Get your fix - Week 76 - Oct 8-15

Whoah...I just clued in to the rhyme in my title.

Well.  I'll be away for a couple of weeks.  So there will be a bit of a break after this post.  Maybe a summary of all that has gone wrong once I get back?  Who knows.

I think that most people can agree that spending millions of dollars of other peoples money to tell the world how great you are is bad form.  Especially when you're a government.  Spending hundreds of millions of dollars telling people that you're saving their money and making things better in these tough economic times.

The Enbridge hearings are digging in to Enbridges past ability to detect and stop leaks.  Short version of the story: They can't and they haven't.  How this doesn't disqualify them immediately from building more pipelines is beyond me.  But apparently detecting and stopping leaks isn't a big part of the job of running a pipeline.  Imagine if we were contracting out our prison services and the company had past experience with inmates escaping, not catching them and not being able to detect that they had escaped.  Would they still be in the running for that contract?

A Conservative take on "The Tragedy of the Commons".  This idiot summarizes "the tragedy of the commons" as "the Tragedy of the Commons problem, where lack of private ownership causes a resource to be overused."  Oh...so if all of our parks and lakes and everything were privately owned, we'd all be okay.

An internal quirk of the CMHC valuation process may have led to an increase in the run-up of our housing prices?

Conservatives for science!  A new study announces that the oil sands aren't a problem for the environment.  Unfortunately several scientists have pointed out that the methodology is flawed (too far away for samples to be meaningful).  As well...it just happens that the study was funded by Suncor.

Here's another report showing that baby boomers haven't really "earned" all of their entitlements...as we'll be paying the bill for years.

I like this headline (which will probably get changed several times in the next few hours as that's what the Globe does)"NDP Attacks Conservatives for How They're Attacking NDP"

Check out this graph on drug enforcement spending in the US of A.  Ya, that seems to be working pretty well.  There seems to be far less drugs and violence these days.

Giving Thanks - Week 75 - Oct 1-8

This seemed like an incredibly slow week in Canadian politics.  Perhaps everybody was just excited about the US Presidential Debate?  Speaking of which, what a horror show.  Every time Obama spoke I was thinking "Okay...here it comes...coherent words..." but they never came.  Romney seemed absolutely certain of what he was speaking, even if it had no bearing on reality.  The worst moment for me was right after Romney launched into a passionate attack on Obamacare and I thought "Man...here it is.  A perfect chance to sell this program.  Talk about the millions of people that can't qualify for insurance and the bankruptcies and the fact that the US Government already spends more per capita on health care then other nations with fully nationalized health care and that it's insurance companies that are driving up the costs and all that."  But no.  A ramblingly incoherent spiel about...who even remembers?  Gosh that was terrible.  Anyhow, I think Obama needs to just Sara Palin the shit out of the next debate.  Memorize a series of 2 minute speeches on his key talking points and just ignore all the questions and talk about what he wants.

Somehow I don't think that this was big news.  The Canadian Government accidentally ran some ads on the Pirate Bay.  Which is sort of awesome.

Seems like the Conservatives have learned something from the Copyright Lobby.  If your immediate proposal isn't approved, tweak it a bit and keep trying.  Heck, even if you get exactly what you want, tweak it a bit and keep trying, but we haven't gotten there yet.  Anyhow, there's a new backbench motion to outlaw "sex selection abortion".  Don't worry.  They have reams of data to back up the need for this.  What?  They don't have any data?  They've only mentioned one study?

I know I promised to try to elevate the tone of political discourse by refraining from name-calling and such.  But "Sleepy Time" Rob Anders is throwing me off my game here by suggesting that Thomas Mulcair contributed to Jack Layton's death.  Who votes for these people?

Keeping going, it's like a rogue's gallery of Conservative incompetence.  Vic Toews makes comments about Omar Khadr that a government minister probably shouldn't.  Maybe he thinks he's a talk show host and not a government minister?  The comment of the story:  pointing out that a decade in prison had "radicalized" him.  Soooooo....because we kept this kid in prison for so long without charge or trial, we can't possibly let him out because he hates us too much for what we did to him.

Entitlement - Week 74 - Sept 24-Oct 1

There was an awesome comment on the National Post today about "Boomer Entitlement".  Somebody replied "I'm a boomer and the only thing I feel entitled to is what I've spent my life paying for."  Or something like that.  It made me wonder...

First up, please follow this link to a CBC article with an interactive chart on the Deficit.  Seems to me that we've run a deficit (more-or-less) from the early 60's to the late 90's.  So...that seems to me do be 30 years of not paying for what you've earned.  Thinks perk up for a few years.  Check out this graph.  You can see how the Liberals almost immediately cut the deficit, resulting in a surplus in their 5th year.  Steve-O inherits a nice surplus which he holds for...oh...10 minutes or so.  Really.  Startling, striking figures.  Trudeau does seem to be the worst offender though.

And on that note, we're soon going to have to really start defining which Trudeau we are talking about, as Justin confirms that maybe, well, he might just be running for Liberal leader.  Wait.  He didn't actually confirm it yet?  The National Post already called him out as the next Prime Minister.

In the political move of the year, Thomas Mulcair announces support for a pipeline from Alberta to the East.  His reasoning is that this can be built in a way that it won't be environmentally destructive (perhaps I projected that in there myself) and it will help to refine a raw product and generate value within Canada.  In one reasoned argument he's shown:
1) He's not opposed to all oil sands.
2) His opposition to Northern Gateway really is about the environment.
3) He's serious about creating value from our oil in Canada.
Really.  Well done.  I kind of hope I'd be saying the same thing if Steve-O had made this proclmation.

I love this farcical hard line on Iran.  First, the whole embassy/ambassador thing.  Because we only have embassies and ambassadors with countries that we like.  Now, the Canadian delegation storms out of Ahmadinejads speech at the UN (again...I'm pretty sure this has happened before).  Honestly, did they just go there so that they could storm out?  Did they sit there with an open mind for a few minutes and then decide that this whole thing wasn't really up their alley?

Omar made it back home.

Oh abortion.  How exciting you made this week.  First up, I think we should thank the good lord for this weeks vote on "exploring the definition of a human being".  What better way to flush out all the social Conservatives!  As well, read the comment boards on some of these stories.  All of a sudden it's all CONSERVATIVES FOR SCIENCE!  "We don't want to change anything, we just want to explore the science of it all!"  Unless you're using science for crazy things like exploring climate change or evolution, they're all for it.  Man.  I'm using too many exclamation marks lately.


And then there is Rona Ambrose.  Rona Ambrose, the "Status of Women" Minister.  The woman who is supposed to be out there, crusading for womens rights.  Voted for this crazy motion.  People pointed out that she's entitled to her opinion and how dare these crazy feminazis try to stifle her right to have these opinions!  Do they know she's not the "Status of this particular woman" Minister and the minister (supposedly) for all women?


This is why I am a proud pirate and will never give these scumbags any of my money if I can in any way help it.  We just passed Copyright reform.  True, isn't wasn't the all encompassing police state that the various entertainment industries wanted, but it gave them a lot of stuff.  But no.  Not good enough.  They couldn't get their law through so they'll try another way to ram this shit through.  Internet disconnection may be a part of an international trade agreement.  Ohhhh...THIS is why all those people hate globalization.


The Globe and Mail continues their continually weird "Expat Dispatches" series.  They've put a lot of effort into tracking down Canadians that have bad things to say about Obama.  Honestly, you'd think that every single Canadian living in the US is some crazed right winger from reading this series.


Stephen Harper plans on a big "Buy Canadian" push for military procurement.  Too bad we have no military equipment manufacturing industry to speak of.  And then there's that whole pesky NAFTA thing.

Hey, did you know that there's a crazily disproportionate number of aboriginal women in Canadian prisons?  And it's feared that the tough-on-crime agenda will only make this worse?  Ya, I don't think the government did either.

How does this ground beef recall have you feeling about food safety in Canada?

Another big story this week was Margaret Wente and her plagiarism.  God.  I don't care if she shoplifted a chocolate bar.  If this gets rid of her, I'm all for it.  This Tyee article points out that it's probably not bigger news because journalists feel it is bad form to kick a competitor when they're down at risk of seeming petty...This isn't a problem at the National Post.

Here's another great Rolling Stone article talking about the US FBI entrapment machine: creating terrorist plots just so that they can knock them down.  This one on the 5 Occupy kids caught trying to blow up a bridge.

This article is very interesting.  I actually had to punch this in to a calculator to make sure I didn't have it wrong (the number is just so staggering)...but apparently 5.5% of all teenage girls in Mississipi get pregnant!  Which is crazy.  It seems even crazier, but the bastion of progressive knowledge example held up as the "right way to do things" (New York) is at 2.26%.  Yes.  Half the number.  But still very high.

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?

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.

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.

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?