The criticism that the DNC favoured Clinton is only really sensible - and barely - from those who abhor party politics in the first place. This sorta thing is the norm for party politics, even Canadian party politics, whether it was Martin pushing out Chretien, the Ontario PCs favouring Christine Elliot over Patrick Brown, Danielle Smith merging the Wildrose with the Alberta PCs, the current pressure on O'Leary to participate in a French Conservative leader debate, Harper muzzling Conservative backbenchers, Trudeau demanding all Liberal MP candidates be pro-abortion (or at least not anti-abortion), etc.. This is what political parties do. It's always been within their prerogative; hell, it's practically their mandate. Electing party leaders/candidates has never been part of the "public" process.
No doubt.. The DNC clearly wanted Hillary to win internally over Bernie is all I ever said.
They just backed the wrong horse. How they thought Clinton was a better choice then Bernie (who actually exited people) is beyond me.
Clinton excited people too. More then Sanders, hence why she won. Cause at the end of the day, the DNC didn't make her the nominee, the voters in the primary did.
Yeah, nearly 4 million more people voted for Hillary than Sanders.
It's been interesting looking at the polling for the CPC leadership - Leitch is winning among people outside of the party, but she's in 4th or 5th among those who are actual party members. Wonder why that is, specifically.
Party members likely realize she's toxic as hell and won't get any votes outside of their base.
The criticism that the DNC favoured Clinton is only really sensible - and barely - from those who abhor party politics in the first place. This sorta thing is the norm for party politics, even Canadian party politics, whether it was Martin pushing out Chretien, the Ontario PCs favouring Christine Elliot over Patrick Brown, Danielle Smith merging the Wildrose with the Alberta PCs, the current pressure on O'Leary to participate in a French Conservative leader debate, Harper muzzling Conservative backbenchers, Trudeau demanding all Liberal MP candidates be pro-abortion (or at least not anti-abortion), etc.. This is what political parties do. It's always been within their prerogative; hell, it's practically their mandate. Electing party leaders/candidates has never been part of the "public" process.
No doubt.. The DNC clearly wanted Hillary to win internally over Bernie is all I ever said.
They just backed the wrong horse. How they thought Clinton was a better choice then Bernie (who actually exited people) is beyond me.
Clinton excited people too. More then Sanders, hence why she won. Cause at the end of the day, the DNC didn't make her the nominee, the voters in the primary did.
Yeah, nearly 4 million more people voted for Hillary than Sanders.
It's been interesting looking at the polling for the CPC leadership - Leitch is winning among people outside of the party, but she's in 4th or 5th among those who are actual party members. Wonder why that is, specifically.
The criticism that the DNC favoured Clinton is only really sensible - and barely - from those who abhor party politics in the first place. This sorta thing is the norm for party politics, even Canadian party politics, whether it was Martin pushing out Chretien, the Ontario PCs favouring Christine Elliot over Patrick Brown, Danielle Smith merging the Wildrose with the Alberta PCs, the current pressure on O'Leary to participate in a French Conservative leader debate, Harper muzzling Conservative backbenchers, Trudeau demanding all Liberal MP candidates be pro-abortion (or at least not anti-abortion), etc.. This is what political parties do. It's always been within their prerogative; hell, it's practically their mandate. Electing party leaders/candidates has never been part of the "public" process.
No doubt.. The DNC clearly wanted Hillary to win internally over Bernie is all I ever said.
They just backed the wrong horse. How they thought Clinton was a better choice then Bernie (who actually exited people) is beyond me.
The fact that Clinton was actually a Democrat probably played into that a fair bit. There's no way the RNC wasn't thinking the same thing about Trump, nor the CPC about O'Leary right now.
The RNC had no idea how to handle Trump. The man was actively mocking his fellow candidates, reporters (even the handicapped ones!) and single moms yet kept going up in the polls.
Not "and yet", "and so". Those things are positives, not negatives to the audience he's playing too.
The CPC would likely have a bit of an easier time handling a similar candidate since I think Harper showed there are limits to what you can get away with in Canadian federal politics. Harper's reign relied on extremely tight information and image control to maintain power.
The CPC would likely have a bit of an easier time handling a similar candidate since I think Harper showed there are limits to what you can get away with in Canadian federal politics. Harper's reign relied on extremely tight information and image control to maintain power.
I disagree. Harper's tight information and image control was grounded on the fact he could get away with anything. Sure, our media called him on his bullshit, but the net impact of that was zero. He was still able to project himself as a skilled economist while he tanked our economy and gave us the largest budget deficit in Canadian history.
The CPC would likely have a bit of an easier time handling a similar candidate since I think Harper showed there are limits to what you can get away with in Canadian federal politics. Harper's reign relied on extremely tight information and image control to maintain power.
I disagree. Harper's tight information and image control was grounded on the fact he could get away with anything. Sure, our media called him on his bullshit, but the net impact of that was zero. He was still able to project himself as a skilled economist while he tanked our economy and gave us the largest budget deficit in Canadian history.
He couldn't get away with anything though. There's a reason he, for instance, kept stomping on his own backbenchers whenever they'd start being open and truthful about the party's stance on women's issues. Or why he never directly openly went after our health care system no matter how much he wanted to.
Harper's entire electoral and governing strategy was built on not really saying what he or his party believed in order to present themselves as reasonable and moderate and thus palatable to the public at large. His tight message control was a result of him understanding that he had to toe the line on what the public would consider acceptable.
His ability to portray himself as "good for the economy" was propaganda aided by the press and the general bullshit common sense about how Conservatives are good for the economy and you don't need tight message control for that. Any conservative party gets that for free.
The CPC would likely have a bit of an easier time handling a similar candidate since I think Harper showed there are limits to what you can get away with in Canadian federal politics. Harper's reign relied on extremely tight information and image control to maintain power.
I disagree. Harper's tight information and image control was grounded on the fact he could get away with anything. Sure, our media called him on his bullshit, but the net impact of that was zero. He was still able to project himself as a skilled economist while he tanked our economy and gave us the largest budget deficit in Canadian history.
He couldn't get away with anything though. There's a reason he, for instance, kept stomping on his own backbenchers whenever they'd start being open and truthful about the party's stance on women's issues. Or why he never directly openly went after our health care system no matter how much he wanted to.
Harper's entire electoral and governing strategy was built on not really saying what he or his party believed in order to present themselves as reasonable and moderate and thus palatable to the public at large. His tight message control was a result of him understanding that he had to toe the line on what the public would consider acceptable.
His ability to portray himself as "good for the economy" was propaganda aided by the press and the general bullshit common sense about how Conservatives are good for the economy and you don't need tight message control for that. Any conservative party gets that for free.
I have to agree but I think politics are ever evolving and especially seem top be going the other direction as of late. Playing "defense" just does not seem to be cutting it anymore but that may just be my take on it.
Since we are back to Canadian politics, WTF is going on with the NDP? Are we just going to give the chair back to Mulcair as no one seems to really want the job.
Here's a tie-back to Canadian politics. How are we going to spend the next three years explaining to people who distrust news and education and expert opinions that the bump in the US economy resulting from Trump's total deregulation, detaxation, and suppression of worker rights, is not a good thing we should be emulating like the CPC plans to do, but is a short-term bump that will lead to long-term ravages of US society that the Liberals can shield us from?
If the economy does do well under Trump I think that will be impossible, honestly. And for some here that think that's impossible i really think you should step back and analyze this objectively without personal opinions about the president affecting your view.
He put Rex Tillerson is secretary of state. The man would drill through the Lincoln memorial if there was a hint of Oil. He will push Keystone in a flat second and will push for drilling right's anywhere.
Andy Puzder is in charge of Labor. Vocal opponent to minimum wage and labor laws. Less wages = more jobs as hiring 3 x people for the price of 2 x is much more effective in a man hour/cost breakdown.
again, long term they are screwed.
Oil companies already have more reserves than they want to exploit. They know as well as anyone else that drilling for more just lowers their margins. 'Drill baby drill' was about gaining more rights and better extraction deals, not about opening more wells that make existing wells less profitable through increased supply.
Same thing with the pipeline, it wont improve the economy, it may increase the marginal number of wells by reducing costs enough on some wells without decreasing overall profit through increase in supply again. But refineries aren't running significantly below capacity so no huge benefit to increasing the number of viable wells.
All these are increasing executive bonuses and shareholder margins, it does fuck all for the economy.
Same with gutting labour laws and wages. Reduce the overall money being spent on wages, reduce the amount of consumer spending, and boom, recession. This will have some lag time as households spend on credit while they deny their new reality.. but not that long, American households are already over leveraged with college costs and healthcare costs.
Neither of these provide a short term gain for anyone but the rich, which wont lead to any increase in support for conservative politicians.
I would be more concerned about Trump anti-muslim, and other human right abuse policy implementations and their normalization among Canadian conservatives.
MWO: Adamski
+2
Options
Caulk Bite 6One of the multitude of Dans infesting this placeRegistered Userregular
An electorate that no longer feels like they have a say in matters + Facebook ( that most people understand even if they are internet Luddites) as your source of news for the last 5-6 years + a democratic candidate that is despised by a large part of the country.
Let's not forget that the Republican party absolutely did not want Trump and are only now trying to make the best of it.
Edit: Unlike the democrats who instead of embracing the new energy that Bernie brought tried to snuff it out so that "their" candidate won.
If anyone is to blame it's the democrats. Trump did not get more votes than Romney did. The Dems just got less.
1. Democratic candidate that recieved more votes in ridings than any of the downballot democrats (thus, she was more popular among democrats and the general public than the "favourability" numbers would lead you to believe)
2. True, no one educated really wanted trump
3. If you can point to an example of Bernie being snuffed out I would appreciate it, especially in some official capacity by the DNC. Instead he purposefully tried to keep his voters separate from the democrats to extract concessions, but was then never able to fully bridge the gap again.
I dont know who is more to blame, Democrats for not beating the Republicans. Republicans for being so naturally awful that people dont expect any better. People that vote 3rd party and thus enabled the worse option to win. Or people who didnt vote at all.
Though this is all a very strange topic for the CANADIAN POLITICS thread.
What I truly worry about is that the American economy IS going to go gangbusters for the next few years as a result of Trump's pro business, Anti-regulation stance. This will fuel the fires of the "conservatives" up here and reinforce Trump's bullshit is a legitimate way to win a goverment.
Not if they really go through with the ACA repeal. The projected job and revenue losses would be too much to sweep under the rug
0
Options
Caulk Bite 6One of the multitude of Dans infesting this placeRegistered Userregular
Oil companies already have more reserves than they want to exploit. They know as well as anyone else that drilling for more just lowers their margins. 'Drill baby drill' was about gaining more rights and better extraction deals, not about opening more wells that make existing wells less profitable through increased supply.
Same thing with the pipeline, it wont improve the economy, it may increase the marginal number of wells by reducing costs enough on some wells without decreasing overall profit through increase in supply again. But refineries aren't running significantly below capacity so no huge benefit to increasing the number of viable wells.
All these are increasing executive bonuses and shareholder margins, it does fuck all for the economy.
Same with gutting labour laws and wages. Reduce the overall money being spent on wages, reduce the amount of consumer spending, and boom, recession. This will have some lag time as households spend on credit while they deny their new reality.. but not that long, American households are already over leveraged with college costs and healthcare costs.
Neither of these provide a short term gain for anyone but the rich, which wont lead to any increase in support for conservative politicians.
I would be more concerned about Trump anti-muslim, and other human right abuse policy implementations and their normalization among Canadian conservatives.
In a pithier and also currently relevant simile, the economic 'boost' will be like pissing on your leg because you're cold; there will be a very brief moment where it appears to work, and then things will get much worse very quickly on multiple levels.
+2
Options
Caulk Bite 6One of the multitude of Dans infesting this placeRegistered Userregular
It's pretty cool of them to be upgrading Aline Chrétien to the status of former prime minister.
It's not the official Stats Canada account. It's a really, really annoyingly terrible comedy thing. Someone gave me one of their books for Christmas two years ago. It might actually be the worst Christmas present that I've ever received.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Oil companies already have more reserves than they want to exploit. They know as well as anyone else that drilling for more just lowers their margins. 'Drill baby drill' was about gaining more rights and better extraction deals, not about opening more wells that make existing wells less profitable through increased supply.
Same thing with the pipeline, it wont improve the economy, it may increase the marginal number of wells by reducing costs enough on some wells without decreasing overall profit through increase in supply again. But refineries aren't running significantly below capacity so no huge benefit to increasing the number of viable wells.
All these are increasing executive bonuses and shareholder margins, it does fuck all for the economy.
Same with gutting labour laws and wages. Reduce the overall money being spent on wages, reduce the amount of consumer spending, and boom, recession. This will have some lag time as households spend on credit while they deny their new reality.. but not that long, American households are already over leveraged with college costs and healthcare costs.
Neither of these provide a short term gain for anyone but the rich, which wont lead to any increase in support for conservative politicians.
I would be more concerned about Trump anti-muslim, and other human right abuse policy implementations and their normalization among Canadian conservatives.
In a pithier and also currently relevant simile, the economic 'boost' will be like pissing on your leg because you're cold; there will be a very brief moment where it appears to work, and then things will get much worse very quickly on multiple levels.
Yes. But as long as Trump can keep that warm feeling going for 4 years he's golden. 2nd Term Trump is something that truly frightens me.
We will all see how this will go one way or another.
Putting Chrystia Freeland in charge of foreign affairs is such a great way to passively say we are not playing along with the Americans.
It's pretty cool of them to be upgrading Aline Chrétien to the status of former prime minister.
It's not the official Stats Canada account. It's a really, really annoyingly terrible comedy thing. Someone gave me one of their books for Christmas two years ago. It might actually be the worst Christmas present that I've ever received.
Every official government twitter account (and there are apparently a lot of them!) uses either an official logo (parks, space agency, service canada, the senate, the mint, probably a couple others) or the flag (everything else) as their picture
It's pretty cool of them to be upgrading Aline Chrétien to the status of former prime minister.
It's not the official Stats Canada account. It's a really, really annoyingly terrible comedy thing. Someone gave me one of their books for Christmas two years ago. It might actually be the worst Christmas present that I've ever received.
I say they should've gone for a PET joke. The man occasionally dressed like a literal pimp, and dated Porky's-era Kim Cattrall. Plus, he (sort of) legalized sodomy when he was Attorney General, so you know that led to some "C'mon baby, it's legal now" discussions when he was PM.
It's pretty cool of them to be upgrading Aline Chrétien to the status of former prime minister.
It's not the official Stats Canada account. It's a really, really annoyingly terrible comedy thing. Someone gave me one of their books for Christmas two years ago. It might actually be the worst Christmas present that I've ever received.
I say they should've gone for a PET joke. The man occasionally dressed like a literal pimp, and dated Porky's-era Kim Cattrall. Plus, he (sort of) legalized sodomy when he was Attorney General, so you know that led to some "C'mon baby, it's legal now" discussions when he was PM.
I had to look up the Kim Cattrall date thing, interesting little story but it was only one "date"
It's pretty cool of them to be upgrading Aline Chrétien to the status of former prime minister.
It's not the official Stats Canada account. It's a really, really annoyingly terrible comedy thing. Someone gave me one of their books for Christmas two years ago. It might actually be the worst Christmas present that I've ever received.
I say they should've gone for a PET joke. The man occasionally dressed like a literal pimp, and dated Porky's-era Kim Cattrall. Plus, he (sort of) legalized sodomy when he was Attorney General, so you know that led to some "C'mon baby, it's legal now" discussions when he was PM.
I had to look up the Kim Cattrall date thing, interesting little story but it was only one "date"
The best thing that came out of that was 60 Minutes mis-identifying Cattrall as Margaret Trudeau last year.
Want to find me on a gaming service? I'm SwashbucklerXX everywhere.
Good old Hollywood coming to tell people they need to get new jobs.
I truly respect climate change and our need to move away from the petrocarbon world we live in but things like this just make opponents dig in their heels.
Its silly to tell people to get other jobs regardless of the industry, where there is demand, someone will supply.
So I think, if there is supply, it might as well be us and we do the best damn job of wages, safety, training, and least damaging we can. Its not the oil that bothers me, its the tankers that have the bare minimum of maintenance, the inspectors with rooms full of paper work to get to because they are not budgeted to be staffed and equipped properly, the lack of tug boats required to guide them through dangerous rock filled waters, the lack of damn near instant response to a spill to contain, the crew who are under paid registered from other countries where even though its good money for their families they are getting a pittance of what that position is worth, the insurance that tries to pay as little as possible and essentially reneg on continued clean up costs, and on and on it goes.
Its business seeking the lowest cost possible while off loading the enviromental, worker safety (physical and financial), and economic boom/bust impacts on to our society that bugs the hell out of me. Haven't other countries shown we can do a better job in Canada of protective regulation, their organizations, and using the boom to save and diversify for the bust?
Good old Hollywood coming to tell people they need to get new jobs.
I truly respect climate change and our need to move away from the petrocarbon world we live in but things like this just make opponents dig in their heels.
We have to move away from petrocarbons and in far far larger ways than a carbon tax , that includes the entire world, realistically is that going to happen?
I don't think so.
Paris was a circle jerk of feel good nonsense, its not enough and with how oil and gas is tied into the prosperity of many countries I am not surprised when leaders lean towards economy over environment. I wish it didn't happen but this is the world we live in and unless someone magics up some tech that can remove massive amounts of emissions we are easily going to shoot past the temperature changes that Paris set aside as goals.
Good old Hollywood coming to tell people they need to get new jobs.
I truly respect climate change and our need to move away from the petrocarbon world we live in but things like this just make opponents dig in their heels.
We have to move away from petrocarbons and in far far larger ways than a carbon tax , that includes the entire world, realistically is that going to happen?
I don't think so.
Paris was a circle jerk of feel good nonsense, its not enough and with how oil and gas is tied into the prosperity of many countries I am not surprised when leaders lean towards economy over environment. I wish it didn't happen but this is the world we live in and unless someone magics up some tech that can remove massive amounts of emissions we are easily going to shoot past the temperature changes that Paris set aside as goals.
I don't really have any answers.
The problem is we don't live in a vacuum. Canada can cut or tax petro distribution until the cows come home and unless the world follows we are literally committing economic suicide. Not saying we should stay the course or anything just not sure how to balance both realities.
Our whole society in Canada (as an example) is built around 2-3 mass population centers in every province and a massive amount of distance between them. We can't even achieve decent public transit except in the more populous cities like Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver because without a minimum population density it's pointless.
Alberta is like 1.2 x the size of france with 5% of the population.
Good old Hollywood coming to tell people they need to get new jobs.
I truly respect climate change and our need to move away from the petrocarbon world we live in but things like this just make opponents dig in their heels.
We have to move away from petrocarbons and in far far larger ways than a carbon tax , that includes the entire world, realistically is that going to happen?
I don't think so.
Paris was a circle jerk of feel good nonsense, its not enough and with how oil and gas is tied into the prosperity of many countries I am not surprised when leaders lean towards economy over environment. I wish it didn't happen but this is the world we live in and unless someone magics up some tech that can remove massive amounts of emissions we are easily going to shoot past the temperature changes that Paris set aside as goals.
I don't really have any answers.
The problem is we don't live in a vacuum. Canada can cut or tax petro distribution until the cows come home and unless the world follows we are literally committing economic suicide. Not saying we should stay the course or anything just not sure how to balance both realities.
Our whole society in Canada (as an example) is built around 2-3 mass population centers in every province and a massive amount of distance between them. We can't even achieve decent public transit except in the more populous cities like Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver because without a minimum population density it's pointless.
Alberta is like 1.2 x the size of france with 5% of the population.
Yea.. for the world to do what it needs to do... its going hurt.
I mean... Maybe you don't need to if you strait up accept that 20% of the population won't vote for you.
Even Harper drastically improved his french in office.
Edit: That fucktard grew up in Montreal? How does he not even have a base level french? My English friends learned at least enough to order poutine and hit on the pretty french girls!
I mean... Maybe you don't need to if you strait up accept that 20% of the population won't vote for you.
Even Harper drastically improved his french in office.
Edit: That fucktard grew up in Montreal? How does he not even have a base level french? My English friends learned at least enough to order poutine and hit on the pretty french girls!
Harper had fundamentally different objectives. Beyond simply winning elections, he wanted his Conservative party to replace the Liberals as "the natural governing party of Canada". That drove things like trying to appeal to Quebec (and even so, he never won more than 10 seats in the province and only had 5 during his majority government). If you go back to his Conservative leadership race, he was trailing Stronach in every province east of Ontario; in other words, in a race involving only Conservatives, he couldn't win in Quebec.
If you are talking only about the next thing required to win (and let's be honest, that's exactly the sort of business style thinking that O'Leary brings to the table), you don't need to win Quebec. You would probably be better served feeding the elements of the base that are full on "fuck Quebec" in order to win the leadership race, and then planning some sort of conciliatory gesture between that and the general election that would let you get the 5-10 seats in Quebec that are sufficient to prevent you from losing based on your opponent sweeping Quebec.
Good old Hollywood coming to tell people they need to get new jobs.
I truly respect climate change and our need to move away from the petrocarbon world we live in but things like this just make opponents dig in their heels.
...
Robbie Picard, who founded Alberta’s I Love Oil Sands campaign, happened to run into Fonda at a Fort McMurray Moxie’s and asked her if she knew the full extent of Aboriginal employment and investment in the oilsands. According to Picard, she was quickly shuffled off by handlers.
“Greenpeace does not want these pipelines to be built, so they’ve got Jane Fonda to come up here, they act like they represent all Aboriginals and they don’t,” said Picard.
Because of the oilsands, he said, “there are Aboriginal people here that have more money than Jane Fonda.”
So... just the Aboriginals that aren't massively wealthy (from the oilsands)? How heartless and out-of-touch this "Jane Fonda" must be!
Wow, that's fucked up.
While it should't surprise me at this point, it still always throws me a little bit when this kind of anti-French/anti-bilingualism shit pops up so blatantly. It's also amazing in a very aggravating way that they basically dismiss French in this country outside of Quebec, even while making several mentions of a French language debate in Moncton.
+2
Options
AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
edited January 2017
It's the "fuck you, I don't want to have to play by the rules and/or put in a modicum of effort to adhere to any of this shit" sentiment that's the most telling in an article like that.
It's not, as far as I am aware, a legal or constitutional requirement that you need to be bilingual in order to be Prime Minister. But it's a political necessity in so far as there are a number of practical and political realities that make it defacto a requirement, considering bilingualism is constitutionally recognized and implemented most heavily at the federal level of government, oh and by the way Quebec, Eastern Canada, and Northern Ontario exist, thanks.
If you're not willing to put in the amount of effort required in order to realize that these are the realities you need to play by in order to participate in the process of being elected to said position, then no, you should be disqualified since it's readily apparent you aren't actually serious about what the office entails.
It's the "fuck you, I don't want to have to play by the rules and/or put in a modicum of effort to adhere to any of this shit" sentiment that's the most telling in an article like that.
It's not, as far as I am aware, a legal or constitutional requirement that you need to be bilingual in order to be Prime Minister. But it's a political necessity in so far as there are a number of practical and political realities that make it defacto a requirement, considering bilingualism is constitutionally recognized and implemented most heavily at the federal level of government, oh and by the way Quebec, Eastern Canada, and Northern Ontario exist, thanks.
If you're not willing to put in the amount of effort required in order to realize that these are the realities you need to play by in order to participate in the process of being elected to said position, then no, you should be disqualified since it's readily apparent you aren't actually serious about what the office entails.
The last major party leader who could not at least have a simple conversation in both languages was.... Preston Manning?
am I missing anyone?
PSN: Canadian_llama
0
Options
AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
Everyone could understand Preston Manning though, since he loved that word Refooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorm.
Maclean's is going to toadie to and carry water for whoever they see as the frontrunner for the Conservative leadership.
Didn't they also do a fairly glowing piece on Leitch recently?
If you can't speak French, you should not be the PM. You don't have to have the best French in the world, but conversationally fluent is the minimum bar.
Posts
Party members likely realize she's toxic as hell and won't get any votes outside of their base.
Not "and yet", "and so". Those things are positives, not negatives to the audience he's playing too.
The CPC would likely have a bit of an easier time handling a similar candidate since I think Harper showed there are limits to what you can get away with in Canadian federal politics. Harper's reign relied on extremely tight information and image control to maintain power.
I disagree. Harper's tight information and image control was grounded on the fact he could get away with anything. Sure, our media called him on his bullshit, but the net impact of that was zero. He was still able to project himself as a skilled economist while he tanked our economy and gave us the largest budget deficit in Canadian history.
He couldn't get away with anything though. There's a reason he, for instance, kept stomping on his own backbenchers whenever they'd start being open and truthful about the party's stance on women's issues. Or why he never directly openly went after our health care system no matter how much he wanted to.
Harper's entire electoral and governing strategy was built on not really saying what he or his party believed in order to present themselves as reasonable and moderate and thus palatable to the public at large. His tight message control was a result of him understanding that he had to toe the line on what the public would consider acceptable.
His ability to portray himself as "good for the economy" was propaganda aided by the press and the general bullshit common sense about how Conservatives are good for the economy and you don't need tight message control for that. Any conservative party gets that for free.
I have to agree but I think politics are ever evolving and especially seem top be going the other direction as of late. Playing "defense" just does not seem to be cutting it anymore but that may just be my take on it.
Since we are back to Canadian politics, WTF is going on with the NDP? Are we just going to give the chair back to Mulcair as no one seems to really want the job.
I have 549 Rock Band Drum and 305 Pro Drum FC's
REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS
Same thing with the pipeline, it wont improve the economy, it may increase the marginal number of wells by reducing costs enough on some wells without decreasing overall profit through increase in supply again. But refineries aren't running significantly below capacity so no huge benefit to increasing the number of viable wells.
All these are increasing executive bonuses and shareholder margins, it does fuck all for the economy.
Same with gutting labour laws and wages. Reduce the overall money being spent on wages, reduce the amount of consumer spending, and boom, recession. This will have some lag time as households spend on credit while they deny their new reality.. but not that long, American households are already over leveraged with college costs and healthcare costs.
Neither of these provide a short term gain for anyone but the rich, which wont lead to any increase in support for conservative politicians.
I would be more concerned about Trump anti-muslim, and other human right abuse policy implementations and their normalization among Canadian conservatives.
MWO: Adamski
Not if they really go through with the ACA repeal. The projected job and revenue losses would be too much to sweep under the rug
It's pretty cool of them to be upgrading Aline Chrétien to the status of former prime minister.
Thank you, I was just thinking that and wondering if I was remembering it wrong!
In a pithier and also currently relevant simile, the economic 'boost' will be like pissing on your leg because you're cold; there will be a very brief moment where it appears to work, and then things will get much worse very quickly on multiple levels.
I mean, realistically they done fucked up and attributed her actions to her husband because whoever controls that account was trying to be smart.
It's not the official Stats Canada account. It's a really, really annoyingly terrible comedy thing. Someone gave me one of their books for Christmas two years ago. It might actually be the worst Christmas present that I've ever received.
Yes. But as long as Trump can keep that warm feeling going for 4 years he's golden. 2nd Term Trump is something that truly frightens me.
We will all see how this will go one way or another.
Putting Chrystia Freeland in charge of foreign affairs is such a great way to passively say we are not playing along with the Americans.
Every official government twitter account (and there are apparently a lot of them!) uses either an official logo (parks, space agency, service canada, the senate, the mint, probably a couple others) or the flag (everything else) as their picture
I say they should've gone for a PET joke. The man occasionally dressed like a literal pimp, and dated Porky's-era Kim Cattrall. Plus, he (sort of) legalized sodomy when he was Attorney General, so you know that led to some "C'mon baby, it's legal now" discussions when he was PM.
I had to look up the Kim Cattrall date thing, interesting little story but it was only one "date"
The best thing that came out of that was 60 Minutes mis-identifying Cattrall as Margaret Trudeau last year.
Good old Hollywood coming to tell people they need to get new jobs.
I truly respect climate change and our need to move away from the petrocarbon world we live in but things like this just make opponents dig in their heels.
So I think, if there is supply, it might as well be us and we do the best damn job of wages, safety, training, and least damaging we can. Its not the oil that bothers me, its the tankers that have the bare minimum of maintenance, the inspectors with rooms full of paper work to get to because they are not budgeted to be staffed and equipped properly, the lack of tug boats required to guide them through dangerous rock filled waters, the lack of damn near instant response to a spill to contain, the crew who are under paid registered from other countries where even though its good money for their families they are getting a pittance of what that position is worth, the insurance that tries to pay as little as possible and essentially reneg on continued clean up costs, and on and on it goes.
Its business seeking the lowest cost possible while off loading the enviromental, worker safety (physical and financial), and economic boom/bust impacts on to our society that bugs the hell out of me. Haven't other countries shown we can do a better job in Canada of protective regulation, their organizations, and using the boom to save and diversify for the bust?
We have to move away from petrocarbons and in far far larger ways than a carbon tax , that includes the entire world, realistically is that going to happen?
I don't think so.
Paris was a circle jerk of feel good nonsense, its not enough and with how oil and gas is tied into the prosperity of many countries I am not surprised when leaders lean towards economy over environment. I wish it didn't happen but this is the world we live in and unless someone magics up some tech that can remove massive amounts of emissions we are easily going to shoot past the temperature changes that Paris set aside as goals.
I don't really have any answers.
The problem is we don't live in a vacuum. Canada can cut or tax petro distribution until the cows come home and unless the world follows we are literally committing economic suicide. Not saying we should stay the course or anything just not sure how to balance both realities.
Our whole society in Canada (as an example) is built around 2-3 mass population centers in every province and a massive amount of distance between them. We can't even achieve decent public transit except in the more populous cities like Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver because without a minimum population density it's pointless.
Alberta is like 1.2 x the size of france with 5% of the population.
Yea.. for the world to do what it needs to do... its going hurt.
I mean... Maybe you don't need to if you strait up accept that 20% of the population won't vote for you.
Even Harper drastically improved his french in office.
Edit: That fucktard grew up in Montreal? How does he not even have a base level french? My English friends learned at least enough to order poutine and hit on the pretty french girls!
Harper had fundamentally different objectives. Beyond simply winning elections, he wanted his Conservative party to replace the Liberals as "the natural governing party of Canada". That drove things like trying to appeal to Quebec (and even so, he never won more than 10 seats in the province and only had 5 during his majority government). If you go back to his Conservative leadership race, he was trailing Stronach in every province east of Ontario; in other words, in a race involving only Conservatives, he couldn't win in Quebec.
If you are talking only about the next thing required to win (and let's be honest, that's exactly the sort of business style thinking that O'Leary brings to the table), you don't need to win Quebec. You would probably be better served feeding the elements of the base that are full on "fuck Quebec" in order to win the leadership race, and then planning some sort of conciliatory gesture between that and the general election that would let you get the 5-10 seats in Quebec that are sufficient to prevent you from losing based on your opponent sweeping Quebec.
Also on Steam and PSN: twobadcats
Curious what others opinion is on this?
Ehhhh??? I can see how it may look like a conflict that said the opposition would love it to be something even if it isnt.
Of course, people don't behave logically.
I have 549 Rock Band Drum and 305 Pro Drum FC's
REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS
...
So... just the Aboriginals that aren't massively wealthy (from the oilsands)? How heartless and out-of-touch this "Jane Fonda" must be!
...
Wow, that's fucked up.
While it should't surprise me at this point, it still always throws me a little bit when this kind of anti-French/anti-bilingualism shit pops up so blatantly. It's also amazing in a very aggravating way that they basically dismiss French in this country outside of Quebec, even while making several mentions of a French language debate in Moncton.
It's not, as far as I am aware, a legal or constitutional requirement that you need to be bilingual in order to be Prime Minister. But it's a political necessity in so far as there are a number of practical and political realities that make it defacto a requirement, considering bilingualism is constitutionally recognized and implemented most heavily at the federal level of government, oh and by the way Quebec, Eastern Canada, and Northern Ontario exist, thanks.
If you're not willing to put in the amount of effort required in order to realize that these are the realities you need to play by in order to participate in the process of being elected to said position, then no, you should be disqualified since it's readily apparent you aren't actually serious about what the office entails.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
The last major party leader who could not at least have a simple conversation in both languages was.... Preston Manning?
am I missing anyone?
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Didn't they also do a fairly glowing piece on Leitch recently?
If you can't speak French, you should not be the PM. You don't have to have the best French in the world, but conversationally fluent is the minimum bar.
God I miss him:
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12