Wasting Time - Week 92 - Jan 28 - Feb 4

The first half of the week is covered here.

Hey Canada.  You voted for these guys.  Tory backbenchers have asked the RCMP to investigate late term abortions.

I don't really know what to say about this.  Israel bombed a military target in Syria.  Canada doesn't seem to have expressed an opinion about this yet.  I'm not against military intervention into Syria.  I'm a bit cloudy on bombing shit in another country just because.

So, the Supreme Court is going to decide if we can abolish the Senate?  Could this really happen this quickly and this easily?

Well this is a step in the right direction.  Actually charging companies what it costs to repair the environmental damage that they create.  However, there's some pretty great logic represented by an environmental organization in this article.  If we had reasonable environmental safeguards in place, it wouldn't be as necessary to put mechanisms in place to recover vast amounts of money for environmental disasters.  You know...try to prevent them in the first place.

I'm getting sick and tired of the pseudo-Libertarian brigade insisting on people paying for their own rescue.  Emergency Services are there to bail people out of emergencies.  People sometimes make questionable decisions that lead them to trouble.  I would suggest that most emergencies are the fault of a questionable decision.  If we become a society where we punish every victim with a massive bill for bailing them out, Canada will be a very sad place to live.  Are we going to require 911 operators to run credit checks?  Will we need a questionnaire to be filled out before a rescue is made?  If this guy had burnt his house down after falling asleep with a cigarette nobody would be saying anything right now about repaying the fire department.

I think it is probably too early to accuse the Conservatives of planning a partisan celebration for Canada's 150th Birthday.  However, it's not too early to wonder why they refuse to plan it using an independent committee.

I love this Tyee article.  It points out that the price gap Oil companies keep talking about is largely imaginary.  I also love that the standard response by oil companies to low oil prices is "We should dig up more of it and send more of it away, faster."  Canadians need to remember something.  This oil belongs to the country, not to the oil companies.  Well.  Alberta would argue that it all belongs to them.

I'm glad our National Revenue Minister is concerned with dealing with really critical matters important to Canada.  Like getting a Revenue Canada employee fired for creating a game that made fun of stupid things said to him on the phone while on the job.

Wait.  What?  Georges Laraque is the Deputy Leader of the Green Party?  You'll probably get kicked out of this link by the terrible Vancouver Sun paywall.

The Alberta PC Party seems to be doing all sorts of bad things lately.  It has just been disclosed that they received 45 illegal donations over the last few years.  The scary thing is that if these bozos get thrown out, the guys waiting in the wings (Wildrose) are even bozoier.