Canada Corner

Wow, that’s stunning.

The NDP picked up an impressive and convincing chunk of the popular vote for a 3 party fight, the conservatives were clearly severely hurt by splitting the right wing vote with Wildrose, an interesting mirror image of federal politics where a conservative majority is only possible due to badly split center/left votes.

Man there should be a couple good books soon about the conservatives in Alberta, starting with the election / appointment of Ralph Klein and ending with the NDP this week. Ralph was a drunk and he basically got credit for rising world oil prices making Alberta wealthy… but he was no dummy of course and he was the very, very rare politician who could stay popular while actually telling constituents ‘no’, which no other elected leader up to the US President is able to do. Don’t know how he did it to be honest.

Late 90’s the PCs were so absurdly popular that my father, a life-long liberal who wouldn’t vote conservative with a gun to his head, signed up to join the conservative party (!) just so that he at least had a vote in the actual provincial election, which occurs when the PC party appoints those who will run in the next election, including who gets to be premier. Gotta at least try and keep the crazies out. Politics were dirty as ever though, my local town got a nice hospital we didn’t deserve, more than we needed.

Absurd story - a somewhat friend of the family actually decided to run as the Liberal candidate in my riding, knowing of course that they wouldn’t get elected. But you know, you reach a point that maybe you don’t care if others know you lean left, even in small-town Alberta. It might even convince one or two fence-sitters that we aren’t communist Muslim-gays (edit: of course there’s nothing wrong with it if you are :)). Ok maybe one fence-sitter. After losing, of course, the conservative MP cut funding for a kid’s program that that person happened to run as a volunteer. Seriously. Make that a sad story.

But then… what goes around. PC platform has just been that money is better in the economy than the bank. Not the dumbest idea, but this is a resource province that has gone through repeated, repeated boom-bust cycles. In 2005 the market was so over-heated that (I’m telling the truth here) I believe that nearly every single business in Alberta wanted to hire someone but couldn’t find anyone. Some fast food places in Fort McMurray were open weird hours, the local high school students didn’t want to get up early so the store had no choice but to open at 10 a.m. Then you have the premier Redford, who I actually liked by the way, sending her kids to summer camp on her government jet. Wait, provincial Premiers have jets? In Alberta, yes. Even that I personally could get over but not the conservatives of Alberta.

The way Prentice quit wasn’t just hubris, but spite. He gave what was probably a legit budget (finally) but it was the way he did it “look in the mirror”. NDP ran a great platform, though like all politics these days, it’s a lot easier to criticize and say that solutions are out there “corporate taxes” than to implement those solutions. Wild Rose, well hopefully coming in a bit from the Tea Party end. Polarization looks alive and well. It will be an interesting few years.

That’s my history, I’m super glad some left influence is there and would have voted NDP.

Yeah, it’s like what happened to Bush Sr and Ross Perot in the US as well.

I’m not convinced it’s a split vote, or not as bad as it might appear. It looks like 35% NDP, 33% Widlrose, 31% Conservative, so a 64% majority split. But my impression is that urban residents at least who voted PC are basically saying the Wildrose is NOT appealing. If they merge there will be more votes going left.

After 5 years of NDP they’ll be lucky to get higher than 15% next election.

US spent $500 million to train Syrian fighters and only managed find and train"4 or 5 guys" according to the report that ran in the NYT last month. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/world/middleeast/pentagon-program-islamic-state-syria.html?_r=0

So naturally, after Canada elected a Prime Minister completely lacking qualifications who his own advisers consider “not very smart”, he announces with pomp and circumstance that Canada’s contribution after the Paris attacks will be to use our 69 trainers to do the exact same thing that the Americans failed at so spectacularly, because that’s something we do “very, very well”, according to Trudeau. “obviously, we’ll need more”, Trudeau added.

Fucking laughingstock.

Keep on hating. It does my heart good. Whatever Trudeau does to keep us out of that quagmire is a good thing in my book. If that means offering up a token “training force” then fine. On the other hand, I’m totally pleased that the government will go back to being the “Government of Canada” rather than the “Trudeau govt” or the “Harper government” as our Little Dictator liked to coin it.

…and a fine display of vaunted liberal empathy, caring and altruism it is, basking in misplaced schadenfreude while selfishly betraying commitments to allies and ensuring the world additional horror and suffering.

Alternatively, if you genuinely believe it is not in Canada’s interest to be militarily involved overseas, then don’t engage in a disingenuous, fraudulent “contribution” and instead just openly state that you refuse to use the Canadian military to support France and allies in the middle east because you feel it’s unwise and/or inappropriate. Be a statesman, not an assclown who tries to weasel out of commitments and deceive the ignorant and naive into believing he’s offering support of some value.

Trudeau has officially ordered the weed legalization process.

Makes me a happy man. It’s nice to see progress after a decade of very little.

You could at least attempt to hide the ugly elderly male conservative voter stereotype.

All I ask is that these ‘weed smokers’ obey the cigarette smoking laws. I don’t care if you smoke it, I just don’t want to smell it.

(there, does that satisfy the need for an ugly elderly male conservative voter stereotype?)

I was referring more to Desslock…

I’m sure you would have had us get involved in Iraq, too. Look how that turned out.
Has it occurred to you that ISIS did what it did in order to provoke a reaction? Did it occur to you that ISIS wants us to get involved? Why would we do what our enemy wants us to do?

Yep, they secretly really just want us to kill them; to destroy their sources of revenue; to prevent them from carrying out their operations. We should definitely not stop their rape and murder and displacement of fellow humans including allies who we have undertaken to assist in these circumstances. We should instead just let them murder us! That’ll teach em!

But again, as I said in the post you replied to - that’s not the point. If the leader of our nation believes that it’s unwise or inappropriate to get involved in a military conflict in the middle east then he should make that decision on principle and stand behind it. Not opt for a humiliating, mealy-mouthed, disingenuous “plan” that the US just expressly proved less than a month ago, at far greater expense and commitment than Canada could ever muster, is impossible. Saying that “we’re going train the rebels” is more ridiculous than saying that our contribution will be to send a box car full of umbrellas. It’s offensively stupid, to anyone other than the naive and ignorant. Everyone else, including France and our other allies, knows that Canada is unwilling to help but is trying to mitigate the damage caused by that decision by sending supportive rhetoric instead.

I’m in favor of legalizing weed, for what it’s worth. It was closer to happening under the conservative government than you might think, despite some strong opposition within the party.

I guess that strong opposition was Harper? Remember, marijuana is “infinitely worse” than tobacco!

As for Syria, I’d like to see a NATO or UN effort to deal with ISIS before we recommit. I think the decision to withdraw in the absence of such an effort was perfectly reasonable especially given the minimal impact of operating a handful of planes there.

Broadly though it’s a 100% American created mess to begin. ISIS would not exist without the Iraq war and the total failure of Bush’s postwar strategy. France as I recall was deeply opposed to the Iraq war and was treated with derision by American lawmakers and pundits for being so opposed. Do you think those same lawmakers and pundits feel bad today that their idiotic bumbling in the middle east has resulted in a terrorist state that is now striking at France? No probably not… they are idiots. Everyone who thought the Iraq war was a good idea is an idiot, and anyone who still stands by that today is a double idiot.

So instead of opting for a plan that’s been proven to be a failure you want to take the path of the already even bigger failure.

Yes. And others.

No, as I said three times now.

So Doug Ford, nursing a grudge against city councillors, came up with a bill that would cut the number of Toronto councillors in half, right in the middle of an election. The government was taken to court and the court decided that this was a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So Ford has decided to invoke the “notwithstanding clause” which basically allows the government to ignore rights violations and is only to be used in times of utmost emergency (ie. We’re being invaded by aliens).
I’m concerned about the precedent that this might set. Will it affect other provinces? Will governments from now on be able to arbitrarily and capriciously violate our rights in order to implement their plans? Scary stuff.

I guess you’ve never been to Quebec…