I want to absorb all the areas south of the Great Lakes so we have complete control of all of them. Then expel all the people obviously cause we don't want the Trumpicans.
We'll be like the people in charge in Fury Road after the Water Wars start.
And from what I heard on the CBC, both the leadership candidates and the news agencies are starting to consider Kevin O'Leary as a serious contender and frontrunner.
So, leadership race with over a dozen cartoonishly bad and mostly forgettable candidates? Check.
Reality TV star posing a businessman with aggressively offensive positions and zero political experience? Check.
I guess we'll have to get ready for a flood of cheap-ass "Make Canada Great Again" hats
Has O'Leary actually started running? Last I heard he was waffling on whether to do so.
The rumor/(things his conservative opponents are accusing him of) is that he is waiting until after the french language debate to officially enter the race because he is not fluent.
And from what I heard on the CBC, both the leadership candidates and the news agencies are starting to consider Kevin O'Leary as a serious contender and frontrunner.
So, leadership race with over a dozen cartoonishly bad and mostly forgettable candidates? Check.
Reality TV star posing a businessman with aggressively offensive positions and zero political experience? Check.
I guess we'll have to get ready for a flood of cheap-ass "Make Canada Great Again" hats
Has O'Leary actually started running? Last I heard he was waffling on whether to do so.
The rumor/(things his conservative opponents are accusing him of) is that he is waiting until after the french language debate to officially enter the race because he is not fluent.
Kevin oleary is bad but honestly i think kellie leitch is worse
Is this kind of like how, 'Trump is bad but really Ted Cruz is worse,' ?
:rotate:
O'Leary would be stupid not to run in the current political climate, and we would likewise be stupid to underestimate him or trust in some dumbass Conservative 'Never O'Leary!' narrative (which, of course, primarily frames itself as a fear of irrelevance more than a fear of what O'Leary represents).
The Liberals will be blindsided as easily as the Democrats (if not worse, because the Liberals are not nearly as good at campaigning as the Dems) & I have no clue what my party will be up to until our leadership contest is over (I'm hopeful but cynical that the old labor core of the party will be shaken-up a bit). We need a damn proportional system in place to protect against this kind of thing.
Kevin oleary is bad but honestly i think kellie leitch is worse
Where are they on the Christie Clark scale,
What about the Harper scale?
I dont know about christie clark.
Compared to harper? Its hard to say really. I think kellie leitch will clearly have xenophobic policies. Harper was only really starting to get on board with outright xenophobia in the last election, which thankfully he lost.
Oleary has made statements saying he rejects xenophobia. If he becomes conservative leader, will he stick by that? I dont know. I mean other than that i dont really need to comment on his character. We all know exactly how he is.
I actually had a conversation about O'Leary with a friend who worked for CBC. Apparently he was, at least to the staff and other personalities, unfailingly polite and respectful, and went out of his way to buy Christmas presents for the support staff and other people involved with the show when he was there.
That said, it doesn't mean he'd be a good leadership candidate, but he dors seem to be remarkably more tolerable than Leitch. Not a high bar, certainly, but better than it could be.
Yeah, I was going to say something akin to that about O'Leary earlier. As much as I think he's kind of a slimy, business goose, he's not hateful in the way that Trump is hateful. I find Leitch's rhetoric and positioning far more upsetting.
I actually had a conversation about O'Leary with a friend who worked for CBC. Apparently he was, at least to the staff and other personalities, unfailingly polite and respectful, and went out of his way to buy Christmas presents for the support staff and other people involved with the show when he was there.
That said, it doesn't mean he'd be a good leadership candidate, but he dors seem to be remarkably more tolerable than Leitch. Not a high bar, certainly, but better than it could be.
You know, oddly enough, I read the same thing about Trump: good to those who worked for him. And some of those who worked for him? The same category of people he was railing against in his speeches, so...
At this point in my life and after having seen how Canadian Reform and Conservative parties morphed over the years, what came across as out and out betrayals to me towards my Canadian values once Harper was in power, even as limited as that was being a minority government with the proroguing and what not... We can't rely on them one iota to be tempered in their approach, not while they insist ideology trumps things like detailed data gathering in the census, starving/muzzling scientists, their treatment of First Nations people, and being found in contempt of parliament.
Xenophobia is just the ugly icing on their nasty ideological cake and I hope we never have to take another bite.
So now whenever they speak as the Opposition, I just roll my eyes, I just don't trust them anymore. Its harder with media though, trying to go back and figure out which outlets endorsed the Cons in past election years sometimes seems beyond my google fu. CBC is the only thing I recall the Cons being dead set against, so they are one of the few who when I read their articles I get the sense they still have a shred of credibility in regards to facts trumping ideological editorial biases.
I actually had a conversation about O'Leary with a friend who worked for CBC. Apparently he was, at least to the staff and other personalities, unfailingly polite and respectful, and went out of his way to buy Christmas presents for the support staff and other people involved with the show when he was there.
That said, it doesn't mean he'd be a good leadership candidate, but he does seem to be remarkably more tolerable than Leitch. Not a high bar, certainly, but better than it could be.
You know, oddly enough, I read the same thing about Trump: good to those who worked for him. And some of those who worked for him? The same category of people he was railing against in his speeches, so...
At this point in my life and after having seen how Canadian Reform and Conservative parties morphed over the years, what came across as out and out betrayals to me towards my Canadian values once Harper was in power, even as limited as that was being a minority government with the proroguing and what not... We can't rely on them one iota to be tempered in their approach, not while they insist ideology trumps things like detailed data gathering in the census, starving/muzzling scientists, their treatment of First Nations people, and being found in contempt of parliament.
Xenophobia is just the ugly icing on their nasty ideological cake and I hope we never have to take another bite.
So now whenever they speak as the Opposition, I just roll my eyes, I just don't trust them anymore. Its harder with media though, trying to go back and figure out which outlets endorsed the Cons in past election years sometimes seems beyond my google fu. CBC is the only thing I recall the Cons being dead set against, so they are one of the few who when I read their articles I get the sense they still have a shred of credibility in regards to facts trumping ideological editorial biases.
Well, again, while I'm not really defending O'Leary as a potential PM, he's at least shown support for a carbon tax and has spoken out against the xenophobia of Leitch.
And I don't know where you heard that about Donald Trump - everything I read was that he treated his 'underlings' poorly, paid them like shit and, obviously, didn't pay his bills.
Not that O'Leary is a great candidate, again, but I don't know if he's really comparable to Trump. Trump never spoke out against xenophobia and constantly showed a blatant disrespect and disregard for anyone he considered a 'loser'. I still think Leitch is a much closer analogue, though I suppose you could argue that it seems as though she's quickly running out of steam.
O'Leary bought out and gutted a quality software company my sister once worked for, losing her the best job she ever had. There was no need to shutter the company. It was profitable; it just suited his short-term business needs. I have indeed heard he's a nice person outside his TV persona, but I believe he honestly feels that money has no ethics and that making money is the most important thing in life. He's not interested in the people behind the numbers. Not something I want in a national political leader... or even a business leader.
He does at least appear to respect women and have nothing against people of varying ethnicities, but would that make him any better for Canada than Leitch? I'm not sure, when there's nothing profitable in working towards equality or socioeconomic justice.
Want to find me on a gaming service? I'm SwashbucklerXX everywhere.
I actually had a conversation about O'Leary with a friend who worked for CBC. Apparently he was, at least to the staff and other personalities, unfailingly polite and respectful, and went out of his way to buy Christmas presents for the support staff and other people involved with the show when he was there.
That said, it doesn't mean he'd be a good leadership candidate, but he dors seem to be remarkably more tolerable than Leitch. Not a high bar, certainly, but better than it could be.
You know, oddly enough, I read the same thing about Trump: good to those who worked for him. And some of those who worked for him? The same category of people he was railing against in his speeches, so...
At this point in my life and after having seen how Canadian Reform and Conservative parties morphed over the years, what came across as out and out betrayals to me towards my Canadian values once Harper was in power, even as limited as that was being a minority government with the proroguing and what not... We can't rely on them one iota to be tempered in their approach, not while they insist ideology trumps things like detailed data gathering in the census, starving/muzzling scientists, their treatment of First Nations people, and being found in contempt of parliament.
Xenophobia is just the ugly icing on their nasty ideological cake and I hope we never have to take another bite.
So now whenever they speak as the Opposition, I just roll my eyes, I just don't trust them anymore. Its harder with media though, trying to go back and figure out which outlets endorsed the Cons in past election years sometimes seems beyond my google fu. CBC is the only thing I recall the Cons being dead set against, so they are one of the few who when I read their articles I get the sense they still have a shred of credibility in regards to facts trumping ideological editorial biases.
Conservativism is a cancer on the body politic of western nations at this point. There is no major conservative party I can think of floating around not engaging in that same mix of anti-intellectualism, xenophobia, bigotry, corporate handjobs, deregulation, etc, etc.
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MeeqeLord of the pants most fancySomeplace amazingRegistered Userregular
I actually had a conversation about O'Leary with a friend who worked for CBC. Apparently he was, at least to the staff and other personalities, unfailingly polite and respectful, and went out of his way to buy Christmas presents for the support staff and other people involved with the show when he was there.
That said, it doesn't mean he'd be a good leadership candidate, but he dors seem to be remarkably more tolerable than Leitch. Not a high bar, certainly, but better than it could be.
You know, oddly enough, I read the same thing about Trump: good to those who worked for him. And some of those who worked for him? The same category of people he was railing against in his speeches, so...
At this point in my life and after having seen how Canadian Reform and Conservative parties morphed over the years, what came across as out and out betrayals to me towards my Canadian values once Harper was in power, even as limited as that was being a minority government with the proroguing and what not... We can't rely on them one iota to be tempered in their approach, not while they insist ideology trumps things like detailed data gathering in the census, starving/muzzling scientists, their treatment of First Nations people, and being found in contempt of parliament.
Xenophobia is just the ugly icing on their nasty ideological cake and I hope we never have to take another bite.
So now whenever they speak as the Opposition, I just roll my eyes, I just don't trust them anymore. Its harder with media though, trying to go back and figure out which outlets endorsed the Cons in past election years sometimes seems beyond my google fu. CBC is the only thing I recall the Cons being dead set against, so they are one of the few who when I read their articles I get the sense they still have a shred of credibility in regards to facts trumping ideological editorial biases.
Conservativism is a cancer on the body politic of western nations at this point. There is no major conservative party I can think of floating around not engaging in that same mix of anti-intellectualism, xenophobia, bigotry, corporate handjobs, deregulation, etc, etc.
Conservatism is all about keeping things the same, and maybe, kinda, slowly changing things I guess maybe someday if you can prove its awesome. That this is idea is suffering and going reactionary in the era of the fastest changes in human history should be expected at this point, that mindset simply cannot process the modern world, where things can, should, and must change on a rapid basis.
I actually had a conversation about O'Leary with a friend who worked for CBC. Apparently he was, at least to the staff and other personalities, unfailingly polite and respectful, and went out of his way to buy Christmas presents for the support staff and other people involved with the show when he was there.
That said, it doesn't mean he'd be a good leadership candidate, but he dors seem to be remarkably more tolerable than Leitch. Not a high bar, certainly, but better than it could be.
I work in finance on Bay Street and so hear the odd O'Leary rumour. While this doesn't change my opinion that he's unsuitable as PM, from what I understand the public persona is just that, a persona. He is deliberately building a brand based on what your racist uncle thinks a big shot businessman is like.
I actually had a conversation about O'Leary with a friend who worked for CBC. Apparently he was, at least to the staff and other personalities, unfailingly polite and respectful, and went out of his way to buy Christmas presents for the support staff and other people involved with the show when he was there.
That said, it doesn't mean he'd be a good leadership candidate, but he dors seem to be remarkably more tolerable than Leitch. Not a high bar, certainly, but better than it could be.
You know, oddly enough, I read the same thing about Trump: good to those who worked for him. And some of those who worked for him? The same category of people he was railing against in his speeches, so...
At this point in my life and after having seen how Canadian Reform and Conservative parties morphed over the years, what came across as out and out betrayals to me towards my Canadian values once Harper was in power, even as limited as that was being a minority government with the proroguing and what not... We can't rely on them one iota to be tempered in their approach, not while they insist ideology trumps things like detailed data gathering in the census, starving/muzzling scientists, their treatment of First Nations people, and being found in contempt of parliament.
Xenophobia is just the ugly icing on their nasty ideological cake and I hope we never have to take another bite.
So now whenever they speak as the Opposition, I just roll my eyes, I just don't trust them anymore. Its harder with media though, trying to go back and figure out which outlets endorsed the Cons in past election years sometimes seems beyond my google fu. CBC is the only thing I recall the Cons being dead set against, so they are one of the few who when I read their articles I get the sense they still have a shred of credibility in regards to facts trumping ideological editorial biases.
Conservativism is a cancer on the body politic of western nations at this point. There is no major conservative party I can think of floating around not engaging in that same mix of anti-intellectualism, xenophobia, bigotry, corporate handjobs, deregulation, etc, etc.
Conservatism is all about keeping things the same, and maybe, kinda, slowly changing things I guess maybe someday if you can prove its awesome. That this is idea is suffering and going reactionary in the era of the fastest changes in human history should be expected at this point, that mindset simply cannot process the modern world, where things can, should, and must change on a rapid basis.
Conservatism isn't about that at all. That's the philosophical basis for some fantasy political ideology that shares the same name as conservative parties, but it doesn't actually exist in real life. In real life, here and now and for decades in the past at the very least, conservatism is a reactionary ideology against government action and social and cultural change.
People can talk all they want about what conservatism "really is". I'm talking about what it actually is, without the quotes. By looking at their rhetoric and policy.
They are a loose nexus of ideas involving, again, anti-intellectualism, xenophobia, bigotry, corporate handjobs, deregulation, a lack of respect for democracy as an idea, a lack of any care for political norms, a lack of respect for basic human rights, etc, etc. That's what is actually consistently shown from their actions.
There is some sort of theoretical conservatism you can read about in a textbook that isn't steeped in these ideas. In the real world, it doesn't exist.
I actually had a conversation about O'Leary with a friend who worked for CBC. Apparently he was, at least to the staff and other personalities, unfailingly polite and respectful, and went out of his way to buy Christmas presents for the support staff and other people involved with the show when he was there.
That said, it doesn't mean he'd be a good leadership candidate, but he dors seem to be remarkably more tolerable than Leitch. Not a high bar, certainly, but better than it could be.
You know, oddly enough, I read the same thing about Trump: good to those who worked for him. And some of those who worked for him? The same category of people he was railing against in his speeches, so...
At this point in my life and after having seen how Canadian Reform and Conservative parties morphed over the years, what came across as out and out betrayals to me towards my Canadian values once Harper was in power, even as limited as that was being a minority government with the proroguing and what not... We can't rely on them one iota to be tempered in their approach, not while they insist ideology trumps things like detailed data gathering in the census, starving/muzzling scientists, their treatment of First Nations people, and being found in contempt of parliament.
Xenophobia is just the ugly icing on their nasty ideological cake and I hope we never have to take another bite.
So now whenever they speak as the Opposition, I just roll my eyes, I just don't trust them anymore. Its harder with media though, trying to go back and figure out which outlets endorsed the Cons in past election years sometimes seems beyond my google fu. CBC is the only thing I recall the Cons being dead set against, so they are one of the few who when I read their articles I get the sense they still have a shred of credibility in regards to facts trumping ideological editorial biases.
Conservativism is a cancer on the body politic of western nations at this point. There is no major conservative party I can think of floating around not engaging in that same mix of anti-intellectualism, xenophobia, bigotry, corporate handjobs, deregulation, etc, etc.
Conservatism is all about keeping things the same, and maybe, kinda, slowly changing things I guess maybe someday if you can prove its awesome. That this is idea is suffering and going reactionary in the era of the fastest changes in human history should be expected at this point, that mindset simply cannot process the modern world, where things can, should, and must change on a rapid basis.
Conservatism isn't about that at all. That's the philosophical basis for some fantasy political ideology that shares the same name as conservative parties, but it doesn't actually exist in real life. In real life, here and now and for decades in the past at the very least, conservatism is a reactionary ideology against government action and social and cultural change.
People can talk all they want about what conservatism "really is". I'm talking about what it actually is, without the quotes. By looking at their rhetoric and policy.
They are a loose nexus of ideas involving, again, anti-intellectualism, xenophobia, bigotry, corporate handjobs, deregulation, a lack of respect for democracy as an idea, a lack of any care for political norms, a lack of respect for basic human rights, etc, etc. That's what is actually consistently shown from their actions.
There is some sort of theoretical conservatism you can read about in a textbook that isn't steeped in these ideas. In the real world, it doesn't exist.
I like to say that there is a potential world in which I am conservative.
the problem right now is that generally the more right wing people are leading the conservative party in this country. When the Progressive Conservatives were a more centrist party you did not see the kind of things that are coming out of this conservative party as it currently stands.
Alas being more right wing is winning the day in the party because right now right vs left is "in" and finding common ground is not something anyone is willing to do, so positioning yourself as far away as you can from "the other guys" is what gets people traction from within the party.
It leads to the bigger political problem here, and really all around the world, where there is virtually no working together in government anymore. Everything is the us vs. them attitude, and neither side can acknowledge that the other side can even possibly have a good idea, so it becomes very confrontational, which just further promotes the wider gap between the left and the right. The center is becoming a wasteland, not because it is a bad place in principle, but because no one wins in the center these days.
I think there are some fundamental differences in how people are approaching government, and the disappearance of the center parties / increase in polarization is a symptom of people finding a party that represents their views.
The lack of centrists could also be a symptom of everyone sharing their opinions about everything, with sources (real or imagined) to back them up. This encourages people to cluster together more for validation.
There are so many variations and exceptions that have been created by the slow separation, that I'm not even sure how accurate any one reading of policy goals can be.
Do conservatives hate green energy because its associated with hippies and hippies are associated with sexual liberation and freedom?
Do conservatives honestly believe that government assistance is too luxurious a lifestyle and that it should be reduced, that fraud is so rampant that enough barriers should be erected that an honest person is better off ignoring it and finding another job in the time it would take to get approved? Or do they hate these programs because they allow forgiveness for poor life decisions or poor life situations, and they feel that it is getting in the way of morality by reducing their suffering?
I think there's a little of column A and a little of Column B. Sure you'll find the hardcore right wing part of the party who truly believes the right wing ideas are the right ones, but I don't think it is as rampant as you think. There just isn't an alternative on the center-right right now, so for people who are center-right leaning, there simply isn't an alternative for them. So the choice becomes vote for the Liberals with their center/slightly left platform, or the conservatives with their far right platform.
Many of them are choosing to vote/support the far right because they don't associate themselves with a center/left party, when in theory a lot of the progressive element of the conservative side of the party align more closely with the liberals than the conservative party as it exists today.
I myself struggle with this. I consider myself a centrist with a very slight lean to the right. I am all for the liberal's social policies, but don't agree with spending ourselves to oblivion to accomplish the party's goals. (I'm also not a "balance the budget at all costs" person).
the problem right now is that generally the more right wing people are leading the conservative party in this country. When the Progressive Conservatives were a more centrist party you did not see the kind of things that are coming out of this conservative party as it currently stands.
Alas being more right wing is winning the day in the party because right now right vs left is "in" and finding common ground is not something anyone is willing to do, so positioning yourself as far away as you can from "the other guys" is what gets people traction from within the party.
It leads to the bigger political problem here, and really all around the world, where there is virtually no working together in government anymore. Everything is the us vs. them attitude, and neither side can acknowledge that the other side can even possibly have a good idea, so it becomes very confrontational, which just further promotes the wider gap between the left and the right. The center is becoming a wasteland, not because it is a bad place in principle, but because no one wins in the center these days.
You should consider that the right-wing parties keep moving right because that's where their support actually is.
Even here the "centre-right" and "right" merged because the PCs were dead.
I myself struggle with this. I consider myself a centrist with a very slight lean to the right. I am all for the liberal's social policies, but don't agree with spending ourselves to oblivion to accomplish the party's goals. (I'm also not a "balance the budget at all costs" person).
See, I reach the exact opposite conclusion. My observation has been that the left does not spend themselves to oblivion; it's the right that does that with much more frequency. The left is usually trying to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and then spending a lot of time chasing relatively frivolous QoL issues that actually cost relatively little money. The right is usually trying to slash taxes, trim government spending on small things, but then engage in massive revenue giveaways.
I compare, for example, Chretien's balancing the budget by downloading onto the provinces to Harper's driving the deficit by slashing the GST, implementing boutique tax cuts, and slashing science funding, or Wynne's green energy hydro increases and road tolls to Harris' hydro privatization price spike/power brownouts and Hwy 407 giveaway. I don't like the way the political left plays pander to preposterous pet causes, but numerically, those efforts are rather minor - though they do have a net cumulative effect over time - versus the sweeping ideological sell outs the political right engages in. The worst ideas that SJW lefitsts have are far less detrimental, and a lot less likely to be enacted, than the worst ideas neocorporate so-cons have.
Or to put it another way, the Liberal-esque Centre-Left (and the NDP-esque Left) do not understand economics, but do not pretend to, and so are happy to hew to conventional economic orthodoxy. The Conserative-esque Right do not understand economics, but believe not only that they do, but further that they understand it more than economists because they're "real" businesspeople with an anti-intellectual slant, and so end up fucking everything up. (Note, I do not advocate for handing over budgeting to the anarcho-Marxist Far Left.)
To be fair to Stephen Harper, he is actually an economist by trade. I will not defend him on the whole, but he is the exception to the rule on politicians not actually being educated on the things they do.
However, the point about conservatives thinking that running a government like a business is well taken. I don't agree with it either. a government is not a business, nor should it be run like one. The far right does not understand that.
I myself struggle with this. I consider myself a centrist with a very slight lean to the right. I am all for the liberal's social policies, but don't agree with spending ourselves to oblivion to accomplish the party's goals. (I'm also not a "balance the budget at all costs" person).
See, I reach the exact opposite conclusion. My observation has been that the left does not spend themselves to oblivion; it's the right that does that with much more frequency. The left is usually trying to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and then spending a lot of time chasing relatively frivolous QoL issues that actually cost relatively little money. The right is usually trying to slash taxes, trim government spending on small things, but then engage in massive revenue giveaways.
I compare, for example, Chretien's balancing the budget by downloading onto the provinces to Harper's driving the deficit by slashing the GST, implementing boutique tax cuts, and slashing science funding, or Wynne's green energy hydro increases and road tolls to Harris' hydro privatization price spike/power brownouts and Hwy 407 giveaway. I don't like the way the political left plays pander to preposterous pet causes, but numerically, those efforts are rather minor - though they do have a net cumulative effect over time - versus the sweeping ideological sell outs the political right engages in. The worst ideas that SJW lefitsts have are far less detrimental, and a lot less likely to be enacted, than the worst ideas neocorporate so-cons have.
The Mulroney era is by far the worst for this - in 2015 adjusted dollars, he went in the hole to the tune of $523 billion (over 9 budgets), whereas the boogeyman of the Canadian right, PET, only ran up $384 billion (over 15 budgets). Of the PMs over the last 50 years, Harper is the other bookend in terms of total debt accumulated.
For those interested, the complete list:
Mulroney - 9 budgets - (-523.51)
Trudeau 1 - 15 budgets - (-384.69)
Harper - 9 budgets - (-127.02)
Chretien - 11 budgets - (-78.08)
Clark - 1 budget* - (-38.6)
Martin - 2 budgets - 17.36
Liberal average budget: -15.91/budget
Conservative average budget: -36.27/budget
All figures are in billions of 2015 adjusted Canadian dollars.
So on average, Conservatives run over twice deficit as Liberals governments over the past 49 years (the even 50 would include one year of Pearson and improve the Liberal numbers a bit).
*I am giving Clark credit for 1979 even though his budget didn't pass.
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El SkidThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
To be fair to Stephen Harper, he is actually an economist by trade. I will not defend him on the whole, but he is the exception to the rule on politicians not actually being educated on the things they do.
However, the point about conservatives thinking that running a government like a business is well taken. I don't agree with it either. a government is not a business, nor should it be run like one. The far right does not understand that.
The government as a business thing completely misses the point of Government, and severely pisses me off. Much of Europe's reacting to bad times by not spending money makes me sick.
Keynes has shown that economically government works best when they do the exact opposite of what a business would do- when you have a deficit because the economy is doing poorly, you spend more... where a business would be tightening their belt to ride things out. When things are going really well, a business wants to invest money to spur their own growth...where the government wants to take advantage of higher revenues to beat down the debt so they have money to spend when things go sour again.
If this isn't what we're teaching in schools then we damn well should be... because as it is there are WAY too many people that buy into financial concepts that provably don't work... And no shortage of people that will take advantage of their ignorance for personal gain. :-/
To be fair to Stephen Harper, he is actually an economist by trade. I will not defend him on the whole, but he is the exception to the rule on politicians not actually being educated on the things they do.
However, the point about conservatives thinking that running a government like a business is well taken. I don't agree with it either. a government is not a business, nor should it be run like one. The far right does not understand that.
The government as a business thing completely misses the point of Government, and severely pisses me off. Much of Europe's reacting to bad times by not spending money makes me sick.
Keynes has shown that economically government works best when they do the exact opposite of what a business would do- when you have a deficit because the economy is doing poorly, you spend more... where a business would be tightening their belt to ride things out. When things are going really well, a business wants to invest money to spur their own growth...where the government wants to take advantage of higher revenues to beat down the debt so they have money to spend when things go sour again.
If this isn't what we're teaching in schools then we damn well should be... because as it is there are WAY too many people that buy into financial concepts that provably don't work... And no shortage of people that will take advantage of their ignorance for personal gain. :-/
There are criticisms of Keynes, but best I can figure - being only an amateur macroeconomist - most of them center around edge cases and long-term effects if everybody engages in Keynesian stimulus for long periods of time. But basically, it comes down to whether you're the author of your own destiny: usually, if a business has a bad year or so, that's not due to the business itself but rather global effects, so it makes sense to batten down the hatches and wait for the global effects to shift. But even that's not always true: sometimes it is the business itself, and so reinvestment and reconsolidation are required - see Blackberry - because otherwise you're just waiting for your own doom. Alternately, sometimes the global effects won't turn - see the typewriter industry - and again, belt-tightening does nothing to stave off your doom. So even then, the businesspeople-politicians who are just, "Tighten your belts," aren't even correct; they're just a result of selection bias favouring people who found themselves in fundamentally sound businesses that didn't suffer through global trends killing their industries.
Large nations, on the other hand, are largely the authors of their own destinies. Not entirely: our economic performance is largely tied to the health of the American economy, but large nations are also inherently diversified, are often their own suppliers and consumers, and possess natural resources and arable land. Since we control both sides of transaction, both the supply and the demand, it makes no sense to just abandon economic activity altogether.
To be fair to Stephen Harper, he is actually an economist by trade. I will not defend him on the whole, but he is the exception to the rule on politicians not actually being educated on the things they do.
However, the point about conservatives thinking that running a government like a business is well taken. I don't agree with it either. a government is not a business, nor should it be run like one. The far right does not understand that.
The government as a business thing completely misses the point of Government, and severely pisses me off. Much of Europe's reacting to bad times by not spending money makes me sick.
Keynes has shown that economically government works best when they do the exact opposite of what a business would do- when you have a deficit because the economy is doing poorly, you spend more... where a business would be tightening their belt to ride things out. When things are going really well, a business wants to invest money to spur their own growth...where the government wants to take advantage of higher revenues to beat down the debt so they have money to spend when things go sour again.
If this isn't what we're teaching in schools then we damn well should be... because as it is there are WAY too many people that buy into financial concepts that provably don't work... And no shortage of people that will take advantage of their ignorance for personal gain. :-/
I hate how modern taxes are perceived. It's just wrong & disgusting. I kind of presume it has always been like this, but it needs to change.
It is way too trivial for a politician to go and promise to just cut taxes and get applause for it. It's the cheapest bang for your political buck - tell people it's bad to tax them, listen to them clap. Then we find ourselves in this cesspool where nobody can get funding to do anything, where even basic utilities are starting to fail, and everyone still wants to pay less taxes.
Fuck it all. Go pay your Goddamn taxes, grandma. I'm tired of you taking money out of my pocket while absorbing most of the healthcare system's resources. You'll pay your damn share and you'll like it; if you don't, fuck you, we should just turn off the water utilities, close the hospitals and shrug. "Well, you didn't want to pay. This is what it's like when nobody pays. What, thought you'd be able to skip the bill? Ha ha ha. Pony up or go shower in the bushes next time it rains. Figure-out which plants to harvest your diabetes medication from."
I actually had a conversation about O'Leary with a friend who worked for CBC. Apparently he was, at least to the staff and other personalities, unfailingly polite and respectful, and went out of his way to buy Christmas presents for the support staff and other people involved with the show when he was there.
That said, it doesn't mean he'd be a good leadership candidate, but he dors seem to be remarkably more tolerable than Leitch. Not a high bar, certainly, but better than it could be.
I really couldn't give a shit about how polite or respectful someone is in a private capacity. Trump's transition team is reported by all sources as being unfailingly polite in it's dealings with the outgoing Obama administration. Chamberlain was polite & respectful; by contrast, Churchill was a violent, angry & reckless drunk. Guess which of those two men we needed more at the time?
O'Leary is a cheerleader and support structure for the worst elements of Canadian society. We don't have the KKK up here or the long history of American slavery, so our worst elements are different from those found in America - but they are nevertheless bad in their own right, and incredibly racist (just with different targets. Well, except for Muslims; holy shit do racist old Canadians hate Muslims. You'd think from the way they talk that each one had their own 9/11 in their backyard). What will O'Leary say about veils if the subject is brought up again (and it will be)? Probably whatever is cheap & politically expedient, and that means something brazenly hateful in his political sphere. It really doesn't matter at that point if he personally believes the hate or not.
He & every person riding the current wave of populism that even makes his candidacy possibly are just fucking garbage. I don't want to play any variation of patty-cakes with them or offer any form of appeasement.
We can't breathe the same air as these people. It's them or us, and I choose us.
To be fair to Stephen Harper, he is actually an economist by trade. I will not defend him on the whole, but he is the exception to the rule on politicians not actually being educated on the things they do.
However, the point about conservatives thinking that running a government like a business is well taken. I don't agree with it either. a government is not a business, nor should it be run like one. The far right does not understand that.
The government as a business thing completely misses the point of Government, and severely pisses me off. Much of Europe's reacting to bad times by not spending money makes me sick.
Keynes has shown that economically government works best when they do the exact opposite of what a business would do- when you have a deficit because the economy is doing poorly, you spend more... where a business would be tightening their belt to ride things out. When things are going really well, a business wants to invest money to spur their own growth...where the government wants to take advantage of higher revenues to beat down the debt so they have money to spend when things go sour again.
If this isn't what we're teaching in schools then we damn well should be... because as it is there are WAY too many people that buy into financial concepts that provably don't work... And no shortage of people that will take advantage of their ignorance for personal gain. :-/
I hate how modern taxes are perceived. It's just wrong & disgusting. I kind of presume it has always been like this, but it needs to change.
It is way too trivial for a politician to go and promise to just cut taxes and get applause for it. It's the cheapest bang for your political buck - tell people it's bad to tax them, listen to them clap. Then we find ourselves in this cesspool where nobody can get funding to do anything, where even basic utilities are starting to fail, and everyone still wants to pay less taxes.
Fuck it all. Go pay your Goddamn taxes, grandma. I'm tired of you taking money out of my pocket while absorbing most of the healthcare system's resources. You'll pay your damn share and you'll like it; if you don't, fuck you, we should just turn off the water utilities, close the hospitals and shrug. "Well, you didn't want to pay. This is what it's like when nobody pays. What, thought you'd be able to skip the bill? Ha ha ha. Pony up or go shower in the bushes next time it rains. Figure-out which plants to harvest your diabetes medication from."
I actually had a conversation about O'Leary with a friend who worked for CBC. Apparently he was, at least to the staff and other personalities, unfailingly polite and respectful, and went out of his way to buy Christmas presents for the support staff and other people involved with the show when he was there.
That said, it doesn't mean he'd be a good leadership candidate, but he dors seem to be remarkably more tolerable than Leitch. Not a high bar, certainly, but better than it could be.
I really couldn't give a shit about how polite or respectful someone is in a private capacity. Trump's transition team is reported by all sources as being unfailingly polite in it's dealings with the outgoing Obama administration. Chamberlain was polite & respectful; by contrast, Churchill was a violent, angry & reckless drunk. Guess which of those two men we needed more at the time?
O'Leary is a cheerleader and support structure for the worst elements of Canadian society. We don't have the KKK up here or the long history of American slavery, so our worst elements are different from those found in America - but they are nevertheless bad in their own right, and incredibly racist (just with different targets. Well, except for Muslims; holy shit do racist old Canadians hate Muslims. You'd think from the way they talk that each one had their own 9/11 in their backyard). What will O'Leary say about veils if the subject is brought up again (and it will be)? Probably whatever is cheap & politically expedient, and that means something brazenly hateful in his political sphere. It really doesn't matter at that point if he personally believes the hate or not.
He & every person riding the current wave of populism that even makes his candidacy possibly are just fucking garbage. I don't want to play any variation of patty-cakes with them or offer any form of appeasement.
We can't breathe the same air as these people. It's them or us, and I choose us.
Yes, I will quite happily suggest that 'candidate who may incite hate if he considers it to be politically expedient, though that's based on guesswork' is better than 'candidate who is explicitly doing that right the fuck now'. Based on what she's said and done, Kellie Leitch is absolutely a worse option than Kevin O'Leary. Kevin O'Leary has not been throwing out dog whistles about those horrible uncanadian others that don't fit our values, gosh, we should really test them to make sure they're going to be the right kind of people.
Kevin O'Leary has said some unbelievably asinine things about Alberta's government. He's shown a complete lack of understanding with regards to politics at any level, and clearly doesn't get how a country's economy works and how you can't run it like a business. He'd be a Harper-level disaster in a whole number of ways. But he's not engaging in the same kind of xenophobia that Leitch is actively engaging in.
Neither of them would be good leadership candidates. Neither of them would make a good prime minister. But one of them is a blustering slimy businessman, while the other is showing some pretty troubling signs of looking for a uniform by Hugo Boss.
No one said a goddamn thing about playing patty-cakes or appeasement.
I mean, more bluntly, none of the Conservative candidates are people I'd want as PM, because I'm far enough to the left that I have almost nothing in common with any of them.
But there are certainly those that would cause me less concern than others.
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Fight them both, O'Leary and Leitch, tooth and nail, and all that follow them. Do not let yourselves fall like the US. Do not dismiss them as jokes that couldn't succeed like Trump. They could very well get a fat juicy cut of that Russian funding like right-wing parties across Europe and win.
Fight them both, O'Leary and Leitch, tooth and nail, and all that follow them. Do not let yourselves fall like the US. Do not dismiss them as jokes that couldn't succeed like Trump. They could very well get a fat juicy cut of that Russian funding like right-wing parties across Europe and win.
Oh, they absolutely could. There's a growing perception, fair or not, that Trudeau's government has fallen back into the patterns of corruption and cronyism that many believe characterized our previous Liberal administrations. Electoral reform may prevent us from falling completely down that hole, as I believe there are enough people in Canada who would flatly reject that kind of authoritarianism - but that's probably what people in those other countries said, right before it happened.
Our best hope, frankly, is that both Leitch and O'Leary fail in their leadership bids, and that a more 'moderate' Conservative takes the helm of the party. There's some hope on that front, at least - the response to O'Leary has been pretty lukewarm thus far, and Leitch seems to be losing support within the party (while, unfortunately, remaining relatively 'popular' outside of it, among Conservative voters).
But they aren't the only ones that would be a disaster. Maxime Bernier's a libertarian who wants to defund the CBC and slash funding for public healthcare. Chris Alexander was one of the architects behind the 'barbaric cultural practices' tip line (who, weirdly, also has a surprisingly progressive view on refugees. Multitudes!) Blaney's a mini-Leitch insofar as xenophobia and fear of the 'other' is concerned. Same with Peterson. Lemieux is running on his opposition to abortion rights and same sex marriage. Same with Trost.
Raitt and Chong both seem to be near the front in terms of polling, and both seem to be somewhat reasonable, at least? Raitt has spoken out against Leitch, and Chong wants to push a more inclusive Conservative party. So maybe we dodge our own Trump-shaped bullet.
But there are absolutely people in Canada who look at Donald Trump and think 'hey, I want some of that.' I live in Alberta, the heart of that kind of sentiment, and my one hope is that the sentiment is mostly limited to here and some pockets across the rest of the country.
'It couldn't happen here' is a dangerous thought, and one that I worry too many Canadians believe.
so it's being reported that Stephane Dion will accept a role as ambassador to france, and John MacCallum will become our ambassador to Canada.
Getting rid of two under-performing cabinet ministers by essentially firing them into the sun, especially in MacCallum's case. At least Dion gets to go somewhere that I'm sure he'll actually enjoy. Interesting ploy. I actually do applaud it if it does come to be true.
But there are absolutely people in Canada who look at Donald Trump and think 'hey, I want some of that.' I live in Alberta, the heart of that kind of sentiment, and my one hope is that the sentiment is mostly limited to here and some pockets across the rest of the country.
'It couldn't happen here' is a dangerous thought, and one that I worry too many Canadians believe.
yea... I have some people that while they find trump to be clownshoes and a shitty person they still think he was better than Hillary because "she was so corrupt"
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The rumor/(things his conservative opponents are accusing him of) is that he is waiting until after the french language debate to officially enter the race because he is not fluent.
Well, at least they're taking him seriously, as opposed to the GOP who ignored Trump and thought he'd go away.
Not seriously enough to hire a web designer though.
Man, talk about writing your own opposition ads.
Then again, he wouldn't be able to read them.
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Is this kind of like how, 'Trump is bad but really Ted Cruz is worse,' ?
:rotate:
O'Leary would be stupid not to run in the current political climate, and we would likewise be stupid to underestimate him or trust in some dumbass Conservative 'Never O'Leary!' narrative (which, of course, primarily frames itself as a fear of irrelevance more than a fear of what O'Leary represents).
The Liberals will be blindsided as easily as the Democrats (if not worse, because the Liberals are not nearly as good at campaigning as the Dems) & I have no clue what my party will be up to until our leadership contest is over (I'm hopeful but cynical that the old labor core of the party will be shaken-up a bit). We need a damn proportional system in place to protect against this kind of thing.
Where are they on the Christie Clark scale,
What about the Harper scale?
I dont know about christie clark.
Compared to harper? Its hard to say really. I think kellie leitch will clearly have xenophobic policies. Harper was only really starting to get on board with outright xenophobia in the last election, which thankfully he lost.
Oleary has made statements saying he rejects xenophobia. If he becomes conservative leader, will he stick by that? I dont know. I mean other than that i dont really need to comment on his character. We all know exactly how he is.
That said, it doesn't mean he'd be a good leadership candidate, but he dors seem to be remarkably more tolerable than Leitch. Not a high bar, certainly, but better than it could be.
You know, oddly enough, I read the same thing about Trump: good to those who worked for him. And some of those who worked for him? The same category of people he was railing against in his speeches, so...
At this point in my life and after having seen how Canadian Reform and Conservative parties morphed over the years, what came across as out and out betrayals to me towards my Canadian values once Harper was in power, even as limited as that was being a minority government with the proroguing and what not... We can't rely on them one iota to be tempered in their approach, not while they insist ideology trumps things like detailed data gathering in the census, starving/muzzling scientists, their treatment of First Nations people, and being found in contempt of parliament.
Xenophobia is just the ugly icing on their nasty ideological cake and I hope we never have to take another bite.
So now whenever they speak as the Opposition, I just roll my eyes, I just don't trust them anymore. Its harder with media though, trying to go back and figure out which outlets endorsed the Cons in past election years sometimes seems beyond my google fu. CBC is the only thing I recall the Cons being dead set against, so they are one of the few who when I read their articles I get the sense they still have a shred of credibility in regards to facts trumping ideological editorial biases.
Well, again, while I'm not really defending O'Leary as a potential PM, he's at least shown support for a carbon tax and has spoken out against the xenophobia of Leitch.
And I don't know where you heard that about Donald Trump - everything I read was that he treated his 'underlings' poorly, paid them like shit and, obviously, didn't pay his bills.
Not that O'Leary is a great candidate, again, but I don't know if he's really comparable to Trump. Trump never spoke out against xenophobia and constantly showed a blatant disrespect and disregard for anyone he considered a 'loser'. I still think Leitch is a much closer analogue, though I suppose you could argue that it seems as though she's quickly running out of steam.
He does at least appear to respect women and have nothing against people of varying ethnicities, but would that make him any better for Canada than Leitch? I'm not sure, when there's nothing profitable in working towards equality or socioeconomic justice.
Conservativism is a cancer on the body politic of western nations at this point. There is no major conservative party I can think of floating around not engaging in that same mix of anti-intellectualism, xenophobia, bigotry, corporate handjobs, deregulation, etc, etc.
Conservatism is all about keeping things the same, and maybe, kinda, slowly changing things I guess maybe someday if you can prove its awesome. That this is idea is suffering and going reactionary in the era of the fastest changes in human history should be expected at this point, that mindset simply cannot process the modern world, where things can, should, and must change on a rapid basis.
Modern conservatism is reactionary in nature, and that's troubling.
I work in finance on Bay Street and so hear the odd O'Leary rumour. While this doesn't change my opinion that he's unsuitable as PM, from what I understand the public persona is just that, a persona. He is deliberately building a brand based on what your racist uncle thinks a big shot businessman is like.
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Conservatism isn't about that at all. That's the philosophical basis for some fantasy political ideology that shares the same name as conservative parties, but it doesn't actually exist in real life. In real life, here and now and for decades in the past at the very least, conservatism is a reactionary ideology against government action and social and cultural change.
People can talk all they want about what conservatism "really is". I'm talking about what it actually is, without the quotes. By looking at their rhetoric and policy.
They are a loose nexus of ideas involving, again, anti-intellectualism, xenophobia, bigotry, corporate handjobs, deregulation, a lack of respect for democracy as an idea, a lack of any care for political norms, a lack of respect for basic human rights, etc, etc. That's what is actually consistently shown from their actions.
There is some sort of theoretical conservatism you can read about in a textbook that isn't steeped in these ideas. In the real world, it doesn't exist.
We clearly need to control ALL of the maple syrup
I like to say that there is a potential world in which I am conservative.
It is not this one.
Alas being more right wing is winning the day in the party because right now right vs left is "in" and finding common ground is not something anyone is willing to do, so positioning yourself as far away as you can from "the other guys" is what gets people traction from within the party.
It leads to the bigger political problem here, and really all around the world, where there is virtually no working together in government anymore. Everything is the us vs. them attitude, and neither side can acknowledge that the other side can even possibly have a good idea, so it becomes very confrontational, which just further promotes the wider gap between the left and the right. The center is becoming a wasteland, not because it is a bad place in principle, but because no one wins in the center these days.
The lack of centrists could also be a symptom of everyone sharing their opinions about everything, with sources (real or imagined) to back them up. This encourages people to cluster together more for validation.
There are so many variations and exceptions that have been created by the slow separation, that I'm not even sure how accurate any one reading of policy goals can be.
Do conservatives hate green energy because its associated with hippies and hippies are associated with sexual liberation and freedom?
Do conservatives honestly believe that government assistance is too luxurious a lifestyle and that it should be reduced, that fraud is so rampant that enough barriers should be erected that an honest person is better off ignoring it and finding another job in the time it would take to get approved? Or do they hate these programs because they allow forgiveness for poor life decisions or poor life situations, and they feel that it is getting in the way of morality by reducing their suffering?
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Many of them are choosing to vote/support the far right because they don't associate themselves with a center/left party, when in theory a lot of the progressive element of the conservative side of the party align more closely with the liberals than the conservative party as it exists today.
I myself struggle with this. I consider myself a centrist with a very slight lean to the right. I am all for the liberal's social policies, but don't agree with spending ourselves to oblivion to accomplish the party's goals. (I'm also not a "balance the budget at all costs" person).
You should consider that the right-wing parties keep moving right because that's where their support actually is.
Even here the "centre-right" and "right" merged because the PCs were dead.
See, I reach the exact opposite conclusion. My observation has been that the left does not spend themselves to oblivion; it's the right that does that with much more frequency. The left is usually trying to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and then spending a lot of time chasing relatively frivolous QoL issues that actually cost relatively little money. The right is usually trying to slash taxes, trim government spending on small things, but then engage in massive revenue giveaways.
I compare, for example, Chretien's balancing the budget by downloading onto the provinces to Harper's driving the deficit by slashing the GST, implementing boutique tax cuts, and slashing science funding, or Wynne's green energy hydro increases and road tolls to Harris' hydro privatization price spike/power brownouts and Hwy 407 giveaway. I don't like the way the political left plays pander to preposterous pet causes, but numerically, those efforts are rather minor - though they do have a net cumulative effect over time - versus the sweeping ideological sell outs the political right engages in. The worst ideas that SJW lefitsts have are far less detrimental, and a lot less likely to be enacted, than the worst ideas neocorporate so-cons have.
However, the point about conservatives thinking that running a government like a business is well taken. I don't agree with it either. a government is not a business, nor should it be run like one. The far right does not understand that.
The Mulroney era is by far the worst for this - in 2015 adjusted dollars, he went in the hole to the tune of $523 billion (over 9 budgets), whereas the boogeyman of the Canadian right, PET, only ran up $384 billion (over 15 budgets). Of the PMs over the last 50 years, Harper is the other bookend in terms of total debt accumulated.
For those interested, the complete list:
Mulroney - 9 budgets - (-523.51)
Trudeau 1 - 15 budgets - (-384.69)
Harper - 9 budgets - (-127.02)
Chretien - 11 budgets - (-78.08)
Clark - 1 budget* - (-38.6)
Martin - 2 budgets - 17.36
Liberal average budget: -15.91/budget
Conservative average budget: -36.27/budget
All figures are in billions of 2015 adjusted Canadian dollars.
So on average, Conservatives run over twice deficit as Liberals governments over the past 49 years (the even 50 would include one year of Pearson and improve the Liberal numbers a bit).
*I am giving Clark credit for 1979 even though his budget didn't pass.
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The government as a business thing completely misses the point of Government, and severely pisses me off. Much of Europe's reacting to bad times by not spending money makes me sick.
Keynes has shown that economically government works best when they do the exact opposite of what a business would do- when you have a deficit because the economy is doing poorly, you spend more... where a business would be tightening their belt to ride things out. When things are going really well, a business wants to invest money to spur their own growth...where the government wants to take advantage of higher revenues to beat down the debt so they have money to spend when things go sour again.
If this isn't what we're teaching in schools then we damn well should be... because as it is there are WAY too many people that buy into financial concepts that provably don't work... And no shortage of people that will take advantage of their ignorance for personal gain. :-/
There are criticisms of Keynes, but best I can figure - being only an amateur macroeconomist - most of them center around edge cases and long-term effects if everybody engages in Keynesian stimulus for long periods of time. But basically, it comes down to whether you're the author of your own destiny: usually, if a business has a bad year or so, that's not due to the business itself but rather global effects, so it makes sense to batten down the hatches and wait for the global effects to shift. But even that's not always true: sometimes it is the business itself, and so reinvestment and reconsolidation are required - see Blackberry - because otherwise you're just waiting for your own doom. Alternately, sometimes the global effects won't turn - see the typewriter industry - and again, belt-tightening does nothing to stave off your doom. So even then, the businesspeople-politicians who are just, "Tighten your belts," aren't even correct; they're just a result of selection bias favouring people who found themselves in fundamentally sound businesses that didn't suffer through global trends killing their industries.
Large nations, on the other hand, are largely the authors of their own destinies. Not entirely: our economic performance is largely tied to the health of the American economy, but large nations are also inherently diversified, are often their own suppliers and consumers, and possess natural resources and arable land. Since we control both sides of transaction, both the supply and the demand, it makes no sense to just abandon economic activity altogether.
I hate how modern taxes are perceived. It's just wrong & disgusting. I kind of presume it has always been like this, but it needs to change.
It is way too trivial for a politician to go and promise to just cut taxes and get applause for it. It's the cheapest bang for your political buck - tell people it's bad to tax them, listen to them clap. Then we find ourselves in this cesspool where nobody can get funding to do anything, where even basic utilities are starting to fail, and everyone still wants to pay less taxes.
Fuck it all. Go pay your Goddamn taxes, grandma. I'm tired of you taking money out of my pocket while absorbing most of the healthcare system's resources. You'll pay your damn share and you'll like it; if you don't, fuck you, we should just turn off the water utilities, close the hospitals and shrug. "Well, you didn't want to pay. This is what it's like when nobody pays. What, thought you'd be able to skip the bill? Ha ha ha. Pony up or go shower in the bushes next time it rains. Figure-out which plants to harvest your diabetes medication from."
EDIT:
I really couldn't give a shit about how polite or respectful someone is in a private capacity. Trump's transition team is reported by all sources as being unfailingly polite in it's dealings with the outgoing Obama administration. Chamberlain was polite & respectful; by contrast, Churchill was a violent, angry & reckless drunk. Guess which of those two men we needed more at the time?
O'Leary is a cheerleader and support structure for the worst elements of Canadian society. We don't have the KKK up here or the long history of American slavery, so our worst elements are different from those found in America - but they are nevertheless bad in their own right, and incredibly racist (just with different targets. Well, except for Muslims; holy shit do racist old Canadians hate Muslims. You'd think from the way they talk that each one had their own 9/11 in their backyard). What will O'Leary say about veils if the subject is brought up again (and it will be)? Probably whatever is cheap & politically expedient, and that means something brazenly hateful in his political sphere. It really doesn't matter at that point if he personally believes the hate or not.
He & every person riding the current wave of populism that even makes his candidacy possibly are just fucking garbage. I don't want to play any variation of patty-cakes with them or offer any form of appeasement.
We can't breathe the same air as these people. It's them or us, and I choose us.
Yes, I will quite happily suggest that 'candidate who may incite hate if he considers it to be politically expedient, though that's based on guesswork' is better than 'candidate who is explicitly doing that right the fuck now'. Based on what she's said and done, Kellie Leitch is absolutely a worse option than Kevin O'Leary. Kevin O'Leary has not been throwing out dog whistles about those horrible uncanadian others that don't fit our values, gosh, we should really test them to make sure they're going to be the right kind of people.
Kevin O'Leary has said some unbelievably asinine things about Alberta's government. He's shown a complete lack of understanding with regards to politics at any level, and clearly doesn't get how a country's economy works and how you can't run it like a business. He'd be a Harper-level disaster in a whole number of ways. But he's not engaging in the same kind of xenophobia that Leitch is actively engaging in.
Neither of them would be good leadership candidates. Neither of them would make a good prime minister. But one of them is a blustering slimy businessman, while the other is showing some pretty troubling signs of looking for a uniform by Hugo Boss.
No one said a goddamn thing about playing patty-cakes or appeasement.
But there are certainly those that would cause me less concern than others.
Oh, they absolutely could. There's a growing perception, fair or not, that Trudeau's government has fallen back into the patterns of corruption and cronyism that many believe characterized our previous Liberal administrations. Electoral reform may prevent us from falling completely down that hole, as I believe there are enough people in Canada who would flatly reject that kind of authoritarianism - but that's probably what people in those other countries said, right before it happened.
Our best hope, frankly, is that both Leitch and O'Leary fail in their leadership bids, and that a more 'moderate' Conservative takes the helm of the party. There's some hope on that front, at least - the response to O'Leary has been pretty lukewarm thus far, and Leitch seems to be losing support within the party (while, unfortunately, remaining relatively 'popular' outside of it, among Conservative voters).
But they aren't the only ones that would be a disaster. Maxime Bernier's a libertarian who wants to defund the CBC and slash funding for public healthcare. Chris Alexander was one of the architects behind the 'barbaric cultural practices' tip line (who, weirdly, also has a surprisingly progressive view on refugees. Multitudes!) Blaney's a mini-Leitch insofar as xenophobia and fear of the 'other' is concerned. Same with Peterson. Lemieux is running on his opposition to abortion rights and same sex marriage. Same with Trost.
Raitt and Chong both seem to be near the front in terms of polling, and both seem to be somewhat reasonable, at least? Raitt has spoken out against Leitch, and Chong wants to push a more inclusive Conservative party. So maybe we dodge our own Trump-shaped bullet.
But there are absolutely people in Canada who look at Donald Trump and think 'hey, I want some of that.' I live in Alberta, the heart of that kind of sentiment, and my one hope is that the sentiment is mostly limited to here and some pockets across the rest of the country.
'It couldn't happen here' is a dangerous thought, and one that I worry too many Canadians believe.
Getting rid of two under-performing cabinet ministers by essentially firing them into the sun, especially in MacCallum's case. At least Dion gets to go somewhere that I'm sure he'll actually enjoy. Interesting ploy. I actually do applaud it if it does come to be true.
yea... I have some people that while they find trump to be clownshoes and a shitty person they still think he was better than Hillary because "she was so corrupt"
I just say I hope Trump does a good job.