Stampede of Ridiculousnous - Week 10 - July 4-11

We start this week with an "Oh my god! They're talking about us!" article from Salon. It talks about Canada's experience with the recession as a rebuttal to an incorrect (surprisingly!) statement made by Michelle Bachmann about our fantastic unemployment numbers even though we lacked a stimulus plan. And this really got me thinking. It's hard to argue against this article. It's an unbiased viewpoint of how our country weathered the recession. It's sober and honest and could probably only be written by somebody far removed from all the yelling and anger and, quite frankly, by somebody that doesn't care all that much about what is going on here.

So here's my new theory for fixing democracy. Rather than voting for our own government, we allow our neighbours to vote for our government. Washington State can vote on behalf of British Columbia. Montana or somebody else handles the prairies. New York can do Ontario. Or Michigan maybe? Maine handles the Maritimes. We could tell them what our problems are, show them who we have to pick from and they can calmly and rationally decide who would be best to fix it. It makes nothing but sense.

With that, we move on to broken campaign promises. The Conservatives are starting to indicate that user fees are about to rise in a number of areas. But it's okay. They didn't break the promise. They aren't raising user fees as part of the "Strategic and Operating Review Process". They're raising user fees because 13 completely different government departments have just all of a sudden decided that they need to be raised. See. Promise kept. You're all a bunch of idiots for even asking a question about this.

A new round of government job cuts are announced, but not necessarily campaigned upon.

A BC Native Band accuses the Conservative Government of holding up the treaty that they (the Conservatives) negotiated. Sorry. Awkward sentence.

Early reports on the non-mandatory long form census don't sound very positive. Interestingly, The Huffington Post has the exact same article. Word for word. Globe & Mail cites "The Canadian Press". Huffington Post cites...absolutely nobody.

I really have to break away from the Globe & Mail. Nobody else really has anything of substance to add though, over and above what they provide. But take a look at this article. It makes no sense. None at all. It seems to be complaining about a loan provided to a small donut maker to expand their business. It brings up past ralings against "corporations" receiving government loans and handouts. This is the example that you can come up with as a strory about "corporate welfare bums"? A small donut maker in New Brunswick? I realize that a headline like Stephen Harper's Conservatives to pony up $190,000 for doughnuts is supposed to grab some attention. But isn't that precisely the kind of small business expansion loan that everybody and their grandma has been encouraging for the last 400 years? Maybe do a story on the massive tax breaks for Oil Companies? Banks? Etc? It's not even coherent in it's wrongness.

And this article...well...this is why people think Stephen Harper is a dick. He heads out to Alberta. He says stupid things to his rabid base of Conservatives. But it doesn't really matter because nobody really pays much attention. Except other politicians. And they just get all angry and sad.

Jason Kenney complains about the entrepreneurs immigration system being broken and of having "huge backlogs that we inherited." Well Mr. Kenney...you've had a few years to get that sorted out, haven't you?

If/When the long gun registry gets scrapped, the Conservatives have vowed to not offer any help to Provincial governments looking to create their own plan. They won't even turn over their records. Seeing as, if memory serves me correctly, one of the prime Conservative problems with the whole thing was the cost...why wouldn't they help a Provincial Government save some money in setting up their own registry? Their "re-purposing" and "privacy concerns" argument is a bit weak.