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Canadian Politics: Proroguery Electric Boogaloo (with epic Harper evil picture in OP)
Posts
If anyone has a chance of taking down the Conservative government in Alberta it's the WAP. Ed Stelmach has managed to take an incredibly popular party and government and move it to the point where, probably not the next election but in the foreseeable future, they could actually lose an election in Alberta.
There is actually a kind of interesting parallel between what is happening in Alberta and what is happening with the national government in Britain. Ed Stelmach was given power much in the same way that Gordon Brown was (essentially given it by a popular leader) which right away made him less popular and then through a series of, what I would hesitate to call fiascoes but certainly set backs (H1N1 fuck up, royalty fees, etc), has caused his own party, and the public, to look at him with such a critical eye that there are questions whether or not he even makes the next election as leader.
Where the WAP comes in has mostly to do with Alberta's electoral history; people are loosing faith with the Tories and are looking to vote else where, they can't vote for the Liberals/NDP/Greens for obvious reasons so they vote for what is essentially the "lite" Tories.
You might also want to be weary of that 80% PC majority; If I am remembering my Canadian Political Behaviour class right when asked which party a person identifies with people won't identify with smaller or newer parties because those people tend to be seen as radicals.
In Britain you have a Prime Minister, elected as a social democrat, who was unpopular for being an imperialist tool. This led to a split in the left-wing vote. Meanwhile, white supremacists are just as crazy now as they were 10 years ago, only this time they're voting.
in Alberta you have a premier, elected as a conservative, who is unpopular because his economic policies (and those of his predecessors) led to everyone losing their jobs in an oil bust. Everyone needed someone to blame so they ganged up on bungling Stelmach for not being right-wing enough. Then they started looking for other options, somebody that would restore stability to their only industry. Automatically hating the Alberta Liberals because their name is the same as a couple federal governments with a perceived hatred for the province, their only option was the virtually unknown Wildrose Alliance Party. Their popularity skyrocketed over a week or two somehow, probably because they convinced some fat cats that they were the way to go.
I'm not really seeing the comparison here other than fascists getting seats. The contexts aren't all that similar.
I was meaning more along the lines of how they came into power by being handed it by a popular leader and then losing that popularity to the point where their continued reign is questioned.
As for the 2 defectors, the Tories still have a huge number of seats, so 2 leaving isn't much of a dent in their ranks at all.
edit: Not to mention the irony of a 'new, stick-it-to-the-Tories' party being full of defectors from the Tories!
But then there are some crazy stuff which could really hurt them if (when) they ever became a threat to actually form a government
They also say nothing about expanding Alberta's economy away from natural resources besides a vague "support" for the research into alternative energies.
not go into the "Fucking Crazy" column?
Also, that party is fucking CRAZY with a capital ALBERTA.
The unions thread is about to shit all up in here.
What's the point of a union then?
Indeed unions are only effective because it represents the entirety of the workforce.
The whole conversation was thinly veiled comments on how to improve Alberta by getting rid of the brown people.... And the french... and the indians.
Guess I do speak english better than I thought!
Also he went on about how Alberta would be soooo much better of without the feds and should consider forming there own nation. Being from Quebec this sounded familliar.
Bunch of nut jobs.
He must love the Metis.
Just so we're all clear on how awesome Kevin Page is: this guy, with minimal resources and personnel, literally went line by line through the federal budget, which was sent to his office in print form by the PMO, to tell you how badly Harper has fucked things up.
Man am I ever glad I'm saving 2% on some of the things I buy! It's not like the 12 billion dollars that would bring the federal government would be put to good use. -_-
"Harper is looking to combat perception that we may be heading to an election in the spring. In response to his prorogation he has said that, 'prorogation was just a routine matter and had nothing to do with the Afghanistan issue.'"
Bull fucking shit.
Currently DMing: None
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[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
I'm stuck in insanity-land right now. Yes, the WAP is definitely gaining momentum as Ed was not successful in capturing all of Ralph's fanboys - however, this is not a good thing!
It's worse than it sounds. The WAP is full of radical Christians & white supremacists who have absolutely no bones about airing their distaste for natives. When Rob Anders (shamefully, my local MLA) defects to join a new conservative movement, you can be assured that trouble is brewing (Mr. Anders would be the crackpot who thinks that Global Warming is a hoax perpetuated by the KGB, whom he believes are still operating out of the Soviet Union, which he does not believe actually collapsed. It's a frightening NWO conspiracy theory, and there is good reason to believe that the same conspiracy theory and psuedo-science is the reason behind Mr. Stelmach's 'inability' to procure enough vaccine for the province. These lunatics think that vaccine and tamiflu are communist mind control drugs).
Alberta is rapidly transforming from Canada's Texas into Canada's South Carolina.
The situation would be like going to the USA and replacing the Bush Administration with a bunch of tea-baggers. The 'replacing' part sounds good, until you realize what you're replacing them with.
Exactly.
Ralph Klein was a drunken racist and an imbecile, but I'd choose to have him back over the WAP loonies in a heartbeat.
Which is great, since private companies need that money to sustain our healthcare system, welfare, roads, airports, military, universities, research centers, and so on. The government would just blow the money on bonuses for their top executives.
Phew. Good thing we have such a good leader able to think of these things and govern so effectively.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Cutting the GST was a good thing to do, not making up the revenue shortfall elsewhere was very stupid. 50% of this countries revenue already comes from Income tax, another 15-20% from GST (which businesses can write off, but consumers cant). Its time to let up the pressure on the Canadian taxpayers, especially when the GST is a regressive form of taxation instead of a progressive one.
MWO: Adamski
As other people have said (indirectly) the power of unions comes only from having every worker be a member. No one wants to pay the union $5 every paycheck and so once the union got them all their benefits they'd leave it, the union would become powerless and they'd lose all their benefits.
Oh, another page.
Economists said AT THE TIME OF THE GST CUT that it was the worst idea a government has had in a decade or more. Every economist whose opinion I heard was against it. It was a horrendously stupid tax cut, saving your average middle-class person $300-400 a year, the poor almost nothing, and the rich thousands and thousands of dollars (the opposite of how tax cuts are supposed to work, although I am opposed to tax cuts altogether- we've been cutting taxes for decades, how are we supposed to maintain services when all we do is cut funding for them you fucking retards?!!).
A) Most people have the jobs and money to pay the tax
B) The tax builds a cash reserve for the inevitable bust so there is a cushion to pay stimulus monies etc.
C) When the bust comes you can cut taxes to stimulate growth
Yeah, not so bright.
I look forward to Harper's next motion, following this logic, of making the Prime Minister PM for eternity, because the polls really don't show Canadians of caring too deeply about this issue.
In related news, it seems that the Liberal Party is planning on actually sitting in Parliament come Jan 25 (the originally scheduled winter break end and Parliament resumption). They're not exactly sure what they're going to substantively do, but they're physically going to sit in the House as a way in which to hammer Harper home on the issue (and probably craft some strategy of their own).
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Or "now is a good time to buy" or words to that effect.
It was to do a few things actually. Firstly, it's an attempt to derail the Afghan issue and Harper probably hopes the delay will splinter the cohesion among the opposition parties, which is probably true.
Secondly, it lets him re-jig the senate. He wasn't getting exactly his way because of the senate review process, which probably enraged him more then any substantive allegations of war crimes in the house.
Thirdly, it's a massively satisfying power play if it doesn't blow up in his face. He can turn to his base and say "I command parliament." He can literally rule Canada as a dictator and say Canadians don't mind.
It kind of was. Ford shares were trading for a couple of bucks, I really wish I'd had a few thou spare to drop on them in late Jan/early Feb considering every analyst was throwing up their hands and saying the market was retarded for undervaluing Ford so much.
On the one hand, I partly paid for my house with the profit I made on stocks I bought around that time.
On the other hand, my circumstances weren't exactly those of the average Canadian and I happened to have a few tens of thousands of dollars to invest at that particular moment. The idea that his comment was remotely useful or empathetic to the circumstances of the average Canadian is ludicrous.
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Yeah it was a great time to get into the market. My parents lost 25% of their retirement savings value in the crash, and have probably lost 10% of that permanently. My mom had already retired at that point, my dad was thinking of retiring this year, but will have to keep working for a few more years as a result.
The sad thing is...that it appears everyone is ok with it. Where'd that comment about Canadians being apathetic go?
*sigh*
Warning: Don't read the comments. You'll want to kill some of these people.
I never finish anyth
I would be OK with it if the scanners were largely automated and indicated discretely to CATSA staff that something wasn't quite kosher. The fact that there's someone watching privately in a separate office with as much oversight as CATSA has currently is a little disquieting. I wouldn't want to be a woman who takes care of herself walking through there, knowing that some bored dude is probably jacking it to a saved picture of your naked body.
In theory, they could automate the process of looking for anomalies (I write code that automates the process of extracting more useful results than just the image from similar scans, so I should know), which would probably be better than having a human operator in circumstances that are bound for inevitable failure (boring, repetitive work where 99.99999% of the time the result is negative is pretty much a recipe for the operator missing the positive result), but of course the goal here is not really to catch terrorists and the probability of this whole thing being exposed as a charade is lower still.
Also on Steam and PSN: twobadcats
The implication that terrorist activities happen on such a regular occasion to ever require this kind of device is laughable.
I'm ok with safety measures in airports that save my life, as long as they actually do that.
I never finish anyth
Pretty much my thoughts exactly. Airport security is about as effective as stationing paramedics at public beaches who inspect everyone to be sure they aren't bleeding in order to prevent shark attacks.
Also on Steam and PSN: twobadcats