I'm getting a little tired of Saskatchewan continually being overlooked when it comes to landing major federal contracts. The latest shun has been the awarding of the two shipbuilding contracts. I mean c'mon here. Halifax gets $25 billion worth of boat building and Vancouver gets $8 billion.
What's wrong with Saskatchewan's shipbuilding industry? We don't have one?
Hey, we can fix that in a hurry. We have a few thousand farmers and everyone knows farmers can build or fix anything including those leaky submarines we bought from Britain 20 years ago. Give 'er the old Red Green approach and let 'er rip.. Test them out in the raging Rafferty, I say.
So yes, Saskatchewan can build boats. We build farm equipment, so we can build boats, ships, schooners or yachts. You name it, we'll build it and deliver it ... overland maybe, but we'll deliver.
Why I can recall my Uncle Jack building a speedboat from a diagram he saw in Popular Mechanics 40 years ago. Took it out to Katepwa Lake and it looked just fabulous ... sleek, mean, wave-splitting shiny and ... well, it sank as soon as he put the big motor on it.
Hey, that's no worse than those submarine things and I'll guarantee you, the taxpayer loss on Uncle Jack's non-floating boat was a lot less than our Navy's sinking submarines. Besides, we salvaged my uncle's boat and he rebuilt it and the second version was super fast and never even sprung a leak. So there ... and he wasn't even a farmer!
Do you remember that Ground Zero mosque that everyone was so upset about 10 months ago? You can recall how so many people in New York were dead set against this mosque/activity centre that was going to be built three-blocks from where the twin towers were toppled. The rebuild project was being halted by protestors who claimed it was anti-American to do such things.
Well, guess what? The centre is up and operating as a neighbourhood prayer centre and gathering place for a variety of religious and ethnic personalities and nobody seems to be too worried about it these days. As I have said before, our American friends can usually handle just one or two made-up crises per month and right now they're staving off bankruptcy and speculating on who sold the wig to Gadhafi.
They also have that little matter of trying to find a Republican presidential candidate who isn't a wing nut. The search is still on, so they kinda have their hands full right now. New York mosques aren't so important this week.
There is other good news this week, dear diary.
The Vancouver Canucks made a trade, picking up two new hockey players and the announcement did not set off a city-wide riot. There wasn't one storefront window smashed and nobody looted an electronics store when it was made public that the Canucks are now the proud owners of David Booth and Steven Reinprecht. We don't know what they'll do with them, but if it doesn't work out Vancouverites still have Roberto Luongo, so they can blame him again.
I was going to go on a rant about annoying television commercials in the space that was left over, but I've just checked my word count, and I don't have any space left. But you can always follow my rants on Twitter. You may have difficulty finding me on Twitter. If you can't find me there, blame Roberto Luongo.
