Category: Canada

Good Gawd. And here I thought that old saw about some jokes writing themselves was just a bunch o’ bull. Well, I guess it just goes to show ya that truth really is stranger than fiction. Today’s self-writing joke is that a dude from Montreal by the name of Albert Neremberghe and a buddy of his made themselves a documentary film called… wait for it… Let’s All Hate Toronto. No, I’m not making that up.

For the record: Yes, hating TO is a lot like shooting fish in a barrel but it does have one redeeming virtue (Don’t even think about looking at me like that. It’s called loyalty. I suffered through the goddamn Harold Ballard years, fer chrissakes…!). But seriously… do we need a documentary to tell us to hate Toronto? Some folks are WAY ahead of that curve… 😀

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Dang; willya lookit all this? I take a few days off and, lo & behold, a total buttload of interesting stuff all pops up all over the place.

The Poor Little Rich Girl of Canadian politics has decided that, since nobody will let her be in charge, she’s running back home to Daddy’s company to… well, be in charge. Because of her overwhelming qualifications, of course. Don’t let the door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya on the way out.

The Torys put yet another nail in the now almost all-nail coffin of the billion-buck bugger-up of the long gun registry and the Liebrals, naturally, were miffed that it was done outside of Parliament where they could have huffed and puffed — but actually done sweet bugger all — about it:

“It says the Conservatives are trying to do by stealth what they can’t do out in the open — which is kill the long gun registry,” said Liberal Justice Critic Marlene Jennings.

“But by doing it by stealth, they are attempting to ensure that the vast majority of Canadians won’t know what they’re doing, and so they get away with it.”

No, dipshit; it means that the Tories — along with most other people in this country that have two non-partisan brain cells to rub together — are sick and God damned tired of worthless, self-serving, Grit grandstanding on this issue and have decided to take away one of your favourite horns. Go toot something else. Have some beans.

Our boys in Afghanistan had a bad day over the Easter weekend. Perhaps in something of a telling portent of changing values, the deaths of six of our men came almost right on top of the 90th anniversary of the assault on Vimy Ridge where losing six men would have happened about every seven minutes. 3,598 dead in three days; do the math. And none of them came home. But look to get innundated with a fresh volly of “body of fallen soldier begins/continues/ends long journey home” stories in the MSM for the next while (unless there’s something more Lefty-friendly to blab about for a few minutes).

All charges were finally dropped agains the lacrosse players from Duke University, which must have totally baffled the lib-left because hey, the accuser was black and the accused were white. Which means they’re clearly guilty, right?

Hockey season ended. Early.

And much, much more. Dang. Well, I’m back now and seeing as how I’m laid off for a while, that should mean that I’m going to have a lot more time to dish out all the little nuggets of wisdom that you have all come to know, love and depend on to get through your days.

Well, it seems like yet another Grit has gotten fed up with the Fiberals and jumped ship.  The Grit in question is Ontario Liberal backbencher Tim Peterson (whose website seems to be currently offline).  Some of you might know him as being part of what the MSM like to call “London’s first family of Liberals.” :roll:  He’s former Ontario premier David Peterson and Toronto-area MP Jim Peterson’s kid brother and London-North-Centre MPP (and former Ontario Lieberal president) Deb Matthews’ brother-in-law.  Now there’s a gene pool for ya…

The Liebrals, predictably, are saying that he’s just pissy over not getting a cabinet post.  Because we all know that whenever someone crosses the floor from the Grits, its always because of a cabinet position or some other such ulterior crap; but when someone crosses to the Grits and gets plopped right into a cabinet position that they have no qualifications for, it’s truly altruism at its highest.

And before the hooting even starts: no, he’s not joining the Tories.  He’s going to sit as an independent until the October 10 provincial election when he does plan to run as a Tory (assuming he can secure the riding nomination — he’s not getting a freebie).  Ironically enough, it looks like PC Leader John Guess-What-Party-I’m-With actually talked him out of outright crossing over:

“John Tory convinced me that I should not work in this session against the party that helped me get elected, and the party that the people in Mississauga South supported in the last election,” he said.

Imagine a Grit doing that.  Go ahead, imagine it.  Nah, I can’t either.

Quit your damn whining. You heard me. All you bozos out there that are moaning and groaning, like a bunch of homeless mill operators at a TO budget handout, about how the big bad lottery retailers cheated and got a bunch of cash from all you honest suckers. Yes, it seems that some of those guys and gals in those little kiosks in the mall managed to up and bugger off with someplace in the neighbourhood of at least — yes, at LEAST — a hundred million loonies in the last six or seven years, from ’99 to ’06…

Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin’s report, A Game of Trust, revealed yesterday that the lottery corporation enjoyed a “buddy buddy” relationship with retailers and left no paper trail that can be followed to trace the winnings back to their rightful owners.

“Unscrupulous” lottery-ticket retailers have collected at least $100 million in fraudulent claims since 1999, Marin reported yesterday.

The fraud continued for years, in part because of a “hopelessly conflicted” agency that allowed the practice to continue and ignored an early warning from a London case, the ombudsman said.

And now everybody and their dog is bitching and moaning about getting ripped off by the big, friendly OLGC that was supposed to exist just so that they could become millionaires and retire to someplace with a very un-Canadian climate some day.

Piss off.

I’m sick and tired of hearing about how evil the redneck retirement fund has become. Well guess what, boneheads? IT WAS ALWAYS A SCAM TO BEGIN WITH!! A lottery isn’t about raising money for charities, it’s not for covering the cost of some government projects, and it’s sure as hell not there to give you any damn money.

It’s a tax, plain and simple. It’s a tax on people that are bad at math. So either get smart enough to figure out what your odds are of getting hit by lightning while skull-schtupping Pam Anderson, or shut the hell up.

Well, the Ontario Fiberals put out their budget and I have to say that I sort of feel like I’m through the looking glass. Where Flaherty did one hell of a Santa act, Sorbara seems almost… how the hell am I going to put this?

Sensible… 😯

Sorbara says it’s not an election budget. He ain’t kidding there. There’s no new taxes in it (not even booze or smokes, always favourite targets), but there’s no tax cuts, either. All in all, I haven’t been able to find a hell of a lot wrong with it (and you just know that I’m the kind of guy that would look) so far, except for one rather nasty little thing: this talk about cranking up the minimum wage by over 28%. Now, I’m all for people being able to make a living wage. I work for a living myself and yes, if the minimum wage hops to $10.25 an hour, I’ll be making more money. And I still think it’s a bad idea. Now, why in God’s name would I think that?? Well, it’s simple, really: nobody seems to have thought about Bob.

NO, I don’t mean Bob Rae… Screw Bob Rae. I wouldn’t piss in his mouth if his tongue was on fire. So who the hell am I babbling about, anyway? Well, let me tell ya…

Bob’s a regular kind of guy. Has himself a house, mortgage, wife, couple o’ kids… all that middle class stuff. After a bunch of years working for other people, Bob went out and set up a business of his own. Sure, it doesn’t make a buttload of money, but it pays the bills with a little left over to sock away and to buy some nice stuff for the kids when Christmas and birthdays come around. All in all, Bob thinks he’s doing pretty okay for himself.

It doesn’t matter what Bob’s business does. Screw it; let’s say he makes Widgetsâ„¢ and sells ’em. Bob’s got 10 guys that work for him, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (Bob shuts the Widget mill down on weekends so people can have time with their families; he’s a nice guy that way) for the minimum wage, $8.00 per hour. So a little math tells us that right now, Bob’s forking out $640 a day in wages to his ten guys. This is all Bob can afford to pay, and I DO mean ALL. Like I said, Bob’s doing okay for himself but he’s not exactly swimming in it.

Now, imagine Bob’s payroll expense jumps up to $820. Bob ain’t got that kind of money, boys and girls. No way, no how. So what the hell’s Bob gonna do? Unlike some people, Bob doesn’t make his Widgetsâ„¢ for the government, he has to compete in the real world market, where people can take their money someplace else. If Bob jacks up the price of his Widgets by 25%, he’s going to lose business. A lot of folks are just going to say, “screw that, I’ll start buying Mexican Widgets; or maybe I’ll just drive out to the local Indian reserve and buy my Widgets there.”

So how the hell is Bob going to stay in business when he can’t realistically raise his prices and he can’t afford more than $640 a day in wages? It’s simple: two guys are getting laid off and another one is having his hours cut. Plain and simple.

All the warm, fuzzy socialist thinking in the world won’t stop the relentless grind of the simple laws of economics. Crank up wages by over 25%, like the Fiberals and Dippers are howling for, and some people are going to lose their jobs. End of discussion.

And that helps the working poor… how??

Sometimes I just plain don’t get my fellow right-wing nutjobs; I really don’t. There has been a great weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth over the last 24 hours or so, ever since Jim Flaherty coughed up the federal budget on the House rug. And quite the hairball it was, too. But let me ask you, my VRWC fellow travelers: Are any of you, any at all, really surprised by any of this??

Come on, now; you didn’t just fall off the turnip truck this morning did you? I’m not in the habit of moaning and groaning about my BT fellows, but some of what I’ve read leaves me scratching my melon hard enough to leave a gouge:

Christopher Edey, Got Blog If You Want It:
“Someone should really remind Prime Minister Harper, Finance Minister Flaherty and co. that they really are in government, and don’t have to keep letting Paul Martin write the budget just because that’s what everybody has gotten used to.”

M. K. Braaten:
“This afternoon when I read about the latest federal budget I swear I thought the NDP was in power. What happened to being fiscally conservative? What happened to income tax cuts? What happened to increased spending only at the same rate of increase in GDP? What happened to fairness?”

Others, like Dark Blue Tory, Sandy at Crux of the Matter and Joanne are taking a somewhat more pragmatic approach. I tend to agree with them. No matter how you slice it, there is no getting away from the fact that this was a political budget. It’s purpose was not to chart a course to fiscal responsibility, boost the economy or anything else like that. Its purpose was to pave the way to the next election. Period.

If there’s one thing that we should have learned in the last year, it’s that nothing meaningful will get done while the Tories have only a minority government. Anything that they try to do, that will actually make any kind of a difference, will be shot down by the opposition if for no other reason than to be able to bleat to the voters that the Conservatives can’t get anything done.

We need a majority and this is one step towards getting it. It’s bitter medicine, I know, so let’s just hold our noses and get it over with.