Weekly Highlights from our Conservative Overlords

Weekly Highlights from our Conservative Overlords

Monday, September 24, 2012

Sick of This - Week 73 - Sept 17-24

Awesome.  Let's start the week by highlighting the $750,000 that Stephen Harper's government spent fighting disabled veterans over their pensions.

In further "Let's not worry about the law" news, a judge has struck down part of the Conservative's 2008 tough-on-crime legislation.

More on the dismemberment of the National Archives.  Who needs history or culture?  We've got England!

Will and Kate fever continues.  We're going to start sharing embassies with the British.  I guess we're hoping we get a few more invites to Harry's wedding?

And then let's highlight some of the dueling stories about the upcoming real estate meltdown.  The rest of the world seems to think we're kind of fucked while we bicker over the extent of the problem.

I don't think people truly understand what wealth discrepancy is.  Here it is.  The top 400 wealthy individuals in the US hold 1/8 of the wealth in the US.  Got that?  0.00016% of the US population controls 20% of the wealth.  Their wealth has grown 13% in the last year.  They don't need a tax cut.  They don't need loopholes.  They don't deserve a disproportionate voice in politics just because they can spend their opinion into prominence.

This is why we hate the Census!  Families are shrinking.  Not shrieking.

Gah!  Canada agrees with Stephen Harper?  We agree that the Iranian embassy should have been shut down?  Well.  I guess that proves Canadians don't know shit about International Relations.


If they're so eager to reform their own pensions, why don't they stick it in their next Omnibus?  In fact, why don't we just write all of the laws that we plan on passing in the next 20 years down on a piece of paper, sign that shit and just get this done?

Monday, September 17, 2012

Iran and I Cried - Week 72 - Sept 10-17

Let's start with a graph:
Yep.  Sure looks like the Conservatives are in "cruise control".  Just like real estate values are "holding steady".

Wow.  The Harper Government has finally "agreed" to stop supporting asbestos mining.  The awesome thing is that they are actually "blaming" the PQ Government for this decision, as they (the PQ) took the lead on made up their own minds.  I can't even come up with an equivalent to illustrate how insanely ludicrous this is.  Here goes though.  Say you have a big family.  You're the father.  And one of your 10 children is a crack addict.  For years and years you support your crack addicted son.  You give him money for crack.  You threaten to beat anybody up that complains about his crack use.  You yell at the police when they show up to bust him and claim that "crack isn't harmful" and all that stuff.  You get angry at all of your neighbours and other children when they try to help your son to stop smoking crack.  You're the ultimate crack enabler.  And then, your son finally comes to his senses, checks in to re-hab and decides that he'll never smoke crack again.  And you begrudgingly write your neighbours, children and local police an e-mail telling them that you've finally caved in to their ludicrous no-crack policies.  But it's all your sons fault.  You'd happily roll along buying him crack if he would just stop being so selfish.

Jason Kenney announces the stripping of citizenship of thousands of people.  Which sounds impressive.  It must have been the Liberals fault that they made it in the first place.

You read Matt Taibbi and it's just like "What's the point?"  He digs out stories that you couldn't even imagine being real and he writes about them in a through and captivating way.  And they're all just so depressing...Anyhow.  Here's another one about banks manipulation of bonds, interest rates, etc.  Depressing.  Straight up bid rigging.

Stephen Harper wins something!  World Statesman of the Year.  Gawsh.  That's fancy!

Grrr....Stupid experts getting in the way of reasonable policy!  Here, some schmuck claims to know more than our beloved leader about what is going on in Iran.  So what if this guy used to be our "Ambassador" to Iran.  What does that even mean?  He should just stick to...whatever it is he does while he's "Ambassadoring".  Not lecturing our beloved leader on how to deal with Iran.  And another one.

I love how all of the political science majors posting in the comments section of this story (Ahmadinajad blames the west for destroying rain clouds) use this as justification for yanking diplomats from Iran.  And the suggestion that if you think the diplomats should stay, obviously you support Iran.  Oh.  Wait.  Here's a Globe and Mail columnist making the same argument.

Experts again!  Who is this guy?  President of some polling company?  Well of course he has a vested interest in...something and should be banned from providing evidence in the robo-calls case.

Speaking of voter suppression.  There was a study done during the last Presidential election.  A Facebook Banner and reward widgets was enough to make a significant bump in polling numbers.  Which is kind of awesome.  And incredibly sad.

Vic Toews sez (not a real quotation): "It's not my fault that Omar Khadr hasn't come back to Canada.  It's the US."  Because nothing is ever his fault.  Doesn't this guy have another job or something?

Is it me, or does it seem kind of crazy that the Vancouver Canucks and the Toronto Maple Leafs have the most expensive ticket prices OF ANY PROFESSIONAL SPORTS TEAM IN ALL OF NORTH AMERICA!  Not just hockey.  Every sport!  How's it feel to pay for failing hockey franchises in the Southern States, everybody?

Another fantastic story on the moral superiority of Americans.  We have Waste Management actively lobbying against composting laws.  Awesome.

And Intelligent too!  47 Percent of Ohio Republicans are "not sure" if Mitt Romney is more responsible for the death of Osama Bin Laden than Obama.  I for one am glad this country runs the world.

I don't even know.  Some House of Commons clerks don't want to release F-35 documents.

Monday, September 10, 2012

Might as well kill yourself - Week 71 - Sept 3-10

Oh man.  Maybe it’s just my mood this week, but things seem really grim.

We’ll start with the always excellent and always depressing Matt Taibbi.  He lays out just how Mitt Romney made his millions and just what is wrong with it.  Gawd.  Don’t worry though, Mitt is on the scene making sure we aren’t side-tracked from the most pressing of America’s many problems – identifying Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  At least he finally may have admitted that climate change is real…but not his problem.

Moving on to more depressing talk on the economy.  Here is a nice summary of some 21 truths to our current economy.  If any one of those doesn’t depress the hell out of you…man…I just don’t know.

And I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.  With all of the “improvements” in our lifetime, why are we so much worse off than our parents?  Why can’t we buy homes for reasonable prices?  Why are our wages stagnant?  Why is our environment shit?  Why can’t we invest for the long term with some reasonable expectation of a return?  Well, because we’re the fools holding the bag on a Ponzi scheme.

We’ll move on to Quebec, where a separatist government has just been elected.  But don’t worry, it’s a chance for Stephen Harper to really prove himself by ignoring all of their requests/demands/questions.

Because a Quebec branch of the Public Service Alliance of Canada supported a separatist party in the Quebec election, a Tory MP (Pierre Poilievre) figures all federally regulated union members should be able to opt out of paying union dues...which kind of kills the union, no?  As well, last week, Mr. Poilievre saw a car speeding on the highway and suggested that all cars should be banned.  He also caught his son looking at pornography on the computer and suggested the dismantlement of the Internet. 

Enbridge has done some legal maneuvering to set up their proposed pipeline as a limited partnership.  A cynic might suggest that they're trying to avoid legal responsibility.  And, somehow, I don't quite understand this, but the pipeline is going to raise our fuel prices.

So, out of nowhere, Canada has broken off diplomatic ties with Iran.  There's no crisis.  No incident.  Just...time to no longer talk to those guys.  It happens to be on the same day they announce five new Senate appointments...but I couldn't really make sense of this.  But the National Post put it in perspective.  Oh Israel appeasement.  What haven't you done for us lately? (and Iran is pissed)

Stephen Harper named five new Senators?  How many of these fuckers are there?

As well, he's announced that KPMG will review the spending on the new Fighter Jets....and some people are complaining that he's spending more money!  Can't win on this.  In other fighter jet news, somebody is proposing to resurrect the Avro Arrow.  Seriously.

Hey.  Let’s talk about real estate.  Despite statistics showing a decline in house prices and an admittance that sales numbers are way down…hell, if we just use a different statistic “prices remain high”.  Look at that fucking graph!  This shit is not sustainable.  Not by outside money.  Not by drug money.  Not by Vancouver being the 3rd most liveable City (didn’t we used to be #1?).  You’re fucking delusional.  Prices are going to come down.

I don't know if he's totally full of shit, but a dude in the comments section of this article just laid out a plan for how BC could become a wireless internet province by piggybacking the smart meter infrastructure.  Very, very cool, if possible.  It's kind of sad that the best idea that I've seen in some time came from a Tyee article comment section.  I actually e-mailed this link to my MLA, Christy Clark.

Oh.  Some good news.  Bruce Willis is actually becoming a bit of a copyright crusader!  Yes, he’s trying to figure out a way to make sure, and I’m not making this up, to make sure that his children have access to his iTunes catalogue if he dies!  Why anybody would pay money to “own” a digital something that is not really theirs is beyond me.

Hey.  Fracking causes earthquakes.  It's no biggie though.

Bev Oda strikes back from beyond the grave.

We'll end with some inspiration.  Alex Zinardi lost his legs in a CART accident a few years back.  He just won a gold medal at the Paralympics.  Honestly, read this story.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

What a Week - Week 70 - Aug 27 - Sept 4

We'll start with a quote from the lady that will head up the next Quebec succession movement: “More than ever the Stephen Harper government is reminding Quebeckers that Canada was not their country,”

Hey!  Vic Toews doesn't have a monopoly on creepy.  You've undoubtedly heard of Maygan Sensenberger?  The 23-year-old wife of 69-year-old Liberal Senator Rod Zimmer?  Apparently they had some sort of altercation on an airplane.  Here's their photo:

Oh man.  Real Estate.  First, the Vancouver Sun had this article.  They changed the headline after I posted my comment, but the initial headline said "Vancouver home prices continue to rise..."  Yet, nowhere in the article does it say that housing prices in Vancouver have risen.  It says that the percentage of income required to own a home has risen by 2.2 percent to 91.0 percent (which is obscene and a dramatic indicator that this is unsustainable)...but this does not support the claim that house prices have risen.  A totally bogus and deceptive headline.  And then you look at this graph...and it shows you just how clueless these writers are.  Throw this StatsCan page into the mix with median household incomes....boy.  Let's buy some Vancouver Real Estate!

Hey look everybody!  Alberta, with all their oil money and Conservative principles...they're looking at a massive deficit.  Of course, the comment trolls are claiming that they're not Conservative enough and that's the problem!  I thought everybody in Alberta was a hard working taxpayer supporting the rest of Canada?  Why do they even need social programs?

Imagine that you had this business...you could borrow as much money as you wanted for super cheap.  And then you could turn around and lend it out for a larger rate, guaranteed.  So the more money you lent out, the more money you brought in.  And you could release all kinds of reports and self-serving "research" that encouraged people to borrow more-and-more from you because things can't possibly go down.  Yes, you might be able to make gobs and gobs of money as well.  Of course, anybody that points out that the banks seem to be making an awful lot of money off the backs of Canadians is just "jealous".

Rob Ford is just the gift that keeps on giving.  In light of the reading while driving and the conflict of interest trial (and that's just in the last two weeks!) you'd think that Stephen Harper would keep his distance from this guy.  But no.  They're going on a fishing trip.  I can just see this guy getting thrown out of his Mayor's job, and then named as a Senator or Ambassador a few days later.  And then, his awesome niece makes an amazing twitter comment about women preventing sexual assault by not dressing "like a whore".  Yes.  The woman below, who plays in the lingerie football league, said you shouldn't "dress like a whore" in order to not get raped.

Just another independent government adviser for Stephen Harper.  His Chief of Staff has maybe used his position to improve his financial standing with Barrick Gold.

The new Chief of Defence Staff?  An ex-fighter pilot in favour of the F-35.  May as well double down, I guess.

Jack Layton's funeral cost a bit of money.

So we have a Senator that is legally incompetent....I realize that we need to respect her dignity, but come on...

Am I mistaken, or did the guy who is supposed to "clean up the RCMP" just have a bunch of on-duty cops do some ceremonial shit at his wedding...and he didn't know they were on duty?