Poilievre, terror, and milk

A few quick stories"

Liberals ask Poilievre to apologize for stupid comment. Pierre again showing why he is a model parliamentarian.

Next, we've got the big vote tonight. Even if there's a CTV poll where 65% are in favour of extending it, I would tend to think we need to refine them a bit more before supporting them. Unfortunately we haven't had that chance as a parliament to actually talk, and I highly doubt that our current parliament could actually reasonably discuss anything, but we should sit down and figure out this stuff in more detail.

Finally, seems some new research shows that people were almost all lactose intolerant 8000 years ago, and that basically only with the advent of dairy farming did some Europeans actually manage to digest it. Why do I mention this? I dunno, was an interesting story about how us milk-drinkers are the real genetic mutants.

Support Navdeep Bains

Well, this morning I got an e-mail for an online petition in support of Navdeep Bains, asking for Harper to apologize for his slandering of a good Liberal MP. I encourage everyone to go show your support for Nav and sign it.

Clinton

Well, one of the perks of working out in silicon valley for a large company is that they bring in guest speakers, and today we were graced with the presence of Senator Hilary Clinton, in a chat with our CEO. It was a fairly informal ordeal, so it wasn't just a rallying speech for Clinton, but still obviously quite partisan and geared towards her Presidential campaign.

Overall, I thought she did fairly well. You can tell that she was knowledgeable about matters, and wasn't just giving canned lines in response to questions, but she also didn't pick you out of your [metaphorical] seat and make you want to run out to vote for her (I say metaphorical since obviously not everyone could fit in). She was also quite general with her talks (we want universal healthcare, we want more green incentives, etc..), without going into too much general about what to actually do about it.

Overall, I would say she's definitely not a puppet and she is in this for real. It should be interesting to watch her as we go through the campaign, and if she can get enough support to win the race.

Vilsack out

Well, even if we've barely started the 2008 presidential campaigns, we already have candidates dropping out. Of course, nobody actually believed he had a shot to win it anyways.

So really, does anyone think it will be a race between anyone other than Hilary and Barack? Would the media go crazy if someone else actually won?

Trudeau

Well, by now I guess everyone's heard that Trudeau decided to run in Papineau. Good on him for not taking an easy riding, and for taking a harder road. Would have been nice to have him in an easy seat to get out to more areas, but at least this way he can take the chance to prove to us that he truly belongs in politics, and isn't just riding his dad's coattails.

Facts? Where we're going, we don't need no facts

Well, when I first heard about Harper's referencing the sun article about a Liberal MP, I didn't really know what to make of it, since I couldn't get too much info about it. Even a bit after, it's tough to figure out exactly what the article said, what Harper said, what Harper was trying to say, and what it all meant. Some people seem to think that the Liberals are trying to close down these anti-terror measures to save a Liberal family member's derriere, somehow making us think the Libs have some terrorist ties and are trying to save them

Luckily, some people have the intelligence above that of a 5 year old, and can actually figure out what's going on with the story. Harper tried to play dirty with a partisan low-blow. He shouldn't have brought it up, and someone's got to make him apologize for all these semi-slanders of good Liberals. Goodale before, and Bains now. Does he have something against our best and brightest MPs?

Yeah I'm Free, Free Falling

at least according to Don Martin. So fun how he takes one poll and rides it throughout the article, and then briefly passes off 3 seat projections with the Liberals gaining seats, 2 of which return them to power. Ah, the fun of reading only what you want to read.

But what I really want to know is when Canadians finally decided to shift onto the election-time weekly polling numbers. Does anyone else remember the good old days when we used to get one poll every month or so telling us what we thought, and then stepped up during election times? At this pace the polling companies will have gotten to just about every voter in the country by the time the next election rolls around.

Deep Impact, or simply Armageddon

Well, it's happened. Our worst fears have been realized. The world must get ready, since we have news that an asteroid is on a collision course for Earth.

So start stockpiling those supplies now and brace yourselves for the end of the world.

Quebec election

Well, looks like Quebec will be going to the polls shortly after a mini-budget on Tuesday. The Quebec polls have been all over the place the last few years, with it switching back and forth every 2 weeks or so. Currently, it seems to be leaning towards a PQ minority. Should be fun to follow over the next month or so. I don't think anyone thinks that Charest has done great, but the PQ has been imploding recently. I don't think Boisclair will be able to hold onto his support, and my early prediction is the Libs will hang on, but in a minority.

And also, speaking of imploding, how low can you go...

The new cold fusion

Well, I feel I must comment on the recent news about a company claiming to have a working quantum computer. I'm not an expert on quantum computation, but roughly, a quantum computer sort of exists in lots of different states at once, and using that and some other logic, can basically solve an incredibly hard problem in a very short amount of time. Others are already a bit leery about this new claim of a quantum computer, and I have to agree with that. It may work in this small case, and it would be incredible if someone actually got one working, but I think there's not enough here for it to be a real one that will be more powerful than the computer you or I are using right now.

Conservative Ads

Well, I just saw the Conservative ads, and I must say, I think they wasted the Domino one. I think it would be a lot more effective in the last couple weeks of a campaign. People won't remember it now, and it looked effective.

The other 2? Honestly, I think anyone with a decent movie maker program could make a better ad. They looked more like a parody ad than an actual one paid by the party.

In other news, the Kyoto bill passed. The Conservatives will be doing their best to simply ignore this. They definitely don't want to go into an election about their arrogance on Kyoto, and if the opposition had to pick anything to go to an election on, this would be a good one.

Donations

Well, as I sit here pondering the conservatives' new ads, I receive my regular junkmail from the Liberal Party asking me to donate. Since I'm feeling bored, and thinking about actually donating, I click on the link to go to the donation page.

But when on the page, I notice we still have our links to donate to the campaigns from the Leadership race. Does anyone know how we're doing in that, if all the candidates have been able to recoup the funds, or heck, even if the Party has been able to start building a war chest? Obviously we won't be able to build up a warchest like the Cons have built, but it would be nice to know if we went into an election we could actually finance it.

#100

Well, according to Blogger, this is post #100 for me. I started back in August, back then thinking that I might actually talk about more than politics. Well, that never really happened, at least not any more than any other blogger.

Well now, I can definitely say that it's a lot easier to blog when lots is going on. I could always find something to write about last fall, but now, it takes some time to think of something to write. But it's still fun, and I don't see myself quitting anytime soon.

Libs trailing bad - no, wait, they're tied

Well, while Bourque likes to keep on with his "The Liberals are crumbling with Dion" stories, Scott mentioned that SES has the Liberals tied in the polls. Now, I'd say we're probably going to see other polls with these people around every which way, and we probably will see these come out every couple weeks. So what's the reality with these polls?

Well, I'd say that both sides have a base around 30-32, and there are an awful lot of fickle voters out there. As long as neither side is hitting 40 in the polls, I'll take them all as being a virtual tie, especially when you factor in the number of undecideds and people who refuse to answer these polls.

In other news, apparently there were some by-elections yesterday in Ontario, which split between the Libs, NDP, and PCs. The only real news out of this is that the Libs are going to have to watch the left in the upcoming election, since we can't afford to bleed too much to them. We don't need a major campaign shift, but we won't be able to take them for granted anymore.

Floor crossing

Nobody likes floor crossers, except when they join you. But recently, I think everyone is getting a little bored about it. Whether we allow it or not, I think the key going forward is that we need to have some multi-partisan talks about policies going forward. We should sit down and figure out some good rules to stand by, be it a by-election, sitting as an independent until the next election, or whatever we decide, I think it will help stop a lot of bickering if we at least settle on some basic rules.

As for today's news, as egotistical as Garth is, I'll trade Khan for Garth any day.

Kennedy running in Parkdale

So, Gerard will run in his old riding. Some may call out that we have a woman stepping down to let him run, and criticize him for that. Some may say, "he should have tried for a tougher seat out west" (although I don't think he ever really wanted to).

But this was the obvious choice. Give him his old seat back, which he should hopefully win fairly easily, and which will be a gain of a seat for the Libs. Also, by giving him a fairly safe seat, he'll be freer to campaign around the rest of Ontario, and help us win a few more which we have last time.

(H/T to The Dan Report)

UWHabs on Adler on Holland

Well, Bourque seems to be up in arms over Holland's recent interview with Charles' Atler. According to them, Holland says the Liberals will go further than the NEP, and the Liberals would put insane restrictions and prevent anyone from developing the oilsands, and yada yada yada.

Listening to the interview, there is one overwhelming reaction I get to why there's no mainstream media coverage of this: it doesn't deserve any. Honestly. Adler's a moron to think that Holland went overboard with this. I mean, we all knew before this that Adler was a moron, but it's insane to think that Holland actually said anything overly controversial.

If companies don't comply with energy targets, will we punish them? Damn straight we will!
Will we stop the unconstrained growth of the oilsands? Obviously! Adler takes out that we will cut production on the oilsands - Holland clearly said we'll limit growth to be sustainable.
Will there be consequences? Yes, but it's much cheaper to do it now than to do it later, as Holland clearly stated. He even said that the fact that there will be job losses is a fallacy.

If you listen to it, Adler just sounds like a moron who tries to spew the conservative scare-mongering about the environment. He seems like he desperately believes that there will be a magical technology that will allow non-stop oilsands production. The only reason there's anything that could be construed as troublesome is that Holland isn't trying to sugarcoat stuff too much for us.

Honestly, if this is the best that the cons can come up with to try to hurt us with, it's a good sign for us.

Minimum wage

Well, let me hop onto the bandwagon of people talking about the minimum wage. Apparently, Ontario is now up to 8$ an hour, and there's calls to push it to 10 bucks an hour.

The main arguments on both sides are basically:
1. You can't live on 8$ an hour. 10$ at least brings you up to around the poverty line if you have a full-time job.
2. Increasing to 10 bucks an hour would kill the economy and make us lose 20k-60k jobs.

Now, everyone wants to make more money, and we would all like to improve the minimum wage. I know I sure would have liked to be paid more than the 5.75 I made in my job at the Stampede oh those many years ago. I mean, at 10$/hour, I would have been able to buy an extra iPod with that money, had they actually had them around back then. And I'm sure it does suck for those people trying to make it on on minimum wage, barely working enough to get by, often working multiple jobs just to live.

So, why do I say we need to look at other things than raising the minimum wage? Other than losing a few jobs?

Well, the reason I feel is that in our society, there's no reason that people should be working at a minimum wage job to get by. If you're bordering on poverty, I think as a society (through the government, if they can), we should try to make sure that those people get paid more than the minimum. It makes much more sense to find ways to fund the poor (maybe through some government-work programs, or through direct infusions of cash to those who do work), than to just throw more money at all the low-paying jobs. In a similar vein to the debates on tuition rates, it makes more sense to direct the cash to those who need it as opposed to making policies that end up subsidizing those who need to upgrade to a larger iPod.

Global warming caused by us!

In the most shocking news I've read all day, it appears that global warming is caused by humans!

In other equally shocking news, it appears that hockey teams with better players tend to win more, and political parties with more popular support tend to win more often.