Weekly Highlights from our Conservative Overlords

Weekly Highlights from our Conservative Overlords

Monday, November 25, 2013

Nothing to talk about besides the Senate - Week 134 - Nov 18-25

You always know you're on the wrong side when your folk heroes are a bunch of fucking assholes.  George Zimmerman.  Rob Ford.  Nothing more to say.

This is a really great essay on being poor.  And of course people have a problem with somebody holding down several jobs with no idea how to change their situation.  What a freeloader.

Well this is pretty damning...Of course, our Prime Minister had nothing to do with the misdeeds of his hand selected employees.  Old Steve is the most loyal of friends.  Until you become a liability.  Irving Gerstein should be a bit worried.  Oh.  Wait.  He's throwing him under the bus already.

Stephen Harper officially and totally hangs Nigel Wright out to dry.  I really, really hope Nigel kept some paperwork.  The oddest thing about this whole thing: Why on earth would he use his own money to bail Mike Duffy out?

A story about the missing 3.1 billion.  I initially mispelt "story" as "tory".

A Liberal Senator is accused of sexual harassment.

Some of these by-elections are getting hot and heavy.  Stephen Harper is apparently personally sending out mails to one riding.  Yes I know he isn't really signing them.

This is what our government fights for.  Our right to hunt seals, mine asbestos and build pipelines.  Imagine if they put all this money and energy into industries that didn't enrage half the world?  Of kill them.

Imagining half of North Korea addicted to crystal meth makes the place seem about 100% more terrible.

I wonder if in 50 years time we'll hear about Karl Rove sneaking up to Canada to help the Conservatives get elected?  JFK's pollster infiltrated Canada many moons ago.

A story about Stuxnet that provides a lot of information about cyber warfare and international espionage.

Rob Ford continues to be a walking, talking cartoon.  He hired a former steroid dealer as his personal trainer.  To be fair, I'm sure lots of personal trainers have dealt steroids at some point and time.  Rob ford gets interviewed, makes shit up. People take his "billion saved" as gospel, though.

Christy Clark staffer takes job with Kinder Morgan lobbyist.

This is precisely what people don't understand about copyright legislation and "piracy".  Man buys TV.  TV sends all his information to LG.  Man asks LG to make this stop.  LG tells man that he clicked on the terms of service so he should just go pound sand.  So...with proposed copyright legislation, it could go like this.  Man attempts to reclaim own TV and is arrested for breaking factory installed DRM.  We're entering a world where we no longer own the things in our houses.

Every time we take a trip to a major US city, we see massive billboards for movies that will never be released in Canada.  For a recent trip to LA it was Best Man Holiday.  This story explains the phenomenon.

Monday, November 18, 2013

Givin' it up for Sweden - Week 133 - Nov 12-18

I'm sick of talking about Canada.  Sweden is awesome.  Expensive.  But awesome.  And apparently they have so few criminals, they are shutting down prisons (key point - rehabilitation works).  And a higher concentration of billionaires than the US (key point - social safety nets work).

Sometimes it might be a little tough to put the larger picture in perspective.  It's easy to look at something like Fracking and wonder what the deal is.  We were just in Laguna Beach, where there is a (privately funded) seal and sea lion rescue facility.  Supposedly this is their worst year ever.  Higher water temperatures and a lack of fish are causing hundreds and hundreds of dramatically underfed orphaned cubs.  Which kind of shows you why our freshwater lakes, rivers and streams are so important.  But Christy Clark just wants to "get to yes".  As well, was listening to a professor on the CBC yesterday, who pretty much tore Christy Clarks "the world needs our clean LNG" argument to shreds.  Number one, our LNG isn't that clean.  Number two, we'd be a lot better off if we used all the electricity that we're going to generate to create LNG for other purposes.  She's a crazed LNG lunatic.

Justin Trudeau was at an event for teens and answered a question about Marijuana.  Peter McKay freaked out about "Justin Trudeau talking about legalizing marijuana in front of elementary school kids."

This is the worst thing a government can do:  Sign treaties that allow for no future changes.  The Trans Pacific Partnership effectively halts any efforts at copyright reform.  Because governments always get things right the first time around.

More Michael Sona.  According to Conservative party staffers and lawyers he's a criminal genius.  And they in no way provided a voter list.  The Liberals did.

So 10 teenage boys between the ages of 13-15 have been accused of "child pornography".  No details are given.  I'm betting they did something really horrible, but if the victims are close to their same age, are we really going to brand this children as "child pornographers" for the rest of their lives?  Do we need to sensationalize this as a massive "child pornography" bust?

I kind of like this.  Rob "gravy train" Ford is offering $5,000 raises to his employees if they stay on.  And is hiring taxpayer funded lawyers to sue people for taking his power away.  And makes $170,000 per year.

I haven't posted about Stephen Harper's strange obsession with the North in a while.  Here we go!  It looks like the government or the Conservatives or somebody paid CBC to cover a ship salvaging expedition in the North.  And then lied about it.

The Conservatives are trying to fast track "anti-counterfeiting measures".  Border laptop seizures for all!

JPMorgan took to twitter for a Q&A session.  And shut it down when the results became more than embarrassing.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

We can all learn from Star Wars - Week 132 - Nov 4-12

Stephen Harper keeps insisting everything is okay.  "The RCMP is not investigating the PMO.  These are not the droids you're looking for."  Regardless, the PM won.  The Senators are now the only villains and the Conservatives are the champions who banished the criminals from the Senate.

Canada, once again at the top of the heap.  Heap of sucking at curbing climate change.  According to the UN.  And at sucking at "Conservation".  According to a federal audit.


A nice summary of the War on Science.


Here's another one of those Conservative ideas that you can't really put your finger on why...but makes absolutely no sense - Giving wounded veterans top priority for Federal Government Jobs.  I mean...why not just give them the benefits you promised in the first place?  What if they're totally not qualified for the job?  It's just nonsense red meat.  And of course if you don't support it you're against the troops.


I feel like I'm living in crazy land.  Christy Clark just basically said that the "Five Conditions" have been met, paving the way for pipelines.  What has changed since the election?  Do we have great new safety standards and organizations?  Is there a rock solid plan for spill response?  Safeguards designed in to the pipeline?  Support for the pipeline.  No.  But the "Five Conditions" have been met.  Somehow.  This woman sucks.  This is why people were stupid to vote for her party.  And apparently nothing has changed with her feelings on Northern Gateway?


Scientists - It looks like Grizzly Bears might be overhunted in BC.
Christy Clark - Nope.  All good!


Speaking of disappearing wildlife in British Columbia, there's been little response or action on the Cohen Report, one year later.


Alberta oil producers are upset that they might have some new environmental regulations to deal with.

Of course, we have to spend a bit of time on Rob Ford.  Officially, crack smoking Rob Ford now.  Salon has a nice summary of the last few years of Rob Ford.  Lucky for us...his polling numbers didn't really go up.  There were just some flawed polls that skewed the numbers leading into the latest batch.  And to put Rob Ford to bed...watch this video, and if it doesn't make you smile a bit, you're dead on the inside.  Oh.  And just maybe, his incompetent communications director attempted to hire a hacker to destroy the crack tape?


Some facts about income disparity in the USA.  Key one for me...40% of Americans make less than $20,000 per year.  Top 7 percent own 63 percent of the wealth.  But of course, those that point this out and wonder about it are just jealous and should get better jobs.  Because it makes sense that the average CEO makes 354 times his average employee.  And stockbrokers are just so much smarter and harder working than everybody else.

This article looks at the American gun control battle as a function of 11 different nations within American with differing opinions.  Note how the nations extend into Canada.  Makes sense to me.

It's interesting to note that our parallels with the US haven't really kept pace.  Our "Midlands" are responsible for putting Stephen Harper in business, while the American Midlands put Obama in power.

A black woman in Detroit knocked on a door, asking for help when her car broke down.  She was shot and killed.  No charges.


Monday, November 4, 2013

Stickin' it to Democracy - Week 131 - Oct 28 - Nov 4

I think this pamphlet from the Conservative Convention says all that we really need to know about our current electoral system/government.
I've been thinking about Duffy and Wallin a bit today.  And I think there is danger in lumping these two in together.  I think what one did was much more terrible on a personal level, and what the other did was much worse with respect to what it says about the party.  Duffy essentially spent Senate money as a cheerleader for the Conservative Party of Canada (and claiming a living allowance when he shouldn't have).  Wallin used her travel allowance to go about her own private business.  I think Wallin probably belongs in jail.  I think Duffy is a victim of the Conservative Parties arrogance and deceipt.  He did what dozens and dozens of people told him to do, and what dozens and dozens of people told him would be okay.  Now they're hanging him out to dry and of course he's confused.  I think that says worse things about the party than it does about Duffy.  But at the rate this is going, I don't even know if this opinion will stand for another day before new evidence changes it.  Doesn't look good for Harper thoughAt all.  In the meantime...Duffy lays down the hammer!  PM didn't know?  Fuck you!  Here's a cheque from a Conservative Party lawyer for all the legal fees related to this nonsense.  And Jim Flaherty is dismissive of the Senate scandal because it's getting in the way of all of his precious work.

Here's the fucked up logic that Rob Ford is working on.  Release the Crack video because it won't prove that I smoked crack.  Ergo, I should remain mayor because there's nothing at all wrong with any of this.  But the fine folks of Toronto seem to think this is all great.  I feel like this bozo could murder somebody on his radio program and it would be deemed to be a media witchhunt by his supporters.

Interesting that the Federal Environmental Review of the "New Prosperity" Mine (hot name guys!) is so scathing.  Will they build it anyway?  Is it just "environment be damned" on projects that help the Oil Sands?

Fucking hell.  Face scrub micro beads are polluting the Great Lakes in serious numbers.  See...teenagers are awful.

Friends of Michael sona are intimidating witnesses? How does this guy have friends?

Rafe Mair speculates that the fix is in on the Northern Gateway pipeline (obviously) and that it should go to a referendum (not likely).  Probably a good time to pick up some Enbridge shares.

Bloody activist bureaucrats!  Always pointing out the shortcomings of government!  Don't they know that if they point out that Revenue Canada has terrible data security, the terrorists win?

These guys aren't stupid.  There's a proposal to build a bike path along the length of the Keystone XL pipeline.  Now the oil industry can say things like "You're voting against the longest bike path in world history."

Japans hunting of whales and dolphins is messed up.

More on the European Trade Deal - mostly why we didn't get a good deal.

So some drone strike survivors from Pakistan were invited to speak to Congress.  And 5 Congressmen showed up.

Just waiting for the "More guns would have stopped this shooting" argument in the LAX shooting.  Obviously, this shooting only happened because airports are a gun free zone, right?

Looks like the US gets shafted by Free Trade as well.  This time Lobster fishermen in Maine.  I smell a lawsuit.

So this doesn't have anything to do with politics, but I have to talk about it.  Whenever I say to people "Do you remember in the 80's when there were all those plastic costumes that had a picture on it of the thing you were trying to be?" people have no recollection.  Well.  Slate does.