Election Hangover

It feels like forever since my last post. But I've simply got post-election hangover. I'm just trying to get some of the partisan lines out of my system, and back to reality. Salut Mr Dion.

Also having some fun watching American politics play out over the last little while. Thank God I don't have CNN, or else I would be vomiting from my incessant watching of it. Simply put, Mr. Obama is going to win. A "victory" for race relations, as some would say, but I think it's purely farcical to claim the point. If it's a victory, it still means that race matters. Which should be the final goal.

Trying to find the comments I read somewhere about even Obama being further to the right on most issues than the current Conservative party. Very funny, but it does reveal the historical shift that occurred over the last half-century in both countries.

Anyway, when I get back to posting regularly, it'll be a little bit more on my recent move to Vancouver, and the job I have started at Peter Kiewit Sons Co.
Who knows where the Canadian dollar will have been by then.

The results of Strategic Voting

End the Social Experiment

I've finally discovered the source of my discomfort with the current political landscape of our great nation. It is partly based in my recent readings on "negative liberty"and my long held belief in laissez-faire everything. It also explains my affinity to Libertarian thinking. [Honestly, I hate citing wikipedia, but it does have a pretty succinct discussion on most of these topics]. For those of you that know me very well, it also shows in my very pessimistic, but what I call REALISTIC, outlook on life.

We live in a world full of social experiments. They even form the basis of what we call "Canadian."

Programs such as our education system. Our health care system. Our social housing system.

These are all social experiments, designed to give everyone a government mandated education, a government mandated health and a place to live.

The end result, however, is quite disappointing. Look at the youth of my generation. In the western world, these programs have created the most willfully uneducated, self-serving, entitled, mistrusting and violent generation in the history of mankind. Why is violent crime skyrocketing in our urban centers? Because parents expect children to get the necessary education from the schooling system. What ever happened to the responsibility of raising your own child? Some advocacy group (read: unions that will get more members) now want a nationalized daycare program. That sounds like a great idea!!! [that's as sarcastic as I can get folks] Let's take even the earliest development of our children and put in the hands of bureaucrats.

The governmental system has several baseline inefficiencies that it CANNOT fix. It's in the very nature of the system. Too much oversight. And you can't take that oversight away, because that results in corruption. So let's not add more government programs.

The question that you are now clamouring to ask is this: what about the less fortunate that can't afford these programs otherwise?

My solution: Why not leave it to the not-for-profit agencies?
They used to run these systems before the government became so involved. Hospitals run by nuns. Schools run by priests. Soup kitchens, support groups, social housing, all run and administered by local groups and agencies. [No need to worry about abusive possibilities, we live in a world where predators can no longer get away with such behaviour.]

If you tell me that things are ok now, please: stop. Take a look around you. Is our health care system working? NO! We drop more and more, billions and billions of dollars, with no appreciable difference in the quality of care received. We expand the education system, and still see more and more children... yes, CHILDREN... in gangs. We provide more and more welfare, and see our workforce continue to shrink, as more people instead sit on their hands and wait for government handouts.

This is not the Canada that I want to grow up in, the kind of Canada that I wish to leave my children. I don't know where to start to affect this change, but I do believe in the power of the individual, and the collective, but not in the government. YES, WE CAN do better [sorry Barack].

Our Economy is Fine!

A quick lunch-break post. Mr. Dion and Mr. Layton continue their fear-mongering about the economy. Yes, the stock market is down. But that's just artificial money! First off, the Canadian markets are only 50% economy based. The other half is driven by changing commodity prices. It is no coincidence that our markets fell when all of the commodity prices bottomed out last week, NOT perfectly in step with the US markets.

Regardless, don't take my word for it. Listen to the IMF.

Canada will skirt recession:

The International Monetary Fund, meanwhile, projected that Canada next year
will have the fastest growing economy of the G7 major industrial countries, at
1.2 per cent, despite virtually no growth of just 0.1 per cent in the U.S.,
Canada's main export market.

Full article here.

Hell hath frozen over

The Toronto Star just published a story that.... Aghast!.... doesn't take a single cheap shot at the Prime Minister. Ok, one small one about election timing, but I'll make a post about that tomorrow.

After the debate, the math is still on Harper side

Oct 02, 2008 11:26 PM
James Travers

OTTAWA – Two nights of debate and another day of market turmoil are turning an election about the economy and Stéphane Dion into one that's still about the economy but also about Stephen Harper. For the first time since he prematurely killed the last Parliament, partly to avoid campaigning in hard times, the Prime Minister and his fiscal policies are emerging as ballot questions.

Four-against-one debates with the economy as the focus are driving that change. So, too, is the Liberal leader's belated shift from the environmental "e", his personal passion, to the economic "e", the national preoccupation.

...

While watched across the country, the first debate was primarily a battle for Quebec with Harper and Gilles Duceppe the principal combatants. The second was loaded with broader implications and higher stakes – a possible Conservative majority and the determined NDP run at the Liberals for second place.

Tonight those two struggles centred on the economy and Harper's claim that Canada's fundamentals are so strong that the safe course is to stay the Conservative course. As he has done since the campaign began, Layton chipped at that proposition, effectively recasting extraordinary economic events as kitchen table concerns. Dion's attacks are more abstract but effective enough to force Harper to pre-emptively distance his policies from the laissez-faire U.S. mess blamed, a little unfairly, on George W. Bush. [Note from Glen: Emphasis added. And don't take this to mean that I don't blame Bush]

...

Ganging four against one is good way to win a debate...Harper knows this, just as he knows that being pounded in the debates won't crack his core support.

What's less certain is how undecided voters will react to the cumulative opposition criticism and their own rising financial fears. However they ultimately cast their ballots, the Prime Minister and his policies are now an election issue and that is as it should be.

Golly. Ok, I realize I took the "math" part out. It basically says that the Left is split, which is going to result in a stronger minority (most likely). Maybe the Left should coalesce. With Layton as PM.... right.... hell hath indeed frozen over.

Please refer to Capital One tv ad.