I seem to be somewhat more in the blogging mood these days and I have a few things I would like to get off my chest.

The new Korean president is now facing his first big challenge and it is in a place that I would have never thought possible: Mad Cow Disease. There have been a grand total of THREE cows found in the USA with BSE and two more in Canada! OH MY FUCKING GOD! Imagine that! Two cases of BSE in the USA since 2003! That in about a gazillioneen cattle. There have been a staggering THREE cases of vCJ, the associated human disease. In a population of 300,000,000 million, half of them obese, you are more likely to be hit by a satellite falling from space.

Alas, it has nothing to do with safety or health. It is all about good old fashioned Waygook hatin’ and America is always the favourite target. You see, this nonsense is being led by the Korea Federation of Trade Unions, the Dear Leader’s mouthpiece in the south. Korea is being kept divided because if it ever reunited, it would become the world super power and put America in its place and them there Yankees wouldn’t like that, would they?

I watched, with great sadness, Korea destroy itself between 1994 and 2007. For ten years the Dear Leader set the agenda in the South and that agenda was invariably waygook hating. I had hoped the new president, Lee Moon Bak would do something to stand up to the mobs that the North so successfully mobilizes whenever it can. Of course, the timing of the resumptions of US beef exports could not have been better because summer vacation is starting and it is easy to get the kids on the street.

This will the be the new administration’s first real test of whether it can stand up to the mob. If the mob wins, the presidency is doomed. Korea is presently trying to get a Free Trade Agreement passed with the USA. It would be very much in Korea’s interest to get said document ratified before Barack Obama becomes president. I have a pretty strong feeling that Obama will not take closed markets and Yankee hatin’ any better than Bill Clinton did.

On another topic, the Retarded Canadian Auto Workers Union.

Gasoline is hitting historic high prices. So it should because we Canadians, and our American neighbours, are profligate wasters of energy. I am old enough to remember both the 1973 and the 1979 oil “crises.” The sales of US made tanks tanked and guess what, they are tanking again. Japanese car sales went through the roof and people found out that they were fuel efficient, well made and fun to drive.

Well, déjà vu all over again. The “Big Three” can’t give their sleds away. Who the hell would want to drive a car (and they are used as cars) that has higher fuel costs than the monthly payment? Not many. The two hottest sellers in the USA are now the Toyota Yaris and the Honda Fit. And guess what? A whole new generation is finding out that small cars are fun to drive, easy to park and have more space than you think. They don’t fall apart faster than you can bolt the shit back on them.

This leads us to the Retarded Canadian Auto Workers Union.. The RCAWU is reeling because people don’t buy gas hogs anymore. When worked for Chrysler, we were all stumped when we saw cars like the 300 and Magnum so proudly introduced. We knew then that gas prices would spike and that auto workers would lose jobs. Well, now we are seeing it. And what is the reaction of the RCAWU? Well, they want import quotas! Wow, that worked so well in 1979. Instead of bring in Corollas, Toyota used their quota to bring Camrys, and people realized that they were really good bigger cars. Then they built factories in the USA and Canada and built their cars here.

What else does the RCAWU want? Well they want market access in Korea and Japan. I suppose if I had never been past a beer parlour in Oshawa in my life, I would think this is a good idea. But what product do the Big Three make that anyone in Korea of Japan would actually buy? I can’t think of one. You could ship a hundred thousand Malibu cars to Japan and nobody would buy them because those crafty Japs would realize, correctly, that their own cars are better.

We have been wasting energy for years here on a massive scale. We waste everything, really. Had some real leadership been on place in the 80s to continue the energy efficiency programmes started by Carter, we would not be in the situation we are in now.