An Iron Curtain Has Descended In Ottawa

Who the hell has ever heard of needing Ministerial clearance, to use a public auditorium in a library? No one, until now. Come on libertarians. Make some noise.

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Hurrah For The Bright Side

This reminds me of an old joke. Bill Gates walks into a bar. One of the patrons looks up and says, "Man, are we lucky. The average income in this bar just went up to a billion dollars."

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A City Boy's Thoughts On Killing The Wheat Board

Farmers of the prairies, I understand your pain. It isn't easy to have a government go against your wishes and ram through legislation you don't want. I understand that. What I don't understand is why you voted en masse for the Conservative Party. Did you think they were kidding all these years when they said that they would kill the Wheat Board if they ever got a majority? Who is laughing now, eh?

Well, life's a bitch. Water under the bridge and all that. Just one more thing. If you expect urban Canadians to bail you out once you are in the clutches of ADM et. al., well, we have other priorities and money is tight. You understand I am sure. Have a nice day.

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Homicide Shmomicide

So what if the number of homicides is down to a 44 year low? What about all of the unreported homicides?

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Morning WTF

Hands up, if you knew that assault rifles were unrestricted weapons in the country?

Snowdy said he has been sleuthing around the RCMP firearms program. He claims the RCMP wants to reclassify a number of military assault rifle style weapons currently classified as non-restricted, making them either restricted or prohibited. Among these are the Israeli-made Tavor Tar-21; the Robinson Arms XCRL; imitations of the Kalashnikov AK-47 called the CZ858 and CZ2003; the M14; the "civilianized" version of the G36 assault rifle widely used by armies around the world, and a number of others.

A spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews says no action will be taken to increase controls on controversial firearms once the longgun registry dies.

No surprise whatever however, that the Conservatives plan to take no action other than to make sure no one knows who has such weapons. Of course, they are going to be building a lot of jails. Maybe they know something?

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To Hell With Co-operation

There is much crowing in the Liberal press about how Harper has shown them the way to run a minority government. The fact that the same Liberal press was appalled by the tactics used by said Messiah, has been flushed down the memory hole. I hope they choke on it.

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All That's Wrong WIth The Modern Conservative Movement...

In one short article. Meet Michael Harris and Rob Leone, two shiny, new MPPs from the Waterloo Region. Both are thoroughly orthodox in their views on public finances. Michael Harris states these ideas thus:

“It’s affordable taxes, living within your means. We have to do it in our home budget; we have to do the same (in government).”

Good, wholesome family values, completely devoid of any macroeconomics to back it up. But I digress. Wait, there is more, just a few paragraphs on:

Harris works in sales at Honeywell, so he knows the Toronto drive well. He lives in south Kitchener, near Highway 401. He too, plans to pressure the Liberals to bring at least four trains a day to Kitchener. Liberals must follow through on funding for a Highway 7 expressway between Kitchener and Guelph, he said.

“We are going to makes sure we hold the current government to those promises,” he said of the minority Liberal government. “We’ve got Mr. McGuinty on a short leash.”

Expanding mental-health and suicide-intervention programs is a big issue for Harris, because it’s directly affected his family and friends. He wouldn’t elaborate.

“It’s taking a lot of lives each year. I think its something we are really afraid as a society to talk about,” Harris said.

Long-promised Cambridge Memorial Hospital expansion is atop Leone’s to-do list. All parties support it, so get it started, he said.

“I don’t want to stand in the way, simply because I’m a PC member and it’s a Liberal government.”

Um, ok, so much for living within your means. Unless they mean everyone but those living in their riding should suck it up and cut back, because damnit, they want their pork!

In a nutshell, this is what is wrong with modern so-called conservatism. In theory, they are all for "living within our means" and cuts in taxes. In practice, they are also for, unlimited spending in their own ridings. This is fiscal insanity. This is the black hole that they have sucked us and the rest of the world into. God knows how or when we will be able to escape its deadly grip.

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Screwed Up System Almost Screws Ontarians

Well we seem to have dodged a bullet, but just barely. The first past the post system did its usual magic and almost produced a majority of seats with less than 38% of the vote. In fact, thanks to the magic of splits, the Liberals with 2% more of the popular vote than the Conservatives go 14 more seats. It is criminal. Add to this, the fact that voter turnout was a pathetic 47.6% and you have to ask yourself whether the whole exercise was even legitimate.

The fact is, this is just another in a long line of phony exercises in kabuki democracy, where the voters know that their votes will be wasted if they back a party other than the two biggest ones and so gave the exercise a pass. It is long past time when we realize that our system of voting is suited to a bygone era of binary politics. We need electoral reform.

Dalton McGuinty is now faced with a minority situation. He has already signaled that he is going to do a Harper and rule like he has a majority and dare the opposition to bring him down. This is unwise for two reasons. First, if he was serious about the need for stability for the province during an economic crisis, he would make a deal with one of the other parties to provide this stability. Second, unlike Harper, McGuinty was just slapped by the voters. It is clear that patience with McGuinty is quite limited and if he pushes the voters, he will not like the answer he receives from them.

My fear is that instead of having a government of give and take and compromise, Ontario will be faced by years of phony confrontations, proroguing and threats of elections. This is the main "feature" of first past the post politics, where a shift of 2% of popular vote yields massive majorities. It is a feature our democracy can no longer afford.

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Another Victim Of FPTP

From the coverage of the Manitoba election:

McFadyen added that his party was the victim of a cruel numbers game under the first-past-the post election system.

"Under any other circumstance we would be happy with 45 per cent of the popular vote," he said. "Obviously we didn't get those votes in the right places.

"It's a very disappointing night for all of us."

It is too bad, the leaders of the parties only see the stupidity of FPTP after being victimized by it. When they profit, it is a wonderful system. The Manitoba NDP did not get a majority of votes and only bested the Conservatives by 1% of the popular vote, but it got twice the number of seats. This stinks and is completely undemocratic. The NDP government in Manitoba should move ahead with electoral reform. That it won't says more about the corruption of NDP by power than anything else.

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No Deals

Stephen Harper has destroyed Canadian politics. Thanks to his example, it is now unthinkable for either the Liberals or Conservatives to even contemplate working with other parties, even if they have a minority. Such arrogance. It is poisonous. It is stupid and it unnecessarily puts our politics into constant crisis mode. Canadians deserve better. To hell with what the votes want, the Liberals and Conservative believe they rule by divine right. They are saying, in essence, that they don't care what voters think. They don't care if you want them to cooperate. No, they must exercise majority power, even if they don't have a majority. Fuck them, I say and do it where it counts, at the ballot box. Show the fuckers that if they won't play nice, maybe they need to go sit in corner for a while and think about what assholes they are.

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Sunday WTF

What kind of country allows Dick Cheney into it, but not Russel Brand?

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Death By Fiat

King Barry Obama has done something no other emperor of the American Imperium has done before. He has taken unto himself the power to kill any American he deems guilty, without benefit of a trial. No one of any substance will say a word against this summary execution, because the target was a Muslim. However, the precedent is now set and if I was an American, I would watch what I say and do, lest a drone be dispatched over my car.

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