Yeah, it honestly baffled me how folks seemed incapable of exercising even the most minor elements of fact checking on such stuff. Most of those garbage chainmails can be debunked trivially simply by pasting the first few words into google.
My family tend to not notice when they get hit with Native Advertising.
I get links for the usual 10top thing, You won’t believe what happened next! like stuff all day.
Many of the items are native adverts. Even shows ad or advertisment in the “tags” area.
Was hoping that at least my Mom would begin checking links better. Aw well.
I like how instead of thinking “Wow, so many of these things are untrue, I should look into them a little before believing them / sending them on”, the solution they came up with is to just leave off the jerk who keeps correcting the misinformation. What a very GWBish kind of solution.
For schadenfreude it would be funny to find something so blatantly Tea Party for me to post. I rarely use Facebook these days, but the majority of contacts I care about would get the joke. Others, well I might have some new best cousins!
This one’s a corker.
My brother posted this. Asked me if it was real. I said no.
Of course he doesn’t believe me. So, I let him continue on his paranoid day.
(unless this is real, lol)
I’d love it if we had technology to make that real.
Canada edition, from my sister’s facebook page:
WITH OUT PREJUDICE I POST THIS
Alberta’s oil industry- article from Calgary Herald
Extremely well written and so very true. This lady needs to be commended for this article.
This is the typical Alberta view on our relationship with the ROC (rest of Canada), excluding B.C. and Saskatchewan of course.
Fascinating article by Lisa Corbella of the Calgary Herald.
Something has to give!!
Quebec and the Fairy Godmother
Today, let’s have some fun and play Fairy Godmother to Quebec. Let’s grant the province the wish it articulated in Copenhagen. Wave the magic wand and poof, wish granted. Shut down Alberta’s oilsands except, since it’s Quebec making the wish, we have to call it tarsands even though it’s not tar they use to run their Bombardier planes, trains and
Skidoos.
Ah, at last! The blight on Canada’s reputation shut down. All
those dastardly workers from across Canada living in Fort
McMurray, Calgary and Edmonton out of jobs, including those waitresses, truck drivers, nurses, teachers, doctors, pilots, engineers etc. They can all go on Employment Insurance like Ontario autoworkers and Quebec parts
makers!
Closing down Alberta’s oil industry would immediately stop the production of 1.8 million barrels of oil a day. Supply and
demand being what it is, oil prices will go up and therefore
the cost at the pump will go up too, increasing the cost of
everything else.
But lost jobs in Alberta and across the country along with higher gas prices are a small price to pay to save the world and not “embarrass” Quebecers on the world stage. Not to worry though, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Nigeria can come to the rescue. You know, the guys who pump money into al-Qaida and help Osama bin Laden target those Van Doos fighting in Afghanistan. Bloody oil is so much nicer than dirty tarsands oil.
Shutting down the oilsands will reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 38.4 Mt (megatonnes). Hooray! It’s so fun to be a Fairy Godmother! While that sounds like a lot, Canada only produces two per cent of the world’s man-made GHGs and the oilsands only produce five per cent of Canada 's total emissions or 0.1 per cent of the world’s emissions. By comparison, the U.S.produces 20.2 per cent of the world’s GHG emissions, 27 per cent of which comes from coal-fired electricity.
The 530-square-kilometre piece of land currently disturbed by the oilsands (which is smaller than the John F. Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla. at 570 square kilometres) must be reclaimed by law and will return to Alberta 's 381,000 square kilometres of boreal forest, a huge carbon sink.
Quebec, of course, has clean hydro power but more than 13,000 square kilometres were drowned for the James Bay hydroelectric project, permanently removing that forest from acting as a carbon sink.
But Fairy Godmother is digressing all over the place. While the oilsands only produce 5 per cent of Canada’s GHGs, it
contributes much more to Canada 's economy. After all, oil and gas make up one-quarter of the value on the TSX alone. Alberta is also the largest net contributor per capita by far to
Confederation and there are only two more – B.C. and Ontario
.
Quebec hasn’t made a net contribution to the rest of Canada for a very long time. This is not to be critical (after all, Fairy
Godmothers never criticize), it’s just a fact. In 2009,
Albertans paid $40.46 billion in income, corporate and other
taxes to the federal government and received back just $19.35 billion in services and goods from the feds. That means the rest of Canada got $21.1 billion from Albertans or $5,742 for each and every Alberta man, woman and child. In 2007 (the last year national figures are available), Alberta sent a net contribution of $19.49 billion to the ROC or $5,553 per Albertan – more than three times what every Ontarian
contributes at $1,757. Quebecers, on the other hand, each
received $627 net or a total of $8 billion, money which was
designed to help “equalize” social programs across the
country.
Except, that’s not what is happening. Quebec has more generous social programs like (nearly) free university tuition (paid for mostly by Albertans) and cheap provincial day care (paid for mostly by Albertans).
But in this Fairy Godmother world, poof, those delightful unequal programs have now disappeared! Quel dommage!
The July 2009 Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) report states that between 2008 and 2032, the oilsands will account for 172,000 person-years of employment in Ontario during the construction phase, plus 640,000 for operations over the 25-year period. For Quebec, the oilsands will account for 84,000 person-years of employment during the construction phase, plus 292,000 for operations over the 25-year period.
In total, the oilsands are expected to add $1.7 trillion to
Canada 's GDP over the next 25 years.
Wave wand and poof, jobs gone! So, now that the oil industry has shut down and left Alberta, Alberta has become a have-not province and so has every other province. Equality at last! Hugo Chavez will be so pleased.
Meeting our Copenhagen targets suddenly looks possible, as most of us can’t afford to drive our cars or buy anything but necessities, so manufacturers have closed their doors and emissions are way down.
The dream of many Quebecers to form their own nation and separate from Canada has died at last. Alas, in Alberta, separatist sentiment has risen dramatically, citizens vote to separate and the oil and gas industry returns.
Albertans start to pocket that almost $6,000 for each person that used to get sent elsewhere and now their kids get free tuition. Fairy Godmother’s work is done. Wish granted. Quebecers must now sign up for a foreign worker visas to work in Alberta to send their cheques back home so junior can start saving up to pay for college.
Lisia Corbella is editorial page editor of The Calgary Herald.
Please keep this message going, forward to as many as
possible
…and if by chance you still think Alberta’s oil is dirty (not bloody like Eastern oil) let’s just help you pack and LEAVE!
Sure, it’s real. It’s got a 12’ range.
Ha! That popped up on my feed last week and sent me into fits of laughter.
If some malevolent government entity could make that, guess what? You’re already fucked. It’s not like you’re gonna be able to stop them from doing whatever the fuck they want.
As left-wing as I am, I can’t take anyone who uses the phrase “military-industrial complex” seriously.
Eisenhower wasn’t exactly a woolly-minded idealist.
We must end GMO’s, and chemical companies!
CHEMICALS!
Seriously. And as someone who has done contract work for Lockheed-Martin, this is not exactly an abstract concept.
Agreed. And it isn’t like he wasn’t right.
The GMO thing though… that’s a different story.
I think this is just hilarious. It’s like they’re not even against a specific chemical—just chemicals in general. The ignorance is breathtaking.
I really love how “chemicals” has become a bad word to a lot of ignorant people. I can’t wait for “matter” or “atoms” to be the next things to avoid.
Water contains the same atoms that caused the Hindenburg disaster.
Think about it.
Here is a good one.
