So much stuff! - Week 140.5 - Dec 30 - Jan 8

This is just totally insane.  Chuck Strahl, while still acting in some sort of CSIS oversight role, has registered to lobby on behalf of the Northern Gateway pipeline.  This has so many layers of wrong.
1) He's a government employee.
2) He's a former cabinet minister (isn't he?)
3) His son is an MP
4) CSIS seems to be monitoring environmental groups on behalf of Energy Companies
I mean, bravo Enbridge, but what the fuck?

Stephen Harper has appointed a non-diplomat, super pro-Israel ambassador to Israel.  It sounds like she has knowledge and history in the area, but shouldn't a position like this be held by somebody with a bit more balance?

A Conservative MP seems to have acknowledged the existence of climate change and postulated on its contribution to extreme weather.  A clarifying statement will most likely be issued in a day or two.  In other news, Al Roker comes to the defence of the polar vortex.  It's not actually a fabrication of the left wing climate change zealots.

A Conservative MP attempted to bill taxpayers for his trip to New York to run in the marathon there.  But he's such a good guy he's not going to try to get that money now.  After people freaked out about it.

Senator Bob Ruciman wants to create some sort of magical "no protest" bubble around the Prime Minister.  Because how dare those guys sneak in and try to get the PM's attention when hard working businesspeople paid hundreds of dollars for that privilege!  Steve-O thinks the whole thing is hilarious.

Another train hauling crude oil blew up (in New Brunswick).  If I was more of a conspiracy theorist I would think Enbridge is paying rail companies to blow things up.  Speaking of which, Kitimat is planning on holding a plebiscite to see if there is support for a pipeline.  Not a terrible idea.  Judging by real estate shooting up by 25% there I can imagine what the results might be though.  Unfortunately, many people would sell their souls for a 25% jump in their property value.  As well, oil companies seem very aware that this stuff is explosive.  And the train that exploded in North Dakota was carrying the stuff.

Charlie Angus broke a minor campaign finance law.

Our good buddy Rob Anders is facing a nomination challenge in his home riding.  Again.

An amazing post on car manufacturing standards that is really a lesson in trade barriers.  Very interesting.

The government is delaying it's offshore tax evasion snitch program.

Proof that closing DFO libraries was done for nefarious purposes ("culling of materials") rather than to save costs?  That's what this memo suggests.  I love how this is buried in the "Technology" section of the Province...Harper cutting the budget and jobs in the DFO.  Of course, there's been pushback from the Conservatives...and now pushback on the pushback.  And mainstream news organizations are starting to pick this up.

The War on Piracy is working!  Pirate Bay uploads were up 50% in 2013.

An International survey shows that news of our terrible foreign policies hasn't trickled down yet to common folk across the world.

Seeing as a majority of Canadians didn't vote for the Conservatives, is this really surprising that the majority of Canadians think we're heading in the wrong direction?

France has passed a massive wealth tax on any earnings over a million Euros.  Of course, it will "destroy the economy".  Or at least French football.

A theory on the cause of the UK housing bubble: Policies created in the 80's to prevent building new public housing.

The always amazing Matt Taibbi just wrote the most on-the-nose comment about Tea Party America and, well, right wing politics in general:
"the "movement" was about always about rallying ordinary struggling Americans behind an idealized anti-tax/deregulatory agenda that, in an amazing coincidence, also favored the super-wealthy industrialists who happened to be backing groups like FreedomWorks."

2013 Best Of Canadian Federal Politics

Seeing as 98% of you are new readers and you have no idea who I am or what this is, I’ll give a brief introduction.  This little blog here is my attempt to keep track of all the wonderful things that the Harper Government is doing to this fine country.  I update it once a week and this is my summary of all the terribly awesome things that have happened in the past year.

And who can keep track?  Looking back, this has been a staggeringly awful year for Canadian politics.  Or perhaps it’s been an amazing year?  Who even knows anymore?  Let’s plunge in.  We’ll start with a photo of our dear leader with Justin Bieber, because who doesn't want to see that?

The Senate

Of course you couldn’t read a fortune cookie this year without a mention of the Senate.  Who can make sense of this crazy, crazy debacle?

• You have Senators who don’t actually live in the province which they represent, which should (perhaps) disqualify them from being a Senator in the first place

• You have Senators fraudulently claiming living expenses

• You have Senators claiming travel expenses while they fly around the country doing work for Corporate boards and the Conservative Party of Canada

• You have a key member of Stephen Harper’s inner circle paying for the expenses of a Senator out-of-pocket in the hopes the whole thing will just go away.  Illegally paying.

• You have Senators actively campaigning to disrupt a 3^rd Party audit, in the hopes that it will all just go away

• You have Conservative Senators whitewashing an audit report so that their own Senators get off lightly and don't look too bad

• You have the Prime Minister, a notorious micro-manager, disavowing any knowledge or responsibility for the wrongdoings of all these people who he more-or-less directly appointed (and even though he had previously claimed that some of these things were a-ok)

Am I missing anything?  Oh wait.  The funniest thing about all of this?  After thoroughly hanging Nigel Wright out todry, it comes out that our great leader actually praised Nigel Wright for his help with “ethics” in the foreword to his book about Canadian Hockey.  Which he wrote while sitting as the Prime Minister of our country.

Canada – Stephen Harper’s personal Advertising Agency

One of the perks of getting elected is that you get to spend millions and millions and millions of dollars advertising how great you are in hopes that people vote for you the next time around.  First off, "The Harper Government" has really blown up.  That phrase has shown up on 522 government news releases.  That was back in May though, so I'm sure it's much more than that by now.

Not only that, but Harper has gotten the PMO (an organization which was originally just supposed to plan his day out) to get involved in political mud-sligging.  The Conservatives also pretty consistently use taxpayer funded mailouts to do their partisan dirtywork and seem to routinely place criticism of the opposition on government websites.

Then there's the little annoying ones.  The splashy event, cancelled at the last minute, to celebrate the end of the Long Gun Registry.  Yes, nothing screams "prudent fiscal managers" more than spending a lot of money to cancel an expensive program and then spending more money on a party to celebrate all the waste.  They also decided to scrub references to "Environment Canada" from the Environment Canada website (I think to make room for more Economic Action Plan ads, by the look of it).

But that's just a tiny little amuse bouche leading up to the double fisting, strap on the fat pants, all-you-can-eat buffet of wasteful awfulness.  It's probably impossible to figure out exactly how much this government has spent on totally useless advertising since coming to power.  $548 Million is the best guess here.  Think about that for a minute.  The "fiscally conservative" government in the midst of cutting programs and benefits and environmental protection to "save money", has spent a half billion dollars telling the country how great they are.  I guess you need to do something to keep the 4,000 communications related employees busy.

These ad campaigns are so unbelievably insane.  Honestly, how desensitized are we to these things?

• The "Economic Action Plan", where a tonne of money is spent to convince everybody that the economy is great (and the ads don't really work)
  

• Advertising campaigns to convince the USA that we're not a bunch of oil burning knuckle draggers (so that they'll let a private corporation plow a pipeline down the center of their country).  They've spent approx. $40 Million on this

• Ads to encourage "Resource Development"...lots and lots of it 

• Planning to spend a shit-tonne of money on history propaganda  leading up to Canada's 150th birthday

• A $9 Million dollar campaign justifying opening up Canada's cell phone industry to competition from the United States

• Advertised a great job training/creation program...that hasn't been signed off on by the Provinces (as they'll have to pony up most of the cash) and doesn't actually exist yet

It's just an amazing act of gall to spend this much money blowing smoke up the asses of your own citizens.

Government Spying

Oh sure, America, you have the NSA.  Turns out we’re just as bad.  Not only are we your muckraking minions , like some sort of ill-conceived Hells Angels puppet club, setting up spy-posts in places the USA can't get to.  But we're also helping the USA spy on our friends that we invited to our great big G8/G20 gazebo blowout/Summit.  And it seems like we really learned some things, because then we turned around and started spying on foreign countries (friendly ones) on behalf of Canadian industries.  You have to credit the Harpoids for creating a new way to discredit Glenn Greenwald though – did you know that he’s actually taking money to write these articles?  Gasp.

And more good news.  They're actually looking to fund an organization to continually monitor your social media.  I mean, I'm sure they're already monitoring your social media, but this will be more involved.

Treating People Like Assholes

Did you know that 40% of Canada’s native children live in poverty?  No worries though, because we’re probably just going to throw them in jail when they grow up.  We’re equal opportunity child haters though, as James Moore points out, it’s not his job (or the Federal Government's) to feed his neighbours hungry children.  I mean, who expects help from the government, right?  Speaking of James Moore, I mean...what the Jerry Gergich is going on here?

But it’s not just children and natives that Stephen Harper hates.  He’d also like all the employees of Members of Parliament to sign ongoing, life long, forever inperpetuity, non disclosure agreements.  I mean, nothing screams “transparency” more than ensuring the (taxpayer paid) employees that act out your terrible, terrible plans can never speak to anybody ever about anything.  This isn’t without precedent though.  He tried to get librarians to sign a loyalty pact as well.

This year also saw a cabinet shuffle.  Fresh starts and all that.  Except...our great leader asked the outgoing Ministers to draw up lists of enemies as he hurried out the door.  Nixon would be proud.

We Blew up a Town

Okay, we can't entirely blame the Lac Megantic train explosion on Stephen Harper.  But after that train exploded, we sure talked a lot about preventing exploding trains.  And then another train exploded while we continued to talk about it.

What's awesome is that the amount of oil shipped by rail has gone up by 28,000% since 2009, yet we deregulate, and train companies do things like lobby to use obsolete rail cars.  But why shouldn't we let these companies haul more oil with fewer and fewer regulations.  I mean, the company responsible for Lac Megantic has really stepped up to the plate.  By going bankrupt and by having their license pulled for inadequate 3rd party liability insurance.  Real princes of private enterprise.

Winning the War on Crime

If there is one thing Conservatives are good for, it's being tough on crime.  In fact, this government has been so tough on crime lately that crime has steadily been going down since 1991, a full 15 years before they came to power.  If I've learned anything in my career as an Engineer though it's this: If you see a really positive trend and things are heading in the right direction, start messing with stuff!  Let's look at some graphs (and this is from the National Post!  Who knows what fancy statistics the left wing can dig up)

But of course it's only radicals and criminals that are opposed to this stuff.  People like judges, who are refusing to honor minimum sentencing laws.  Or pointing out that mandatory sentencing laws are unconstitutional.  Or charge criminals the "victims services surcharge".

The judges aren't the only radicals though.  Look at this crazy guy, the Ombudsman for Federal Inmates.  "More crowded and violent."  "Less successful at rehabilitation."  Yes, the Conservatives war on crime is creating less rehabilitated, more violent criminals.  Who can trust somebody that says things like "You cannot reasonably claim to have a just society with incarceration rates like these. And most troubling, the growth in the custody population appears to be policy, not crime, driven. After all, crime rates are down while incarceration rates grow,"

Another crazy radical not on board: The Parliamentary Budget Officer.  Here, he shows how radical he is by pointing out that most of the costs of all this new legislation will fall to the Provinces (and that crime rates are falling and these expenditures don't make sense).

But what pisses me off the most is just how red-meat-for-the-base all of this stuff is.  Is our countries top priority really stripping terrorists of their citizenship?  Should we focus on keeping the mentally ill in prison for longer, or should we put some money into getting them help?

Dominating the War on Science

This is becoming such a thing, there are actually several roundups (and a book) on all the damage Stephen Harper has done to science in this country.  You may cry a little.

It's getting so bad that scientists are actually starting to march in protest.  Prompting our "Science Minister" to send out fundraising letters to combat "radical ideologue" scientist.

Not all science is bad though.  When you can re-purpose a Federal Research Organization (The NRC) to do science on behalf of industry, that's good science!  When you can just sort of make some shit up about polar bears to forward your climate change denying ideals, that's good science!  When you can use "science" to determine when life begins, that's good science!

Unfortunately, most science in Canada is bad science, and needs to be scrapped.  Research into the effect of lead bullets and shot?  Scrap it!  Fisheries libraries with irreplaceable documents (many fisheries libraries...and apparently not just libraries but budgets and jobs at the DFO as well...and perhaps proof that it's been done to "cull materials" rather than "save money")?  Scrap them!  Protection for endangered freshwater fish?  Scrap it!  A program that has greatly reduced heroin overdoses on the Downtown East Side?  Better try to scrap that!  Doctors trying to reduce heroin dependency using prescription heroin?  Scrap it!  The UN Drought Convention?  Scrap it!

And this is how crazy it has gotten.  Can you believe that Statscan is actually putting disclaimers on it's data due to scrapping of the mandatory long form census?  Our Environment Minister has doubts about climate change!  Gee, can't imagine why they are so afraid of admitting that climate change is real?

Hiring everybody but Canadians

(It's tough to talk about this stuff without sounding like a xenophobe.  Really, I'm pro immigration.  I'm just not pro bring-people-in-from-outside-the-country-at-lower-wages-and-then-send-them-home) I’ve got to admit, this is just a stroke of genius.  John Le Carre couldn’t dream up a plot this thick with cunning and irony.  Imagine selling Canadian people on all sorts of environmentally harmful mega projects with the promise of long term, well paying jobs.  And you have to cut all those pesky environmental reviews because they take too long and gosh darnit, Canada needs job.  Except.  Man, we need these projects done so quickly we don’t actually have enough people to do these jobs so we’re just going to hire all sorts of people from outside of the country (even if there's lots of unemployed people with the requisite skillset) and pay them a lot less and steal their money and not really bother with creating all these Canadian jobs in the first place.  It’s beautiful.  Not only that, but we’re also going to:

• Let people with the employable skills jump to the front of the line

• Let Corporations decide who gets to come to Canada

So we're going to have some sort of hand-picked, corporately acceptable society of welders?  Just so that we can harvest oil really cheaply?  Not that there's anything wrong with welders.

We Only Help Countries that Have Something to Offer Us in Return

You’ve heard of foreign aid?  That’s where you help out countries that are less fortunate than your own.  You’d think you’d decide on who needs help based on who needs it the most, right?  No.  Canada decides based on who can offer something in return.  I think all charities should function like this.  I think I'll only give to the food bank if they can send somebody over to mow my lawn.

We've also started telling our diplomats to worry more about developing trade than on...well...whatever they'd normally be doing.  Spying on friendly countries, I guess.  And anybody that has a problem with any of this is an "extremist fear monger".  Is there like one old lady in Mississauga that isn't an extremist fear monger according to the Conservatives?

The Stephen Harper 2013 List of All-Stars

Let's end this list by focusing on our Great Leaders best performers.

"Sleepy Time" Rob Anders - First, I'd like to congratulate Rob Anders on a fantastic 2013.  I don't think he was caught sleeping on the job at all this year.  Well done.  Unfortunately, it seems this left him more time to talk and express himself.  He did such things like rail against that terrorist Nelson Mandela (in his defense, Stephen Harper probably used to agree with him).  Unfortunately, this was not his only windbag moment.  Thanks for sending this great Canadian to Parliament, Calgary West.  Sorry.  Can't resist posting this photo.

Dean Del Mastro - Poor Dean Del Mastro.  People just wouldn't lay off him with the accusations of election shenanigans.  He complained that his good name was being sullied.  He used his Parliamentary privilege to bully witnesses.  He begged to either be charged or set free of his terrible hell.  So they charged him.  I hope he's feeling better about all of this now.

Peter Goldring - I missed this guy last year.  He somehow managed to beat his drunk driving charges for refusing to blow (honestly, read through this story and try to figure out how this came to pass) and has been welcomed back to the Conservative fold with open arms.

Jim Flaherty - I used to think Jim Flaherty was one of the okay guys.  He didn't do or say anything terrible.  He just hacked and slashed budgets.  And then...well...I can't even believe I'm writing this.  He's started confronting other Conservatives who have spoken out against Rob Ford.  I think he might be on the wrong side of this issue.  As well, he had some difficulties filling out expense claims this year, which is a bit troubling considering he's the Minister of Finance.  We're also going to celebrate the only mention of Rob Ford in this article by showing a picture of Rob Ford with the Hamburgler.

Vic Toews - I was almost sad to see this guy go.  I feel like nobody brought Canadians together quite like Vic Toews.  He actually blamed the opposition for the Conservatives fiercely enough when they appointed a now disgraced former CSIS watchdog.  It was their fault that they didn't question them hard enough about what they were doing.  Not only that though, but after creating a bunch of laws that will put a bunch more people in jail, he complained that policing costs have gotten too high.  For a Minister of Justice, he seemed to have a tremendously poor understanding of crime statistics.

Peter "Helicopter Captain" McKay - Peter McKay freaked out when Justin Trudeau talked about marijuana legalization in front of "school children"...after some high school kids directly asked Justin Trudeau about it and he answered their question.  I've heard politicians talking about marijuana is one of the #1 causes of drug addiction.  I think Peter might just be confused because most Conservatives aren't used to the concept of directly answering people's questions.

Tony Clement - Good old Tony was actually following me on Twitter for a while this year.  Which is odd.  He had the unenviable task of explaining to Canada that the government hadn't actually lost $3.1 Billion dollars, they just didn't know where it was.  These things are different, apparently.

Jean-Guy Degenais - Jean-Guy Degenais is a Conservative Senator.  An unelected Conservative Senator.  He's upset because the MP for his region is "useless and powerless", by his estimation.  If only the good people of Quebec would be smart enough to vote Conservative and hop on board the gravy train.

Conclusions

In the end though, what can we do about this?  Who is going to make it all better?  That's what I keep asking myself.  And I think I found the solution.  Anything the Conservatives are this strongly against is probably worth looking into.

Getting Lazy over Christmas - Week 139 - Dec 23-30

I wasn't going to...but I did it anyway.  A Christmas post!

You know all those greedy scientists making tens of thousands of dollars researching climate change and how it's all just a plot to keep the gravy train rolling?  Lucky we have the fighters for the truth on the other side of the story who are only in it for the good of humanity.  And billions of dollars in donations from billionaires with oil interests.


Christ, this pope is awesome.  His new thing?  Atheists are a-okay, as long as they "do good".

I thought this UK porn filter was one of those crazy right wing dreams that will just go away.  But it's real!  That's insane!

CSIS lied to get warrants.

In Japan, they've recruited homeless people to clean up the Fukishima disaster.  And they're stealing their wages (and paying them less in the first place).


Once again it is winter time.  Time to demand that lost skiers pay for their own rescue.

This is a tremendous Slate story that tracks the life of Ronald Reagan's "Welfare Queen" scapegoat that he used to demonize poor people and push through welfare reform.  Why doesn't somebody do this with the most egregious of Wall Street criminals and push through some sort of Finance Reform?  Matt Taibbi, I'm looking at you.


This is one of those non stories....I mean, of course the NSA has more data than they can possibly analyze.




Iron Maiden apparently used music piracy data to target where they should go on tour...except they didn't.  They just happen to sell out lots and lots of concerts in those places.

South Dakota has supposedly created a tax loophole (on purpose) for rich people to get out of the obligation to pay inheritance taxes in the hopes that it will "create business".  Which it does...to the tune of hundreds of jobs.  So they've given up millions and millions and millions of potential USA wide tax revenue to create hundreds of jobs.







They polled Brits (In England, just in case you were wondering) about why they don't vote.  Well, it's not because they don't care.  It's because they hate politicians.

A lady in Texas is fighting the loss of her land to the Keystone XL pipeline.

Music publishers are still using bots to claim ownership to music that they don't own.

Where does all that money come from? - Week 138 - Dec 16-23

Okay.  Hold on just a minute.  Here's a story about Conservatives being concerned that Liberal attacks are going to derail the Conservatives precious fundraising drive.  Buried in that story, the Conservatives brag about:
- Over 1000 donations
- Raising $1,511,394 from those donations
Isn't the maximum donation $1200?  How do you raise that much money from around 1000 donations?  It would take over 1259 donations at the maximum amount to raise that much money.  Wouldn't you say "over 1200 donations"?  How is everybody donating the maximum amount?  This seems really dodgy.


Who can make sense of the Supreme Court ruling that struck down three prostitution laws?  We've got people claiming it's great for women.  Terrible for women.  Great for Canada.  Terrible for Canada.  There does seem to be a consensus that it's great for pimps and johns.  We'll see what they come up in the next year.


No surprise, the joint review panel recommends moving forward with Northern Gateway.  With Christy Clark caving in, we should have this sucker built in the next couple of years.  David Suzuki is not a fan and points out that Enron...errrrr....Enbridge is a terrible company.  Of course, National Post is ecstatic.

Stephen Harper was a supporter of apartheid in the past.  Maybe a stretch, but he was certainly not the Nelson Mandela supporter he now claims to be.

I don't know if this means anything, but Irving Oil did a presentation to the "Oil Industry" about a month before Lac Megantic about concerns over a  lack of testing leading to "safety concerns" hauling by rail.

Poor old Alberta who does nothing but give, give, give...is set to receive a windfall in new health transfer payments.  38% more.

Some Keystone XL protesters have been charged with "terrorism hoax" because some glitter fell off their banner.

Too Big to Fail II - This is pretty scary.  There's a suggestion that our banks could go Cyprus in the next financial crisis.  It looks like Jim Flaherty is paving the way for Banks to take our money to cover their mistakes.  Well.  They already took our money to cover their mistakes.  But this time, it could really be OUR money, like from our bank accounts.

How come every critic of the Conservatives is an "extremist"?  John Baird suggests that any suggestion that Canadian foreign policy is driven by commercial interests is "extremist fear mongering".

All of these "oil and natural gas boom" related projects are sold to us based on jobs.  It kills the environment.  Jobs!  It's an ineffective use of our resources.  Jobs!  Well, jobs for whom?  People are getting laid off and replaced with temporary foreign workers.  This is fucked.  We need to do these projects because of jobs, but we need to execute the projects so quickly that we don't have enough people for the jobs?

A video highlighting what is wrong with many trade agreements.  We may be forced to accept food that complies with foreign laws, but not our own.

Stephen Harper's Indian Limo Extravaganza just got a lot more expensive.  $1.2 Million.

An odd little factoid.  The Canadian Government spent $3.8 Million on disposable water bottles over the last 3 years.

Once again, we seem totally incapable of purchasing military vehicles.  A $2-Billion purchasing plan is set to fly away in the wind.  Wonder how many millions we spent to get to this point?

The Senate audit will begin looking at personal expenses.

Vice lays out the most terrible police actions of 2013.  This will make you feel terrible.

Tom the Dancing Bug takes on the wealth gap.  Again, I guess would be more accurate.

Canada is the USA's crap weasel - Week 137 - Dec 9-16

Canada has been acting as the NSA's bitch, setting up outposts in countries where the USA can't.

I think that you really need to be questioned when you start asking your employees to sign lifelong confidentiality agreements.  Especially when those employees are paid for by the public.

James Moore points out, in a really terrible way, that the Federal Government has no interest in helping out the Provinces with child poverty.  “Is it my job to feed my neighbour’s child? I don’t think so.”  Yikes.

Speaking of the BC Provincial Government screwing things up.  Christy Clark.  Jobs Plan.  Not working.

Think we hunt too many grizzly bears? Fuck you.  How about we hunt more grizzly bears, then?

This seems like it will end poorly.  Canada lays claim to the North Pole.  Russia is not happy.

Another Conservative MP is trying to re-open the abortion debate in new and interesting ways.  For me, this is an interesting thought exercise in acceptance.  At what point do you accept that a decision has been made and move on?  At what point do you accept that your minority point of view is being over-ruled by the majority?  On one hand, I admire their tenacity.  On the other hand, this is what I hate about Conservatives.  Raise contentious issue.  Get beat down.  Raise same issue again with a slight twist.  Get beat down again.  And over and over and over again.  Does the same thing happen from the left?

The Conservative War on Science continues.  This time, they closed some libraries belonging to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.  This included hundred year old reports as well as more modern information.

A breakdown of income earnings in Canada for 2011.

Bit of a probe going on into the missing Wright-Duffy e-mails.  And the Conservatives are not cooperating with attempts to change their e-mail deleting policy.

Seems fitting that Canada Post is announcing massive cuts in service on the Conservatives watch.  I mean, who expects Canada Post to continue delivering mail, really?

Jim Flaherty is getting angry at other Conservatives who have publicly called out Rob Ford.  Man.  I used to think he was one of the more reasonable ones.

Somehow Montreal has managed to get approval for some safe injection sites.

Is this another dispute over Conservative election expenses?  An old one?  I don't even know any more.

The "Pot Smoking Mountie" has been arrested for "Assaulting a Police Officer".

A funny story about PM staffers trying to boss around South African media.

Some people are the worst - Week 136 - Dec 2-9

It's kind of terrible that with Nelson Mandela passing away I'm focusing on a terrible human being like Rob Anders.  "Sleepy Time" Rob Anders.  But this guy needs to be called out.  The voters of Calgary West need to be called out for voting for such a useless human being.

An angry Conservative Senator blames Thomas Mulcair for a hundred or so years of Parliamentary tradition.  How dare he call out law-breaking Senators when he, himself, enjoys a house at taxpayers expense.  Legally.

Speaking of terrible Senators, this one calls out his (elected) NDP MP as "useless and powerless".  Why don't these people hop on board the gravy train and vote Conservative?

A nice summary of Duffy-gate and why we have a right to be pissed off.

Things are just getting surreal now.  Patrick Brazeau is hired as a Parliament Hill reporter.

Can you believe that "World Class Spill Response" is actually a sales tactic for the Northern Gateway Pipeline?  That's like selling unprotected sex with "World Class HIV Treatment".

Gizmodo talks about the Alberta plan to create toxic sludge lakes, rather than actually treat effluent from the tar sands process.

Who can even keep up with this stuff?  The "Truth in Sentencing" Act?  A $200 victim services fund?  No wonder judges are pissed.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer points out the obvious: It's easy to balance a budget when you alleviate the burden of responsibility from yourself (through artificially high EI rates, amongst other things).

People seem to really be rallying behind this backbenchers "Fire the Leader" reform attempt.

This rash of soldier suicides suggests that we really aren't doing enough to support our soldiers who come back from combat.

The Conservatives are still convinced that the Government of Canada is their personal re-election vehicle.  This time - partisan remarks posted on the Finance Canada website.  Since removed.  And even the NP thinks all this ad spending might be getting out of hand.

Canada is (maybe) about to claim the North Pole.  But of course they are.  We are.

A Tyee story about how our "strongest in the world" banks are actually really messed up.  We just hid our bailout a bit better.

It looks like ACTA is coming, whether we like it or not.

This is mostly about the United States, but the CSEC/Brazil kerfuffle shows that similar things are happening here.  Basically, state security apparti (FBI, etc.) are operating on behalf of corporations.  The amount of effort put into defeating legal, peaceful activist organizations (Greenpeace etc.) is staggering.

I was thinking I had missed something last week when I was putting my list together but I couldn't put my finger on it.  Alas!  The NHL/Rogers deal!  What exactly does this mean to the future of the CBC?

A leaked UN document shows that there are many countries out there that want an end to drug prohibition.

A busy week - Week 135 - Nov 25 - Dec 2

I think the most important thing we will talk about today is that the Harper Government invited US spy agencies into Canada to spy on people during the G8/G20, which is all kinds of fucked up.  Canadian law prevents Canadian agencies from spying in Canada, so this seems like a nice little workaround.  There seem to be a whole lot of "all countries spy on one another" arguments getting thrown around.  Really?  All the other hosts of Summits invite their buddies over to help them spy on all the other participants?  And of course, the only thing the Harper government has to say about this is "Glenn Greenwald got paid for this article", so, logically, any journalist paid to write a piece has to be lying.  Or something.

How happy was the government to be able to announce that they caught a Chinese "super spy"?

Canada continues to buck world opinion on anything related to Israel.  Of course the Iran nuclear deal isn't supported by the Conservatives.

A tax lawyer that Jim Flaherty appointed as a tax consultant (and Chairman of the Canadian Mint) is embroiled in a massive offshore tax shelter scandal.

Some more details about diplomats shifting their focus to "commerce".  Of the people, for the corporations

The Conservatives killed a plan to study the environmental effects of lead shot and bullets.  Who needs science when you know all your policies are right regardless?

So the by-elections resulted in a whole lot of nothing.

Another week, another pissed off batch of scientists.  Biologists/Fish/Fisheries Law this week.

I know that many, many people don't care at all about criminals and think they need to "get what's coming to them."  But what is the point of prison?  Punishment?  Rehabilitation?  I think if you removed the prison culture mentality from the United States you'd have a country that was light years ahead of where it is now.  Canada isn't quite as bad but listen to what our "Ombudsman for Federal Inmates" has to say.  "More crowded and violent."  "Less successful at rehabilitation."  Yes, the Conservatives war on crime is creating less rehabilitated, more violent criminals.  Well done boys.  At least we've cut down on the number of white prisoners!  Just to clarify, yes, that is a joke.  Honestly.  Just read this quote. "You cannot reasonably claim to have a just society with incarceration rates like these. And most troubling, the growth in the custody population appears to be policy, not crime, driven. After all, crime rates are down while incarceration rates grow,"

I don't know what to think about Randall Hopley.  Yes, kidnapping a small child is terrible.  But...this could have ended so, so very much worse.  In the end he did the right thing and there has to be a degree of leniency shown for that.  This man obviously (I think) has some mental health issues and needs some help.  But if we simply declare him a "dangerous offender" and throw him in jail forever after he makes the right decision, what message is that sending to the next guy facing a similar choice?  In the end, 7 years and 10 years of monitoring once released from prison...sounds about right.  Hopefully he gets the help he needs.

This sounds a lot worse than it is.  E-mails belonging to a lawyer who dealt with Duffy/Wright were thought to have been deleted by the PMO.  But have now been found.  This is the same guy that has had a complaint filed against him for breach of ethics.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.  Stephen Harper thanks Nigel Wright for all his solid ethics help in the acknowledgments of his hockey book.

Let's balance budgets by selling off assets and history!  Canada sells a diplomatic building in London for $500 Million.

Jim Flaherty apparently doesn't know how to fill out expense claims.  Good quality in a finance minister.

What a strange double standard we have when it comes to marijuana.  Yes, you can legally smoke marijuana for medicinal purposes.  No, you can't do it in your police uniform.  Can you imagine if they banned the taking of all medicines while in uniform?  Peter McKay thinks he's setting a "poor example" by using his prescription medication.

We're number one!  We're number one!  BC has the largest rate of child poverty.  By a large margin.  Families first, right Christie!  Speaking of making fun of Christy "families first" Clark.  Shit.  I was just making a joke.  This article points out just how much of a hypocrite she is.  What the fuck, BC?  How did she get voted back in?

I was surprised to find out that emergencies on reserves are handled by a separate agency to emergencies elsewhere.  I guess this makes sense.  It also makes sense that it is run poorly.

Stephen Harper sings at the event where he announces his first trip to Israel.

Who knew that the new pope would be such a bad-ass?

Conservative Senators voted to block a member of the Deloitte audit team from testifying in there...it's kind of confusing.  Anyhow.  The gist - they don't seem to want to hear from somebody that might make them look bad.

Alberta, the province that pays for the rest of us "takers" and "have nots", caused a spike in the deficit due to flood relief.  That's why you're not supposed to get too uppity when you pay a bit more than the next province at any given time, Alberta.  You never know who is going to need government resources.  This is what a government does.

Speaking of what government does, here is a perfect example.  The history of air traffic control.  In the US.  US Senators know an essential service when they see one.


The Federal Government is going to hire a firm to continuously monitor social media.

The Cold War was always kept in check through mutually assured destruction.  You bomb us we'll annihilate you.  But there's threatening to turn anybody that attacks you into rubble and then there's actually wanting to turn anybody who attacks you into rubble.  This factoid suggests the latter - to speed up the response time, all minuteman missile silos had their launch code set to 00000000.