Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Nostalgia for cars






Went to the Blethering Place antique car show in Oak Bay on Sunday. Entered the Rotary Club raffle for a new car but didn't win, but that's OK. Had one of the Blethering Place's burgers for lunch. It was a little dry but the fried onions were good. I know it goes against all that's good and holy among the organic food crowd to say that a good burger needs to be made from a well-marbled piece of meat- meaning larded with fat- and that's what it takes to make a juicy burger. Of course you end up wearing it on your shirt. So what.
The reason I like to go to these gatherings is nostalgia. It takes me back to see a '51 Pontiac not much different than my Dad's '52. What surprises me is how high it is. The low slung look was just starting to come in. It was also a time when a car was built, and I mean built. A blow from a a sledge hammer that would demolish a Toyota Corolla would barely make a dent in one of these babies from the fifties. I can't remember which model my Dad had, but I'm pretty sure it was a 6, and checking the references I see it put out about 90 horses. Not a lot of power to move almost two tons of iron, but I do remember my Dad saying he got 20mpg out of it on the highway. Do modern vehicles do any better? The '50 Nash advertisement claims 25. So much for all the computer stuff made necessary by environmental regulations. Another thing I remember about that Pontiac was the distinctive whoosh it made during gear changes. No more Pontiac. A combination of bad management, idiotic unions and a final push from the Obama economic team led to its demise. Some people say the Obama crew is totally incompetent. Not so. They are very good at what they do, which is wrecking the American industrial engine. Gone the way of Plymouth, DeSoto, Nash, Studebaker, Packard, Hudson, and others. Oh, well.
While I was wandering around Oak Bay Avenue a shipload of 'migrants' were making themselves comfortable in Esquimault. I'm pretty sure if I had thought to scan the horizon to the east I would have seen a gigantic swarm of lawyers darkening the sky on their way to a feeding frenzy.
I don't read the papers much, especially when something like this is going on. I have a weak stomach and the smell of BS roasting over the airwaves is more than I can stand. At the time when I was riding around in my Dad's '52 Pontiac refugees from the WW2 were pretty common. Italians, Germans, Poles were normally put back a grade or two until they learned English and I was friends with a lot of them. In fact I was quite intrigued by them. These were true refugees who had been trapped in a meat grinder between the Nazis and the Bolsheviks. I knew nothing about that in those days, but I knew they had been through Hell.
I'm sure many of these Tamils have been through Hell too. The Tamils are a Hindu ethnic group from India who had been brought into Buddhist Ceylon to work the tea plantations. They never went back. Their language and religion, radically different from native Sinhalese, possibly kept them from assimilating. At any rate, they have been making war against the Sri Lankan government for many years. It was a bloody and vicious war, and only concluded last year when the last bit of Sri Lanka was finally brought back under control by the government. I claim no knowledge of the ins and outs of the issues other than the fact that it was the Tamils who initiated the war. I also know they attained control of large portions of the country, using terrorism as one of their main weapons. That doesn't mean that the people from this ship are culpable. I just don't know.
What I do know is that we have a mechanism in place for people who want to enter Canada as refugees. To my knowledge it is far from inhospitable. All of those Poles, Italians, Germans et al came to Canada according to the laws in place at the time. But these people decided to ignore our laws. Perhaps they have heard of our weak-kneed justice system which is riddled with litigious lawyers and multicultural advocates, made possible by weak laws framed by these same people who now profit from them.
Well, this would be a good time to straighten things out. There is now way that these people should be allowed to remain in Canada, no matter how many sad stories the media uncovers. (If it can't find any real ones, it will surely make some up.)
Those cars from the fifties were built solid, and so were the people I knew then. They would have seen through this nonsense immediately.
This is what we should do. Starting this week, the Government of Canada should introduce legislation decreeing that any 'migrants' landing on our shores without prior authorization will forfeit their right to ever be residents of Canada. This goes for adults, children- even if born here after arrival- relatives. Never. None. Zero. And the ship will be impounded to sell, proceeds going toward paying for their return to country of origin. No appeals, no recourse to our Bill of Rights, that infamous make-work project for lawyers, none, nada. Take names, fingerprints, DNA samples, then send them on their way. Maybe some other country wants them, say Cuba. Fine. Good bye. Ass. Door. Slam. Behind. Bye bye.
What is the alternative? Get ready to be inundated.
Oh, yes, one more thing. Start an investigation into who organized this invasion. No, they didn't just buy a ship and set out randomly, this is part of something going on behind the scenes. Find out who. Seek and destroy.