The Conservatives who are trying to spin that this is no big deal because well, majority governments don't often win byelections and well, the Liberals didn't win it by as much as one poll said they would a few weeks ago so really Trudeau messed things up and this is a sign he is in over his head, is just nonsense and kind of smacks of sore losership.
The Harper government is praising Conservative Sen. Mike Duffy for showing "leadership" in the Senate expenses scandal.That's because he paid the money back, I guess. But here's the Liberal way of looking at it:
But Liberals say the Conservatives are protecting one of their own, tipping off Duffy about ineligible per diems and whitewashing a report on his invalid housing allowance claims.Gee, which way is the right way to look at this? How can we ever possibly tell?
62 million bottles of really good wineOr, to put it in another way that we're all thinking about this time of year
Two hundred thousand cars
Eight thousand pretty nice houses
Pretty good salaries for four thousand people a year for ten years, plus the daycare costs for their children
Every penny of what me and more than 25,000 other Canadians paid in federal income taxes last year.So that's how much the Harper Cons lost track of when they were frittering away those "anti-terrorism" dollars on airports and police and databases ... and gazebos, don't forget the gazebos ...
The law will allow police to detain people pre-emptively and hold them for as long as three days without charges and would give authorities power to compel testimony through so-called investigative hearings at which people are brought before judges to answer questions.Under Paul Martin, the police never used these powers. Under Vic Toews and the Harper Cons, does anybody think they'll be so careful and circumspect? The record so far isn't very reassuring.
Shortly after the blasts occurred, the tabloid [New York Post] falsely claimed that 12 people had been killed and a Saudi national was in custody; and then, to add insult to injury, they ran a front page photo which libelously depicted a high school track star as a federally-sought suspect.And by the way, the Czech Republic and Chechnya are not the same place...
The Post then continued to stand by their reporting long after it had been proven wrong.
Meanwhile, on CNN, Wolf Blitzer and the "best political team on television" once again found themselves unable to keep up with a breaking news story that doesn't involve a poop ship—and were subsequently commended by their boss for it.
And lest you think the shit show was confined to old media, allow me to disabuse you of that notion.
On popular websites like Reddit and 4Chan, amateur detectives conducted a crowdsourced investigation which wrongly named a missing college student as the wanted culprit; but that didn't stop them from congratulating themselves on their sleuthing
The outcome is pretty much a foregone conclusion: Justin Trudeau, eldest son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau and the party's undisputed rock star, is widely expected to win handily....Most party insiders — including realists in the five rival leadership camps — are privately predicting a comfortable first ballot win, with Trudeau taking anywhere from 60 to 80 per cent of the votes cast.You mean all those so-called "news stories" I have been reading over the last several weeks about how there was going to be such a low vote turnout and how Joyce Murray or Martha Hall Findlay or somebody was going to come firing up from behind and sweep the race turned out to be based on nothing but horse race journaminalism, thin air and Tory spite?
On Wednesday in question period, Wall said, "There are some other issues in (other) provinces that we've noted and I think we need to explore those issues with respect to the alliances. And I think specifically of religious schools .... We have to be concerned, and I hope the member is concerned, about the protection of freedom of religion, as well."Then reporters asked Wall on Thursday whether he thought being gay was a choice and Wall reacted by talking about "those" and "some" who are "very close geographically":
"I really have not thought about it a lot. From everything I've heard from those, I know some who are very close geographically to us right now, no."Broten got it right:
His staff later explained that he meant there are government staff members who are gay.
Broten expressed concern that "the premier has trouble saying 'gay' in question period, it sounds like."
On feeling like the bad-luck fairy has moved in with you and is sleeping on your sofa:Emphasis mine.
People with plenty of money have crummy luck all the time, too, but it’s just an inconvenience for them. My parents are millionaires. Last week their heater, car, and garage door broke. So what?
If they were poorer, each problem would’ve caused two more problems. People living on the edge are vulnerable to every mishap in a way that is catastrophic. It’s very hard to break the cycle. You need a string of good luck that lasts for years.
By the way, I’ve always tried to live within my means and got hit with the housing crisis in a perfect storm that reduced me to zero. So I’m not saying here that poorer people are doing something wrong; it’s just about having more than enough money to be able to recover.
