to me that the only way The Bachelor series has NOT ended is with the Bachelor/Bachelorette giving the final rose to a contestant who has *already* been eliminated.  Maybe we really haven’t seen the last of Jake…or Ed for that matter!

A lineup this long can only mean one thing. A new model of the iPhone has just gone on sale. Yes, Apple has released the iPhone 3Gs this morning and people were clamouring to get their hands on it. Just check out this lineup outside Apple’s New York flagship store. A few hundred people waited outside in the light rain to be one of the first to get their hands on the spec-bumped phone.

So what’s new with this phone? Two colours are now available, black and white. The phone is up to two times faster than the previous iPhone 3G, which means you can launch apps and websites quicker. A new camera (3 megapixel instead of 2) which can also shoot video. You also get voice control and a built-in compass.

The new phones will be available this morning at Rogers stores across Canada. Two price points have been announced, $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model. You will also be able to purchase the phone without a contract, but be prepared to shell out a lot of cash. $699 for the 16GB model and $799 for the 32GB model. Ouch!

Is it worth upgrading to? Watch for my full review next week on Breakfast Television!

Another story about uniform access to medication. It’s a big issue… particularly for certain patients with chronic kidney disease on dialysis.

Here’s the story.

Marshall Thorowsky still has trouble getting around. That’s because he suffered a terrible complication from his kidney disease that almost cost him his leg.

“Lots of extreme pain, wouldn’t sleep at night time, it’s devastating,” says Thorowsky. His wife Carroll adds, “he was saying just give me something and I’ll cut that leg off because I can’t stand the pain anymore.”

Here’s what happened. Kidney patients on dialysis are not able to get phosphate out of their bodies. Doctor Nairne Scott-Douglas explains, “your phosphate goes up it will suck calcium out of your bones and weaken your bones.”

But the catch is calcium is given to dialysis patients so it will bind to the phosphate – so patients can excrete it.
But for some, that calcium builds up and causes problems in the body. And this is exactly what happened in Thorowsky’s leg.

His wife says, “there’d been some large amount of calcium depositing right into the vessels and veins in his leg and it was cutting off the blood supply.”

So it looked like Thorowsky had flesh eating disease on his leg. But then doctors told him about Renagel.

“It is a non calcium based phosphate binder – it binds up phosphate in your food without delivering calcium to your body,” says Dr. Scott-Douglas.

So it puts the phospate and calcium in patients like Thorowsky back in balance. But Renagel is not covered by Alberta Health – even though it’s available everywhere else in the country.

“Why would every province in Canada approve the use of this drug in certain clinical situations except Alberta, the only answer you can come to on that is we’re not willing to pay for it,” says Dr. Scott-Douglas with some frustration.

But Thorowsky got free access to Rengael by appealing to Genzyme – the pharmaceutical company that makes it. He’s still on it and his leg has healed.

“I know I needed it, and it certainly made a 
difference in my life,” he says.

Which is why the Thorowskys are speaking out. They, and Doctor Scott-Douglas feel there should be uniform access to the medication.

“We need to have control of pharmaceutical costs, I’m not against that,” says Scott-Douglas, “what I’m against is having an unequal playing field between Canadians.”
 
Carroll Thorowsky says, “we would certainly expect Albertans be provided with or have access to this type of therapy.”

  It would never end, so it seemed, but praise be it’s about to.

  We’ve endured another week of ham-fisted grandstanding on parliament hill, but we’re now to be granted a reprieve from the whole sad lot of them (the Commons summer adjournment starts Friday) and there’ll accordingly be blessed silence descending over Ottawa, except now that I think about it we’ll have to put up with the racket anyway because Honourable Members will be trolling the summer picnic and barbeque circuits. 

  Cook your own burgers in your own back yard, I say, and ignore the swarm of political travellers about to arrive in your midst.  Which is what I’m getting ready to do by altering course and providing evidence, first,  that Canada is not the only place with nitwits posing as politicians.   And second, this country needs somebody like T. Boone Pickens.

1. Brooksville, Florida

  A pleasant little outpost, so the tourist brochures say, 40 miles or thereabouts north of Tampa, population 8,000 give or take.  The place has a city council whose alderfolk apparently have so little on their minds they’ve been moved to decree an ordinance covering, as it were, dress code for municipal employees. 

  From now on, Brooksville city workers will be required to wear underclothes and use deodorant.  They gotta have them boxers on, or briefs, and bras, maybe thongs for the women although the edict doesn’t go specifics that small, and generally make sure they observe “strict personal hygiene.”

  I’m not kidding here  –  and there’s more.  The dress code prohibits exposed underwear, clothing with foul language, and “sexually provocative” clothes.  No piercings, moreover, anywhere except the ears.  (Navel, nose, lip, tongue, forehead, any bodily spot Brooksville municipal folks might have fancied are off limits, as of now). 

  And the deodorant, too.  Spray and spoon it on:  there’ll be no obnoxious scents wafting around this city hall, y’hear, and none in any public places actually, so the gardeners and construction workers and roadbuilders will need to cart around a totebag of Mennen or Old Spice or whatever so when they start sweating like hogs in the Brooksville summer heat, well then they can just reload and come up smelling like roses. 

  The mayor of the joint, one Joe Bernadini, voted against the dress code ordinance because he figured it “takes away freedom of choice.”   That seems odd because the implication is Brooksville employees should have the option to expose their underwear if so inclined or not wear any at all, and not apply roll-on either, and if they want to, pierce themselves on just about every square inch of skin. 

  It’s pretty stupid stuff, especially when you consider that cities and business firms and all the rest have managers or supervisors who’ll take aside a malodorous employee for a quiet word about freshening up.  Or if there’s a young miss with an overexposure of underthingies or perhaps chestal area, same thing:  best you cover a bit more so the rest of us get to see a bit less.   

  All the papers and wire services and television networks put together stories about the Brooksville dress code, which probably guarantees it’ll be rescinded within hours.  Politicians don’t like to be mocked, and don’t like to be portrayed as dimwits, which raises the question of why they insist on behaving like dimwits. 

  At any rate, if or more likely when the Brooksville dress code is rescinded, and the controversy thereupon expires, we Canadians can be grateful for small mercies.  The crowd on parliament hill probably won’t get wind, so to speak, of the goings on in Florida, and will accordingly not be inspired to apply the same kind of aromatic and sartorial standards to every single federal government employee in Ottawa, and across the land.  Let us rejoice. 

2. T. Boone Pickens

  The man is 81 years old, says he’s been a Republican for 81 years, and by the estimates of Forbes Magazine he’s a billionaire three times over. 

  T. Boone made his money in the awl bidness, as they say in Texas (which is where he hangs out) and along the way is said to have trampled over a goodly number of small energy operators by means of hostile takeovers.  A corporate raider, some people claim, but Pickens has never said he’s in business to lose money, and he’s certainly not going to ignore a deal even if somebody else gets squeezed out. 

  What’s interesting about TBP is that after more than 50 years in the awl bidness, making money by exploring and drilling and investing in the traditional oilfield manner, he’s now saying the U.S. of A. had better smarten up and redesign its energy policy from top to bottom.  What he means is eliminate, once and for all, American dependence on foreign oil, and get busy with solar, wind, and above all, natural gas development in country.  In the U.S. of A.  And he says he has the plan to make it all work.

  T. Boone has an interesting list of quotes about the subject.  Richard Nixon in 1974:  “Let this be our national goal:  in the year 1980, the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need.”  Then Gerald Ford came along to the White House and said the same thing with slightly different phrasing.  He was followed by Carter, Reagan, Bush # 1, Clinton, seven presidents in all, concluding with Bush # 2 who said in 2003 Americans are “addicted to oil,” and so his goal would be to “promote energy independence for our country.”

  T. Boone says not one of them followed through.  They all did nothing except talk, so TBP decided to get busy and draw up the “Pickens Plan” which he did and then spent around $60 million dollars of his own money to promote.  He says he’s got the ear of President Barack Obama, and it looks as if by late this summer, the U.S. Congress will pass a bill designating natural gas  –  American natural gas  –  as the energy source of the future for both industry and transportation.   

  There’s no telling at this point how far the Pickens Plan, which he says is the only plan out there, will go.  But that’s not the essential point.  The real story here is that a private citizen, albeit with a lot of money and influence, has stepped into the yawning energy policy vacuum in Washington and for now, anyway, has moved the politicians down there to get off their rear ends and do something. 

  We can debate later and worry later about whether T. Boone’s plan will ultimately hurt Canada (he’s got money here and says it won’t and besides he told a crowd of oil executives in Calgary he doesn’t consider Canadians to be foreign, he’s talking about those folks in the Middle East).  

  As I say, that’s a discussion for another day.  In the meantime, T. Boone Pickens  –  non politician  –   is the current architect of U.S. energy policy.  Pity we don’t have someone like him in Canada to straighten out the parliament hill mob, although not necessarily on energy matters.  Just straighten them out, period.