Not Good with Numbers - Week 49 - April 2-9

Peter McKay gets the photo this week, for ratcheting up the stupidity level.  See a few posts below.

If there is one thing that we've learned in the last few years, it's that corporations know how to do things.  Nothing can be accomplished better than a group of office slaves working towards maximizing profits at the expense of everything else.  Why not give them the responsibility of determining who can and cannot enter the country?  I'm sure there's absolutely no chance that this could fail or be abused.

I initially missed the irony of this story.  But Vic Toews, the killer of privacy, is requesting that we respect his as he gets his carcass hauled off to the hospital.  And he's probably going to bring his bill back from the dead.


The Fighter Jets are becoming a bit of a shitstorm, as the Auditor General has formally pointed out that the whole process is "stupid and crazy".  Okay, perhaps that's not an actual quote.  More of a paraphrase.  Why does it take the auditor general to change their course of action after years and years of everybody telling them that this is wrong?  And according to Peter McKay, it's all just "accounting".  They knew that it would cost this much, they just chose not to tell us.  But it's all above board.  Just a 40% accounting interpretation.

Great.  There's more polar bears than people expected so obviously Global Warming is a farce and we shouldn't worry about it.

Perhaps I need to create a new label - Why Democracy Does Not Work.  I'm not sure who to blame for this, but apparently the NDP has decided to just talk for several days during budget discussions.  The Liberals are angry because they don't get to share the spotlight.  And the Conservatives are probably happy because they get to point out that the other parties look stupid.  This is an actual paragraph in the story.   

By his own estimation. Mr. Julian talked non-stop for the better part of 14 hours over the course of four days. His voice had started to wear thin and he was forced to drink repeated sips of water just to keep going.

Initially, I chalked this story up to the NDP being kind of stupid and wasting time.  But then I started thinking...what else are they supposed to do?  They have absolutely no other mechanism to make any sort of impact on this legislation, or on anything, really.  Which is kind of scary.

The Norther Gateway Pipeline Environmental Review process has started.  And the panel shut things down for a day because there were some children outside and they got scared.  And they're not going to move the schedule.  They're just going to ignore that period of time and pretend it never happened.  It got me thinking...who are the review board?  First, there's Ms. Sheila Leggett, who seems to be a professional energy review board member.  Then, Mr. Kenneth Batemen, who also seems to be a professional energy review board member as well as a lawyer for energy companies.  Then, Mr. Hans Matthews, a geologist and aboriginal rights type dude.  Okay...maybe this isn't actually a completely terrible group of people.

Remember a few years ago when the Conservatives sold off some of our really expensive diplomatic properties as they were deemed "lavish and extravegent"?  Well, now we're going to stick our diplomats way out in the suburbs as their rental places are costing too much

And speaking of cuts, goodbye CBC!  Who needs a non-corporate run source of news and entertainment anyhow?

This is a great headline for a story.  Misleading, but great.  Baird pulls plug on Rights and Democracy.  I finally understand why newspapers capitalize headlines the way that they do.

Justin Trudeau beat up some long-haired guy.

Fighter jets.  Becoming a problem.  Auditor general.  Rejigging.  Doesn't really say anything.

Dealing with Absolutes - Week 42 - Feb 13-20

It's a busy week.  Angry John Baird gets our photo of the week.  I've been waiting a while to see this guy again.

One thing I've learned in life is a healthy respect for absolutes.  Right or wrong.  Black or white.  Ham or cheese.  There are no middle grounds in anything and anybody that thinks so is delusional.  It's a digital world, people need to accept that.  That's why I think this new statement about either being for child pornography is great.  I mean, what bad things could come from the government having complete visibility of everything that we do on our computers?  I mean...this certainly couldn't have anything to do with all of these new copyright laws.  That's child pornographer talk.

Righteous indignation is awesome when somebody else has done something and you have no proof.  Kind of overshadows your own dirty tricks...push polling ridings to make them think their recently voted in MP is going to quit comes to mind.  I kind of hope the NDP is behind Vikileaks.  I would respect their nefariousnous.

And, apparently, the police and government have been working pretty hard to fabricate justification for this law, as none appears to be readily apparent. And...and...apparently they want to not just give access to police, but to government appointed inspectors as well.

Oh, it gets better.  Apparently Vic Toews was surprised when the CBC asked him about the provision that "any" police officer could ask for data from an ISP.   "This is the first time that I'm hearing this somehow extends ordinary police emergency powers."  So, who exactly drafted this bill?

Now, as I trolled through comments on a variety of stories on the above, I came across the oddest rumour...It's just so strange...but appears to be all over the place.

Some specifics around the environmental/animal rights groups targeted as "extremists" by the Harper Government.  The list includes Greenpeace and PETA.

More bad news on fighter jets.  It seems pretty silly to stick with this program.  It's like when you pre-order your Benz 4 years ahead of time and they keep jacking up the price and deleting options.  I hate it when that happens.

A study just came out claiming the oil sands aren't as bad as coal.  I've got a problem with this study.  They took the total reserves of different types of fuel and projected what the effect would be if they were burned in their entirety.  In essence, if we burn all of our coal, we're in big trouble.  If we burn all of our tar sands sourced oil, it's not a big deal.  But there's got to be a lot more coal throughout the world than tar sands, no?  This study doesn't help us understand the difference between heating out house (for example) with one over the other.  It just seems a bit confusing to me and I see this as Stephen Harper's get out of jail free card on the oil sands.

You know what I'm really sick of?  All these well educated foreign doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. that come to Canada and take all of our cab driving jobs.  And security guard jobs.  Somebody needs to put a stop to that sort of thing.  Some of them even claim that somebody is trying to kill them back home, which most likely is nonsense.

A study just came out claiming the oil sands aren't as bad as coal.  I've got a scientific problem with this study.  They took the total reserves of different types of fuel and projected what the effect would be if they were burned in their entirety.  In essence, if we burn all of our coal, we're in big trouble.  If we burn all of our tar sands sourced oil, it's not a big deal.  But there's got to be a lot more coal throughout the world than tar sands, no?  This study doesn't help us understand the difference between heating out house (for example) with one over the other.  It just seems a bit confusing to me and I see this as Stephen Harper's get out of jail free card on the oil sands.

Oh.  Ya.  Another study about downloading.  Bittorrent?  Not so bad.

Way to stir up trouble with a headline, Globe and Mail.  A Catholic couple sued the Province for teaching a mandatory course that taught students about the multitude of religions out there...as this somehow infringed on their religious right to believe that their beliefs are the only ones out there.  Somehow "Mandatory religion course doesn't infringe on freedoms" sounds a bit more scandalous.

Gun Registry legislation is done.

A member of the Harper Government wants to change the way Parliament is filmed on Friday's because there are lots of people missing and it looks bad.  There's no comment necessary for this one.

Apparently, you can bring your baby to work if you're an MP.