Saturday, June 7, 2008

A Grain of Salt

The other day Ottawa announced that it was giving a $250 million dollar subsidy to General Motors Canada in order for them to preserve the jobs of those employees in the area.

Hold on, what?

Okay, lemme get this straight, our government, a conservative government is giving a corporation whose revenue is more than $180 billion dollars a year, a subsidy of $250 million.  Armageddon is here!  The world is ending!  What are we going to do!   First, a Conservative government that spends like socialists, then what?  The first NDP Prime Minister?  I mean really, this is something that I would have expected to come from the left leaning side of the House, but Harper?  That's like him stabbing himself in the kidney and saying that he's taking one for the team.  Spending money on the economy is one of Harper's biggest nay-nays.  Whenever he thinks of the Canadian economy, Harper sings to himself, "Let it be, Let it be" and takes on what we call a Laissez-Faire economic stance.  In other words, he keeps his hands out of the cookie jar.  

And GM?  Well GM certainly has a lot of explaining to do.  I'm not savvy to exactly why their revenues are down, but for a company that has more revenue every year than the GDP of North Korea, what difference is $250 million going to make, and why are we doing it?  Shouldn't they be left to figure it out themselves?  But no, this conservative government is going to hold their hand so that thousands of people don't lose their jobs.

I guess that even Harper has a few good surprises up his sleeve sometimes.  But is this the real Harper?  Is this the Harper that we're going to see if there's Conservative majority elected?  Somehow, I doubt it.

A Grain of Salt

This is some commentary that I have written on Current Events to date.  I hope to be posting one of these every day!

I hope that you enjoy my rants.

June 02, 2008

The United States top Marine in Afghanistan said yesterday that he had been grateful for the military support of Canadian troops.  Unsure of what exactly the Americans needed help on, sources suspect that Canadians helped them find the English instructions inside for their weapons, even though American has only one regular language.  Personally I differ on this point of thought, because it's my bet that the Canadian troops practically threw themselves at the Americans to "help them with their fresh weapons, just to get a chance to use something that isn't thirty years hold.  When asked if they would share, the Americans were delighted to skip off to the shooting range and show off what exactly a $1.3 trillion dollar defense budget buys.

June 04, 2008

Well the American Democratic nomination race still isn't over.  Even now that Senator Barack Obama has thirty-eight more delegates than he needs to win the nomination, he's still only the "projected nominee".

Projected nominee?  Give me a break!  This race has been going on longer than some wars!  And in this contest, less has been gained!  Since the beginning of the campaign in 2006, Obama has earned at the supposed endgame 230 more delegates and super-delegates than CLinton.  But it's still not over, because there's still the democratic convention, where not only the super-delegates but also the regular delegates are allowed to change their minds!

I know American politics is supposed to have twists, but this is ridiculous.  It's like reality TV on steroids.  I mean if I want to watch CSI, I'll watch CSI.  But, it looks like the world is still more concerned about sensationalism than it is about good government.  Okay, granted, Barack has basically clinched the nomination.  But now he's got an even tougher job ahead of him with the presidential campaign set to bein... well, a couple weeks ago.  So get your game face on Obama:  18 months down, 5 to go.

June 05, 2008

Well the Stanley CUp Finals are finally over with the Detroit Red Wings as the victors.  I really wanted the Pittsburgh Penguins to win, but no, two of the best players in the game, one of the best goalies in the game and a fantastic rent-a-player to boot weren't enough to get past the stifling defense and fantastic offense shown by the guys from hockey town.

Now, many of you may have no idea what I'm talking about.  You'r saying to yourselves right now, Stanley Cup?  Isn't that like a big sports trophy or something?  Shame.  Shame on you ignorant people who call yourselves Canadians.  I don't even know why I'm showing you the grace of telling you a few details in the first place.

You know, it's hard enough to hold onto our identity already with the Americans trying to push theirs on us all the time.  But if you don't even watch hockey?  That's like rolling over and saying to the Americans, "Why don't you buy Tim Hortons from us?".  Oh wait, they already did that.  With things that we can call Canadian being bought up faster than we can make them, it's not always a great thing to be loved by every rich guy in the world.  We've got to stand-up for ourselves.

So next time a hockey game is on while you're flicking through channels, watch a few minutes of it and look up some of the players on Google.  Because it's either that, or boycott Timmy's.

June 06, 2008

Toyota today announced a new fuel cell powered vehicle.  Some experts suspect that it'll be just like the Delorian from Back to the Future, just drop in a banana peel and you're good to go.  But according to Toyota, it's powered by hydrogen.  That's a relief, because I can get hydrogen way more easily than food or gas, right?  Oh what's that I'm sorry?  The commercially consumable hydrogen cell hasn't been invented yet?  So then why is Toyota making cars that run on something that doesn't exist!

It's marathon runner, "Hey, we've got this great new thirst quencher that is amazing for long distance, it's healthier for you and comes in pink."  Then the marathon runner gets to the drink station, and surprise! "Oh, we don't actually have any here.  You didn't bring along anything of your own?  Sorry!  Good Luck!"

The poor marathon runner is taken away by ambulance at the twenty mile marker due to dehydration.  But at least he could have tried the new drink if it did exist.


Friday, June 6, 2008

Sometimes I just can't believe people

Well, it's been another crazy week.  Not that my life is busy or complicated or anything.  I'm sure I've got nothing on Hillary Clinton or Brad Pitt, but I feel like my life is this incredibly dense spiderweb that isn't all made by me, so I don't know where the sticky spots are.

I'm going to rant for a bit here, so bear with me, please.

You know that political thing I'm doing?  Maybe you don't, I'll give you a rundown.  I'm in this organization called the Youth Parliament of Canada.  It was founded by this dude Tyler Johnson last summer, and now has grown exponentially.  Except that it now no longer exists.

Because of problems with management, most of the part leaders, my own included, have broken away from the organization and are planning on starting their own, called the Canadian Youth Assembly.  Now, I don't even know what this CYA is going to look like, but apparently it's supposed to be the same as we all thought the YPC was supposed to be.  They broke away because TJ (Tyler Johnson) decided that our entire organization was too partisan, and so he gave us all the boot.  (I actually haven't checked yet if I can post or not, it's still TBA)  Funny how an organization modeled around the real Federal Government can be seen as too partisan. Yeesh.

I've already told the new CYA that I plan on giving them my full support, but I'm seriously starting to doubt the effectiveness of all these people that I've been dealing with.  I mean when you look at it hard, you can see that the cliche "it takes two to tango" really does apply, and not only is our executive director power mongering, but everyone else seems to be taking themselves too seriously again.  (Yes, things like this have happened before, but not this bad)

I'm considering just withdrawing from the YPC/YGC/CYA in general.  (BTW, YGC means Youth Government of Canada, in case you can't get our Roosevelt Alphabet soup of acronyms right)  There are other ways to gain experience in the political field, and right now this is not looking like the best option.  What's really disappointing though, is how far we'd already come to fall so far.  We still have a Youth First Minister's Conference slated to begin in July that's going to be spoken at and attended by Rick Mercer.  We've received a personal endorsement from NDP Leader Jack Layton and most of the other major federal parties.  We were getting really close to having the House of Commons in Ottawa booked for when we were supposed to go there in January.  

But now our house of cards is falling down, just like Humpty Dumpty, and I'm pretty sure that neither all the GG's horses and men can put YPC back together again.

There are still options with hope though.  I can hope that there's an election soon and help one of the local politicians campaign.  There's this new organization that I just found out about called momentofYOUth.org that seems pretty cool.  And who knows, maybe YGC will rise from the ashes anew, or maybe CYA will take off.

All I know is that I'm going to Queen's University this fall, and life goes on without politics.  As sad as it is, I'm going to have to keep living off of Rick Mercer and 22 Minutes re-runs for just a little while longer yet.




World Peace