There is a major fracking lawsuit going on in Alberta right now. In a total coincidence, the judge overseeing it received a government appointed promotion and the case is going to see another round of delays. Keeping with fracking, this Tyee article points to Wall Street speculation as the cause of all of this rampant Natural Gas Development. That might explain our race to pull this stuff out of the ground as quickly as possible.
Remember when everybody got all angry and stuff about the Kitsilano Coast Guard Base getting shut down? The Government decided to ease tensions by closing it a full 3 months earlier than planned. What I really don't understand is how all of this is going to save money. More burden is going to be placed on the Richmond Station. We're adding a smaller rescue force. The City Police Department is ramping up services to fill some of the gap. I don't think this is anything more than shuffling money around. Jim Chu breaks down why this whole thing is kind of insane. And if it didn't seem sketchy enough, the Coast Guard just announced a massive investment in a Coast Guard base in Newfoundland. And they're going to try to sell off the land that the Kitsilano base sits on so that there is absolutely no chance that it can ever come back.
The Harper Government is spending a lot of money on advertising, both for his "Economic Action Plan" and for spots that will encourage resource development. It's crazy to spend money like this. Can you imagine if the Liberals had done something like this to promote the gun registry? I'm hoping somebody doesn't dig up a youtube video of just that.
The F-35 is starting to remind me of the Northern Gateway Pipeline. There just seems to be so much wrong with these projects, it's hard to figure out how we're still planning on pursing these projects. More problems leads to more groundings by the Pentagon.
Some massive military cuts have been announced. There are absolutely no details. Soon we're going to have the best equipment in the world and nobody to run it or service it.
The Federal Government has started making surprise visits to EI recipients. You know. To make sure everything is on the up-and-up. No word if they're carrying crowbars and allowed to break kneecaps if things seem sketchy.
If you're a Senator and you're caught doing something bad (like fraudulently taking money for a housing allowance that you're not entitled to), you get to just undo it and everything goes away. Mike Duffy says he's going to pay his housing allowance back.
MPs and Senators racking up hundreds of thousands in travel expenses? No problem. Several Census takers causing $6000 in damage to one hotel room? It's a bloody outrage! We need to get rid of this whole crappy Census thing! Oh, some of them may have been native as well? Well that's a whole new ballgame of outrage. Read the comments. Holy shit this country is racist.
Somebody took the time to dig in to voting records in an attempt to figure out how often MP's were skipping out on Parliament. I'll give the Cons this - they definitely show up to vote. The majority of their MP's that were missing votes were the various Ministers. I guess that is to be expected. They pretty much own the Fewest Missed Votes list, though. The NDP has a few as well, and Elizabeth May seems to be making an effort. Must get tiring casting all those "no's".
The Ottawa Citizen doesn't think much about the Office of Religious Freedom.
A group of people are trying to do something about Stephen Harper's war on scientists.
David Suzuki is supporting Joyce Murray. Is this going to sink her bid? That's another Conservative attack ad right there. There is actually a dude in the comments section talking some total Tea-Partylike revolutionary nonsense.
There seems to be less interest in the Ashley Smith case. But it sounds like the insane findings keep coming out as the inquest rolls along.
Bernard Valcourt is named Minister of Aboriginal Affairs.
Holy Cow! This country. I finally understand where Rob Ford came from, and why we're stuck with Stephen Harper. There's a tonne of mouth breathing xenophobes in Toronto. And holy crap, Rob Ford actually comes out on the side of decency here, by agreeing that even illegal immigrants should have access to city services. You know, stuff like the Police. Food Banks. Etc. But no, according to the commenters every single illegal immigrant is a welfare grabbing criminal who should be shot back to where they came from in a cannon. And they've got the support of Toronto councilman Denzil Minnan-Wong who, surprise, surprise is an immigrant himself. But a legal one. So, you know, fuck all those other guys.
Wow. If you want to see the racists poke their heads out of their holes, write a story about an Atheist with non-lily-white skin complaining about a Christian prayer at the start of a public meeting.
Does anybody else feel like there is no consistency in how real estate numbers are reported. Recently, there is a lot of discussion about benchmark price, not average price. This article points out that prices are up...relative to January of last year. But falling in general. There is no consistency. The Real Estate associations cherry pick numbers to make things sound less bad. I've heard stories around town of massive, massive drops in tax assessments. I think there is some massively un-reported drops in housing value.
I commented on an article a few weeks ago about an ice fisherman paying for his rescue after being trapped on melting ice. I played upon the absurdity of paying for emergency services and perhaps suggested that we wouldn't expect people to pay for car accidents and other things that are often largely the result of personal decisions. Well. A City in Texas actually thinks this is the right thing to do and will soon start charging people for response to accidents (via charges to their insurance company).
And finally, from Grantland:
Cherry’s Coach’s Corner appearances this week were feisty but predictable — among other things, he defended Zac Rinaldo for hitting an opponent when he was down and praised the Maple Leafs for dressing a good squad. So now seems as good a time as any to spend some time talking about his Twitter feed.
If you’re not following Don Cherry on Twitter, do it now. I’ll wait. The feed is a masterpiece of harmless observations combined with classic Cherry-style vitriol, as if Andy Rooney had a love child with the crazy old lady yelling at empty seats on the subway. He’s been tweeting for about three months, already telling a rambling story about being attacked by bees and causing outrage by complaining about relief aid to Haiti.
And if you’re wondering if that’s really Cherry typing out his update, it’s not — which, somehow, makes the entire thing 10 times better. It turns out that he phones a producer and dictates his rants, and they have to type them out as he goes.
Is there a worse job in the world? Every 21-year-old self-proclaimed social media guru patiently trying to explain Pinterest to a 60-year-old CEO for the ninth time should fall on their knees and thank a deity that at least they don’t have to be Don Cherry’s Twitter proxy. Can you imagine being the person who has to enter stuff like this in real time? Or his recent seven-part masterpiece about meeting an especially energetic dog in Peterborough?
I love Don Cherry. I guess that’s what I’m trying to say.
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