As a wise ambassador once said, there are three sides to every story. Your side, his side, and the truth. This blog is dedicated to always showing you the third edge of the sword.
One of the cellphone games I play is "Big Win Hockey", and I recently had to debate whether or not to use Big Bucks to buy Big Contracts.
Typically I play with a two-squad system: I have my Platinum Team (with occasional upgrades to Superstar players, and occasional downgrades of Gold players), and then my Bronze Team (with occasional upgrades to Silver players, and occasionally Platinum players on expired contracts currently sitting out while a Gold player gets "burned up", but its not really an upgrade).
Recently I actually dropped the 50 Big Bucks it takes to buy a pack of five "Big Contracts". But is it a good idea and worth your money? It all boils down to whether or not the "Big Contracts" give you more play time or not. For that, we need to know the average contract size, which...we don't.
Instead we'll have to do some guesstimating. Having only obtained one pack, I don't know a standard distribution or anything, but my highest was 63 games and most of them were 50-53 games. Now let's compare with non-premium contracts. I like to have at least 30 games for each renewal, sometimes I'll get 37 or 39 game cards as well, so this average is a little more flexible: it can be as high or low as I want.
Since bronze game packs only cost coins, not bucks, and coins are basically infinite (you can watch free videos to get 300 coins, or two bronze packs), you could in theory sell all cards that aren't 35-game or up and keep bronze packing it until you get there. But let's say you just want in the 30s, and that your average card would be 32 games.
Each of your six players gets six contracts (5 renewals), so every renewal at a 32 games per contract average would occur after your player plays 192 games. After 192 games, you have to use a "Fountain of Life" (cost: 50 bucks) to get your player back. So that's 50 bucks every 192 games, or 0.2604 bucks/player/game. (We could multiply by 6: your team costs 1.56 bucks/game, but we're just comparing anyways).
Now instead imagine you buy Big Contracts. Each pack only gives 5 contracts, so in other words your one player will completely consume one pack (this is why we don't need to multiply by 6). I'm going to put an estimate of 55 games per contract card on average: if anybody has more experience please note it in the comments. At this rate, your player will manage 330 games before using up the final contract. However, you will have to spend 50 Big Bucks on the contracts plus 50 Big Bucks on the renewal. That's 100 Big Bucks every 330 games, for a Bucks/player/game ratio of 0.303. That's 1.8 Bucks/game for your team. In other words, it's not worth the money.
At 64 games/contract, the bucks/player/game ratio matches the "el cheapo" scenario. Relatively obviously, in our simplistic analysis the games/contract has to be double. It's not true: the first contract after a renewal is 55 games, so at 32 games/contract we get 215 games, not 192. At a 55-game average for the Big Contract card we stay at 330 games, but it doesn't make Big Contracts a better bet. In fact, it makes it worse.
If your team averages 32 game contracts, Big Contracts only pay off if you get an average of 75 game contracts, which you definitely don't.
In fact, I'm not sure offhand if 75 game contracts are even found: I think 72 is the largest I've ever seen. So in the final analysis, you're better off sticking to the "free" contacts you get in coin-purchased packs† then you are wasting your Big Bucks. The only platinum contracts you should ever hold are the ones you get as a consolation prize when trying to get a Superstar player.
† Bronze packs, by the way, destroy silver packs. Quite often silver packs don't contain any actual silver cards, and never more than two: unless you're really interested in fielding an all-silver team, take my advice and ignore Dan the Puckgamer.
The Alberta government is making it sound like this is a problem with people flushing goldfish down the drain -- in all but the most rural areas this is pretty much not the reason goldfish are ending up in lakes and streams.
The real reason is immigrants doing something stupid, and political correctness isn't letting anybody say so. Buddhists who want to release goldfish into the wild should be deported to China where they can pollute rivers and lakes over there.
"When I woke up this morning and I saw Taylor's note that she had written, it really solidified that we needed to make a change," said Apple senior vice-president Eddy Cue in an interview with The Associated Press.
Apple had already agreed to share revenue from paid subscriptions to the new Apple Music service, which will cost $10 a month. But Swift said she would withhold her latest album from the service because Apple wasn't planning to pay artists and labels directly for the use of their music during the free, introductory period.
Edmonton's entirely corrupt police force -- last seen harassing a man to death in a famous incident that at least was fatal to the "hate-crime" busting asshole responsible -- has looked into body cameras and said: nope, not interested.
Body cameras on cops are ways to record what police actually do when they come up against the almost-always civilians they target. Reason.com has done quite a bit on the subject, both the pros and the cons. The pros include a vast improvement of behaviour. Anybody who's witnessed Edmonton cops interacting with citizens notices immediately how belligerent and dominating the officers become -- and those are the ones in public, in private are far far worse -- and how quick they are to try to deny them their right to walk away and tell this second rate pig to go shove Kris Wells' dick up his ass. Pros also include, paradoxically, a reduction in complaints against police. While generally not applicable in Edmonton, where every police officer is corrupt, jurisdictions with a more healthy mix of good and bad cops see complaints about officer mistreatment go south. It would ensure that complaints only come when there's actual police abuse (also caught on video in this case), and not so much when the officer did nothing wrong and the complaint was frivolous (note: this has yet to occur in an Edmonton case). The other pro is that it immediately raises eyebrows when the video goes missing or camera evidence is destroyed. This tends to happen an awful lot, most famously in BC where Ian Bush was shot in the back of the head during an interrogation for "resisting" and the officers got off, in part because there was no video being recorded in the interrogation room.
EPS spent three years researching and testing the cameras with funding support from the Centre for Security Science. Some of the key points from their research were:
clear policies need to be drafted about when police should start recording
where and how to store the data needs to be addressed
the test project found no "significant" evidence that body-worn cameras reduced use of force by officers
police work time would "notably increase" if video review became part of daily police routine
Where and how to store the data isn't nearly as important as how to store and release the data is. More on that below. As for the "no significant evidence" that body-worn cameras reduced the use of force by officers, it's not clear that anything short of firing every corrupt Edmonton police officer would actually reduce that use of force, especially if, as noted, the video is never released. Apparently 70% of the police force believes it never will be (30% of officers said they wouldn't wear the cameras voluntarily). To that, if Edmonton does introduce police body cameras, pace Reason, several things need to happen.
All bodycam video taken in public by Edmonton Police is in the public domain. This is an absolute 100% requirement. If it's not happening, giving police body cameras is useless. Citizens must be able to see all footage taken on public property, including inside of vehicles and homes when visible from the street. As well, all bodycam footage recorded while in a business which posts an "EPS Agent Status" sticker -- thereby allowing EPS equal authority to an owner -- is in the public domain and cannot be withheld by either EPS or the business owner. Because this footage is in the public domain, it must be available for any member of the public who wishes it. A reasonable administration fee -- I'm talking in the under $10 range -- can be charged to provide the public or the media with this footage, and the requester should provide their own flash drive or DVD to record the footage on.
All bodycam footage recorded during the execution of a warrant must be provided to the subject of the warrant or the owner and resident of the property. Another 100% requirement, though I know there will be some disagreement on whether both owners and renters should get a copy of the footage. I specify both the owner and the resident (read: renter) in this section because if a search warrant is executed in a home property belonging to both individuals can be damaged and destroyed by excessive police action. Likewise, both individuals may be charged as a result of evidence collected during executing the warrant, and the bodycam footage will help determine if that evidence was collected under the restrictions placed on the cops by the warrant. There is absolutely no excuse for property owners not being able to witness what cops did in their home or place of business. They aren't permitted to run roughshod over property that doesn't belong to them.
In the event that bodycam evidence is missing or destroyed, or a camera malfunction of any kind has occurred, the officer's testimony is no longer acceptable as evidence in any criminal or civil trials against either the affected member of the public or against the officer himself. This definitely will require legislation, almost certainly at the federal level, but is a complete requirement when dealing with corrupt forces such as those found in Edmonton or Vancouver or Windsor. Camera footage which for some reason stops recording or disappears is common when dealing with Edmonton cops -- remember, they tasered a lawyer who legally photographed their abuse of power and totally got away with it -- and the best way to ensure that doesn't happen is to put every pig on notice: if the footage disappears, the only side of the story that can be heard in court is the accused. If there's video footage for you to provide context or explain motivation for the actions you're witnessed performing, fine. If that footage disappears, it's clear that you did something wrong. If it's good enough for Canada Customs, then it's good enough for corrupt cops.
Body cameras must be turned on for all public interaction except for where station surveillance or dashboard cameras are operating. If a cop is in their car the existing dashboard camera should be sufficient to record encounters...and in fact, dashboard cameras should be subjected to the rules above. While in the station, even in interrogation rooms or at the front counter, public interactions should be covered by existing surveillance. However, outside of these realms, a police officer's entire shift needs to be recorded. Sorry assholes, you've proven you aren't trustworthy. Everything you do is suspect, every one of you is corrupt, and every minute you're walking around collecting money paid for by taxpayers you'll be subject to their oversight. There should, again, be absolutely no forgiveness for officers who fail to collect video footage. If it ain't there, that guy who stands up in court claiming you murdered him can get you convicted of murder. Record the video or go to jail forever. You wanted to be a petty dictator controlling and bossing around the public, now pay the piper.
So there you have it: a way for body cameras to improve the shameful condition of policing in Edmonton. It's bad enough that men have to shoot the freedom-hating cops that come to their door to keep the police state at bay, even worse if they get to record video footage that only comes out when they don't have their own sick secrets to hide.
Nenshi also threw his support behind the government's proposed hike of the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
He urged the government to be thoughtful in how it phases in the increases, because of the potential impact on small business.
However, Nenshi said the initiative could help reduce poverty and allow working people to have better lives.
It's still mind-boggling, incidentally, how the same far-left economic illiterates who insist that minimum wage doesn't hurt businesses are also so wary about raising the minimum wage too quickly and "shocking" businesses.
Either it hurts, or it doesn't. Unfortunately, these three don't have enough brain cells between them to wonder about that, and you won't get the CBC asking them such questions.
The godless socialists of the Alberta NDP encountered the first of many humiliating reveals right at the start of their term in office when one of their MLAs, Deborah Drever, turned out to have posed for an album cover in 2012 where she dressed like a slut and sits there while she gets gang raped. Drever has been a humiliating embarassment since the day she was spat out of her mother's womb, it turns out. She happily poses with marijuana t-shirts and people giving the Canadian flag the finger. Later it was also revealed that Drever had called Ric McIver a "gayboyz", which led to her expulsion from cabinet.
If you're wondering, by the way, how you missed out on this during the election, don't worry, you didn't. Exposing Drever is part of the project of a dedicated group of conservatives who have been performing the investigation into the NDP candidates that the media neglected to do (even as the polls hinted at an NDP majority government). Apparently voters in Calgary-Bow weren't particularly interested in their candidate either, not bothering to research her dubious (for the SJW-class) poses on album covers nor her horrible (for the sane people in the audience) political views.
Not only were the horrible NDP candidates like Drever, faggot Michael Connolly, and fascist-dictator loving Rod Loyola elected without the slightest amount of scrutiny by either the media nor the electorate, but what was revealed during the election didn't seem to matter one lick for the party's overall support. Is there a single person who didn't vote for Rachel Arab's NDP because they found out her candidates thought Hugo Chavez and his brutal dictatorship was a model worth emulating in Alberta?
In other words, that same sentiment would have put Wildrose in power in 2012. Call it a victim of bad timing, whatever you like, but don't you dare claim that it was because Albertans were "worried about extremists in the party". They weren't worried about extremists like Rod Loyola or David Eggen.
Therefore, they weren't worried about Allan Hunsperger.
If you claim that you did have a problem with Hunsperger in Wildrose, and you voted NDP in the last election, YOU ARE A LIAR. You're lying to me, you're lying to yourself, you're lying to Albertans. Just try to claim otherwise, you pathetic liar. If you shrug off Drever then you shrug off Hunsperger, and if you are upset that Drever got in then you implicitly agree that the majority didn't mind her and therefore Hunsperger either.
All in all, the 2015 Alberta election serves as a giant redemption of Allan Hunsperger. Danielle Smith owes him an apology, as does every left-wing media member who trumpeted up his story then tried claiming that they were helping Albertans identify an "extremist" who was too dangerous to keep out of government.
The entire present government is full of extremists. Nobody seemed to care, and those who happily voted for them should each personally apologize to Hunsperger.
Yet the practical effect of Clinton’s political victory, in a phrase of the time, was to “define deviancy down.” He had changed the boundaries of the ethically acceptable — in the character we expect from a president and in the behavior of powerful men toward young women in their employ. In the end, Clinton stood; standards fell.
But if Clinton succeeds, it would expand the boundaries of the permissible. It would again define deviancy down. Americans would have rewarded, or at least ignored, defiant secrecy and the destruction of documents. Future presidential candidates and campaign advisers would take note. Americans would have rewarded a skate along the ethical boundaries of money and influence. Future donors would see a green light, no matter what candidate Clinton says about campaign finance reform.
Defining deviancy down. That's the perfect description of the NDP caucus.
Miley Cyrus showed up with a mentally disturbed faggot at an event for...raising money to stop mentally disturbed faggots from dying from the consequences of their sick lifestyles.
Tyler Ford says he's not sure if he's a guy or not. For those who aren't interested in ripping off a piece of this werido's skin to get a DNA test done, I offer a handy metric to help this sad loser out.
Hey dude, were you born with a dick that you could have stuck in Miley Cyrus? If yes, you're a guy. If no, you're a girl.
“We want the First Nation, Metis and Inuit people of Alberta to know that we deeply regret the profound harm and damage that occurred to generations of children forced to attend residential schools.” said Notley.
FYI, every single word of this statement is a lie. Nobody "regrets" the residential schools, not really. Indians, remember, demanded they be kept open 50 years ago when the possibility of closing them arose. The reason? Because it's a lie when Rachel Arab says there was profound harm and damage done to generations of children. Other than a few isolated cases, there was no damage.
But Rachel Arab wasn't done being ludicrous on the subject of the Red Indian.
In a speech to the legislature, Notley also added her voice to those calling for a national inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women.
Look, we've covered this before, and I have more on this coming soon, but there is absolutely zero need of an inquiry, and the NDP are showing their ignorance by thinking there such a need exists.
We know why so many Indian women are victims of violence: they hang around high risk peoples. Short of making prostitution highly illegal and punishing the women who sign onto such a dangerous lifestyle, there's not much in practice that can keep Indian women from joining this notoriously dangerous profession. Then outside of turning tricks, the biggest danger to the health of Indian women is that their families and spouses tend to be the most violent and dangerous bunch of savages known to exist in this country: a Red Indian male.
Will Rachel Arab fight to ban marriages within Indian tribes to protect these women from the vicious violent men who do more to oppress and destroy them then the most lurid fantasy of "genocidal" residential schools? Will she require Indians remain on the reserve (ie. enforce the treaty) to minimize the risks that occur when they live in inner white cities? No, of course she won't. In other words, she's too politically correct to take any actual action to protect these people. Instead she's just got some cheap political points.
She doesn't know the problem, she doesn't know the solution. The only productive thing Rachel Arab can do on this file is shut her mouth.
Phair, who served on Edmonton city council from 1992 to 2007, said he only learned his name was on the list when someone from the board called him on Friday.
"I had no idea that my name was even being considered," he said. "I was both speechless and surprised … and certainly quite honoured. I do feel there are a lot of other people and group who are a whole lot more deserving than I am."
Within every social circle I think, this dilemma is a striking one. The problem is that you have a lot of friends and people you chat with regularly or semi-regularly, and it's a perplexing matter to figure out the complex system of when you may or may not chat with people.
For example, take Claire†. Claire is separated, has kids and an ex, and a job. She has to get up around 6am to get the kids ready for school, then she works from 8am-5pm and then the kids are in bed by 8pm and she's in bed by usually 9:30-10:30pm. When, you might be interested to know, is it a good time to text Claire? Well, she's pretty chatty from the time she gets up until around 7, then you won't hear back from her until at least 9am when she gets a break at work.‡ Don't bother texting her after 10pm though, she's not going to reply for close to ten hours. Claire's at least calm about it though. If you think about a funny YouTube video to send her at 11:30pm, she'll "lol" in the morning without ripping your head off. Laurie isn't quite so easy to work with.
In Laurie's defense, Laurie works weird hours, and 7 days a week. Thursday through Sunday she works from noon until 10pm, and then Monday through Wednesday she works from 9am until 9pm. She really really really needs a lot of sleep, and so if you ever screw up and text her between the hours of 11pm and 11am during on Thursday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday you will hear about it in a very long pissy reply that I'm sure she has on macros. Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday of course, you can text a little earlier but frankly I get so gunshy I don't risk it.
† As you might surmise, all names have been changed. Or, that is to say, some names have been changed and some have been swapped and others left totally the same but the end result is that the specific calling restrictions to which I reside are properly documented ‡ "Wait", I hear you ask, "can't you just text her at anytime and she gets back to you when she can?" Yes, you'd think so, but we'll get to that, so file it in the back of the brain for now.
Jessica used to be cool about texting times, but now she's got a new job as a waitress so she absolutely doesn't want any texts before around 11am because she has to work late. Angela needs a lot of sleep so even though her work hours are fairly standard, anytime after about 8:30 is totally verboten. Rita is on call, and whenever she's at work she ignores all texts and then continues to ignore them when she's home, so some mornings you'll say hello and a couple hours later she'll reply but then other times if you text hello she never replies, and three days later still won't reply: but if she's off that day she'll reply to that hello. If you want to text Jamie you'd better not do it while she's napping in between split shifts, on the days that she has split shifts that is. And those are the schedules I'm familiar with: a quick search of my phone finds that Adrienne, Dawn, Lucy, Sarah, Stacey, and Wendy have all at one point used the phrase "don't text" at specific times of the day and I think once upon a time I might have known why.
Are you completely confused yet? Good because I hate being confused alone. This is a complete hodge-podgey mess, and I'm pretty sure that anybody with a decent number of female acquaintances is forced to live under a similar regime as I do. And yes, you'll notice that all of the above listed individuals are girls, and no that isn't just a really weird coincidence. I think it's related to the difference between men and women when it comes to texting.
Men get it. Women don't.
Okay I admit that's a pretty handy phrase to keep around for a lot of purposes. In general, women use communication more than men, and men understand what the hell we invented it for in the first place. (Possibly related: men are always inventing them). In the case of texting, the beauty about the service is that (as those of you who read the ‡ note above are already aware) you can send somebody a message and they can read it or indeed respond to it any time in the future they find it convenient. That's the point of text: I'm taking a few seconds to say something to you, then when you have a few seconds you can say it back to me.
Women tend not to get that, and as the accompanying graph shows they hilariously are hypocritical when applying this logic to themselves. But the problem is twofold: for one, you saw that the above rules fall into two general categories: 1. Times when she's busy and she doesn't want me to text because otherwise she's got a message that she can't get back to right away despite this being the exact reason for texting 2. Times when she's asleep and doesn't want me to text because it would cause her phone to make a noise which may/will wake her up and ruin her night.
The solution to (1), of course, is going to be quite complicated mostly because this isn't a problem to begin with. It's a feature, not a bug, so I'm unclear why women can't get that (excepting the obvious, of course, that they're all crazy).
The solution to (2) is meanwhile rather simple and all but the most crazy of women§ can solve this problem with little effort whatsoever. It's really an unbelievable solution to the problem of your phone making noise that may wake you up in the middle of the night: make it so it doesn't make noise! Seriously, how hard was this to come up with? There are even multiple options. You can turn the damned thing right off. No, seriously, it lets you do that. If that's too much insanity for you then you can enable Airplane Mode which keeps it from receiving calls and texts and data but can still be used as an alarm clock. This is my preferred method. Finally, there's the option to turn sound off entirely. Put the phone on mute and it will collect text messages and emails and Facebook notifications and won't bother you at all. It's so simple that I'm almost (but not really) shocked women haven't come up with it.
§ And oh Lord, there are exceptions, let me tell you.
No, stop. Why are we even still talking about this? I've just told you the answer: turn the noisy thing off. Hell, it's not just a solution that works at night: Martok doesn't turn the volume on his cellphone on ever. Whenever you want to call him you either dial his landline or hope that he's looking at the screen at the exact moment you dial. (In practice, that last method is surprisingly effective). If he's not looking at his phone, you won't reach him with a call but he can always phone you back. Or you can just text him and wait for the reply like a sane human being.
I've actually been doing the same quite often, leaving my phone on silent more than it's on non-silent. There's never really that urgent a need to get a hold of me right now. Maybe it's growing up in the age before cellphones that gives me this sensible bit of perspective: it used to be when I went to the store or spent a week in Vancouver there really was no way to get a hold of me, and somehow life goes on. Anybody who's upset that I am sending a text message about what I'm watching on YouTube when she wants to be sleeping and only interrupted by "important" messages is vastly overestimating their importance.
In the § note above I mentioned specific exceptions to the "can't object to turning the ringer off" rule, and every one of them I can think of is guilty of overestimating their importance by at least an order of magnitude or seven. These typically are some of the most dangerous women out there: mothers.
I've worked in offices with mothers who believe that their phones must be on full volume with their horrible Taylor Swift ringtones blaring in the belief that in the event of an emergency they must be reachable within microseconds. They of course leave their phone behind when away from their desk, causing everybody else to hear a text that's probably just Cindy sending a photo of the Vietnamese sub she just ate. These helicopter-parenting nutters are convinced that bad things that only they can solve are orbiting their children at all times. Even when their children live with them they claim to need to have their cellphone ringers on all night long -- and therefore, remember, precluding me from texting them -- for "emergencies".
So please, please, if you know of somebody who insists on leaving her cellphone on all night long at full volume, and therefore puts silly restrictions on your life and how you send them messages that were designed to be replied to at her convenience please tell her to smarten up and send her this post.
You never know, you might be teaching my Nancy and Claire and Rita a lesson. God knows I'm having no luck.
Memo to the nutso feminazis who want to put a woman -- some woman! -- on the $10 bill. Even the New York Times isn't behind you on this. (though their rationale, kicking off Andrew Bloody Jackson, is equally flawed)
Which woman will they put on? Probably a stupid one. The only thing dumber? They're putting a chick on the $10 note.
You know, the kind that if you tried giving a woman instead of a $100 or a $50, she'd gouge you in the balls with her heel.
"When asked, 'What is the tax rate exactly?', he did not know and stated it was three points lower than it actually is," Harper said in a raucous question period that featured repeated pointed jabs at Mulcair, the current darling of public opinion polls.
"That is typical of the NDP. It does not know what the taxes are; it just knows everybody's taxes have to be higher."
The godless socialists with the Alberta NDP are still talking about their retarded plans to cripple the oil industry by again demanding "our fair share" of the tarsands production. (Hint to Albertans: when you elect a government that includes cowardly retard Marie Renaud, don't be surprised when they do retarded things. Retards like her will ruin this province and it's all your fault).
Anyways, you may recall back when Ed Stelmach decided to adjust the royalty rates midstream: investment plummeted, the Alberta government was looking at projected incomes far below what they were going to be pre-adjustment, and then abandoned the plan in time for the majority of the oil investment to rebound.
Okay, that's if you're, say, a regular reader of this blog, or the news, or any way informed about what happened in 2008. Here's the left-wing narrative about what happened, are you ready?
Anyways, you may recall back when Ed Stelmach decided to adjust the royalty rates midstream: the greedy oil companies instantly began to complain that their profits were more important than the Albertan people, they started depriving the PC Party of corporate donations, Stelmach faced a caucus revolt, this great plan was abandoned, and then the 2008 financial crisis hit and that's responsible for every single lost investment dollar in the oilpatch.
Since goofballs like David Climenhaga are pushing that second narrative, and the retarded NDP voters either are too young or too stupid to realize it's a lie, the NDP are going to try again.
Fortunately the NDP are also planning a huge multi-billion dollar subsidy to some other oilsands developers in the form of their ridiculous government-funded refinery. Hopefully it will all come out in the wash, and that the industry will be hurt by royalty changes about the same as its helped by the billions in subsidies the NDP are providing.
Meanwhile, what do we do with all this product? Send it to BC on trains, apparently, since now the NDP have hired anti-pipeline activist Graham Mitchell who was involved with LeadNow, most recently taking action against Tim Hortons for daring to put Enbridge ads on TimsTV.
Between hating on pipelines, hating on oil development, hating on workers making good money performing that oil development, and loving spending government money on winners and losers in the industry, the darkest days for Albertan oil look to take place over the next five years.
KINGSTON, Ont. -- A proposed 150-turbine wind energy project in eastern Ontario is being called a threat to one of Canada's unique astronomical features.
Opened in the summer of 2013, the North Frontenac Dark Sky Preserve was 10 years in the making and holds hope of being a major tourism attraction for the area.
In a letter e-mailed to Ontario Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli and others, resident Chris Albinson wrote that asset could be under threat if the new wind turbines are built.
"Seventy-five wind turbines with associated light pollution would destroy the (economic development) objective and the tax base of the township," Albinson wrote. "This a classic case of one arm of the government undermining the efforts of another arm of the government."
This is incredibly awesome. The Callwood and hippie cases at least had the sense of time passing between Revolution B rejecting Revolution A as evil. Hell, even the Vagina Monologues have been going on for two decades, a time in which the fags and trannies went completely off the deep end.
But dark sky preserves are all from our era! In fact, most were setup during President Monkey's reign in office. The Jasper Dark Sky Preserve was founded in February 2011, and already now they're being swept aside for the Suzuki puppets and their "green energy" nonsense? That's absolutely hilarious. Dark Sky is supposed to show us how we preserve our environment by letting people see the night sky free of light pollution (SPOILER alert: its impressive for the first 15 minutes or so, then you feel like checking the hockey scores).
Unfortunately, the green weenies are also convinced that solar and wind power are going to save the earth, so when two of their sacred cows bump up against each other they discover that their love of dark sky preserves overrules their love of "clean" energy sources. And don't forget to throw in some anti-Americanism for fun and profit!
NextEra Energy Canada, a subsidiary of Florida-based NextEra Energy, is proposing to build about 150 turbines, about a third to be constructed in North Frontenac.
A company spokesperson told council the project would provide $146,000 in municipal property tax revenue, upgrades to infrastructure and funding for recreation and community projects, along with between six and 10 full-time jobs.
In his letter, Albinson called for the Ontario government to reject the NextEra project. He questioned why a U.S. company was being allowed to possibly build a wind energy project in the area.
"Using Ontario taxpayer funds to subsidize a U.S. company that destroys an Ontario nature preserve seems grossly irresponsible, fiscally and environmentally," he wrote
Because when you're weighing the great social-justice-warrior nonsense of our era, don't forget to blame a big US corporation, being all corporationy. How dare an American firm invest in the project that supposedly will make all of Ontario better, supplying life-giving electricity while merely impacting a section of a dark sky preserve.
The overnight story of an Edmonton Police Services officer shot and killed while executing a search warrant has gotten a lot of people talking. The fact that the infamous "freemen on the land" group is involved has gotten a lot of people's attention.
However, there's a far more sinister group that has a direct connection with the events of Monday night: the Greater Manchester Police (GMP)
Codie said: "I asked the teacher could I change groups because I didn't understand them and she said I was being racist and started shouting at me."
A complaint was made and she was taken to a police station.
Her mother said her Codie's jewellery and shoelaces were removed, her fingerprints and DNA samples were taken and she was put in a cell.
The school said it wanted to ensure it had a caring and tolerant attitude to pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and it did not stand for racism in any form.
Greater Manchester Police said it took hate crime reports very seriously and its treatment of the teenager was in line with normal procedure.
As Steyn writes it's ridiculous to believe that this should be "normal procedure".
What's "normal procedure" for Edmonton Police in dealing with this situation? How does it compare with the GMP normal procedures? Sadly, one person who could properly answer that is Daniel Woodall, the Edmonton officer shot and killed.
Edmonton Police Chief Rod Knecht held a news conference at midnight to confirm the death of Const. Daniel Woodall, a 35-year-old, eight-year veteran of the force who was recruited from Great Britain and used to serve with the Greater Manchester Police.
A 38-year-old officer, Sgt. Jason Harley, was shot in the lower back but was protected by his bullet-proof vest. Early Tuesday, Edmonton police said he had been released from hospital.
Woodall worked for the hate crimes unit.
Everybody pick up on that important bit of information? Woodall who was recruited from Great Britain and used to serve with the Greater Manchester Police also worked for the hate crimes unit. In other words, the ridiculous anti-liberty pathology that has infected police across Great Britain is the environment that Woodall festered in, before he was specifically recruited to bring it "across the pond" to Edmonton 2.0.
The GMP has been busy making sure the "hate crimes" unit always has something to do. In April 2013 they announced that, despite having no legal authority to do so, GMP's hate crime division would begin tracking hate crimes against goth and emo kids. Naturally the article picks a couple instances of a physical assault to goad the public into accepting this, hoping you'll ignore stories like Codie Stott. Stott, by the way, was arrested while Daniel Woodall was with the GMP, though it doesn't seem like the two crossed paths: Woodall was based in Wythenshawe station, Stott was treated like a criminal for an "offensive" remark in Swinton. A cursory check for the activities of Wythenshawe Race and Hate Crimes Unit didn't turn up any specific cases, though it's hardly conclusive. Not all Manchester Police abuses are going to reference a specific station. For example, the 2003 incident where GMP logged a "hate crimes" investigation when Christian Voice wrote in to complain about Manchester Police marching in the local Faggot Walk. Come to think of it, wasn't it about seven years ago that Edmonton Police Service (EPS) started walking in the #yegpooftermarch? Is this another of the despicable police practices imported from Greater Manchester?
Predictably, the Edmonton media and the public in general aren't in the mood to ask any such questions.
It's not just cowardly Stacey Brotzel who's quick to assign "Edmonton's finest" to a guy who transferred from a jurisdiction more interested in criminalizing dissent against the state's agenda than stopping real crimes, who worked for a division of EPS more interested in charging a guy who put up signs critical of the sodomite agenda than, say, catching corrupt members of their own force. The EPS method of attacking their opponents and refusing to take responsibility for their actions has largely paid off: can you imagine Edmonton's media daring to take this photo ever again? Instead, very little critical reporting goes into Edmonton Police practices unless they specifically involve the media, then they're all over it. In fact, look what Simons has to say about EPS only two short weeks ago:
We only need to go to Baltimore, to Ferguson, to Cleveland, to see what happens when the social contract corrodes, when people start to lose confidence in their police.
.Now look at what Simons has to say about Edmonton Police today...
The hate crimes unit does such important work. I'm sure many communities who were helped by Daniel Woodall & his team also grieving today.
So what changed? What changed is that the left-wing media is actively interested in "hate speech" being criminalized, as they always aim to be the be-all and end-all of information flow in society. They can't do that if people who speak out against their lies are allowed a voice, so they are quick to leap to the defense of those like Daniel Woodall and Jason Harley, despite any evidence to support these man executing a warrant.
The warrant, we're told by the same EPS that even their media defenders usually point out aren't very forthcoming in the details, was for criminal harassment. Why, you ask, was the "hate crimes" unit involved? What was Norman Raddatz's "hate crime"? The only legal document that has yet been posted is a Edmonton bylaw citation under the "Nuisance on Land", a rather ridiculous bylaw provision that is basically a way for neighbours to rat on each other and use the power of the law to solve sad little annoying conflicts between them.
Despite the 90 per cent compliance rate, those who don't co-operate create up to 3,000 files a year. But thanks to a new approach over the past few years, the numbers remain manageable in a growing city.
"These problems are not necessarily what they look like on the surface. We're dealing with people who might have mental illness, we're dealing with people who are hoarders or they're seniors or there's a whole litany of things," said Courtoreille, adding more focus is now put on dealing with underlying issues of a bylaw infraction rather than the symptoms that incite complaints.
Looks to be doing a bang up job, doesn't it? Is this really a valid municipal government function? (Answer: nope)
From what can be determined, the timeline works something like this: February, 2014: Raddatz "bullied" somebody. Edmonton pigs opened a "hate crime" file on him mid-October, 2014: Royal Bank of Canada foreclosed on Raddatz's bungalow and sued him October 27, 2014: Ryan Colton filed a complaint against Raddatz for a messy yard February 23, 2015: Raddatz misses his court appearance, a judge signs off on an arrest warrant October 2014 - June 2015: Raddatz "harasses" somebody, probably one of the neighbours who complained about him June 2015: Raddatz's company North Summit Mechanical was deregistered due to a filing discrpeancy June 8 2015: Edmonton Police try to talk with Raddatz but he won't let them in. They request a "Feeney" warrant and try to force their way into his home. A firefight ensues, Woodall killed and Harley was injured June 9 2015, morning: Edmonton Police claim they were executing a warrant for criminal harassment related to his "hate crime". They say Norman Raddatz found dead in the basement. June 9 2015, afternoon: The Edmonton Journal reports that Raddatz showed no criminal record, contradicting an earlier statement by Edmonton Police Chief Chief Rod Knecht that Raddatz "did not have a significant criminal record".
Police acting more like thought police than regular police, and city officials harassing homeowners. That's Woodall's modern-day Britain to a tee. The open questions remain: what was Raddatz's "hate crime"? Was this what drove officers to his door? And finally, will EPS learn from this experience and shut down the "hate crimes" unit?
Already one man has tried to defend himself from state aggression -- possibly due to government cracking down on his free speech -- and one of the more thuggish state enforcers has paid the price. Will another have to pay the price next time? Or will Edmonton Police stop their ridiculous policy of sending officers to talk to "bullies" who were mean to somebody? Much like GMP with their "emo kids" policy, Edmonton's "hate crimes" unit is proving Parkinson's Law day in, day out: they always expand their caseload, and it seems Raddatz was merely the latest target in their ever-expanding quest to change your opinions to match the SJW-class.
We don't know if Raddatz is a hero or a victim (or, more likely, some of Column A and some of Column B), but based on what EPS has released to date and based on what disgusting GMP actions Woodall imported into the 100% corrupt Edmonton Police Service, odds are when it comes time to build a statue to the hero who lost his life it won't be the EPS "hate crimes" investigator who was a victim of his own ill-advised policies.
In fact, you won't see a single WARNING: Global News has chosen to include a photo further down in the article. It may be offensive to some readers when the post-faggot parade coverage takes place.
The parade, by the way, is polluting Whyte Avenue this year, which is a shame since the #yegsodomitehike had for the longest time been downtown, leaving a glorious afternoon where Whyte Avenue was completely fudge packer free. That won't be possible this year, sadly, though you should be able to enjoy your day downtown without having any homely sapphists getting in your face. At least until the festivities wind down and all those cocksuckers cross the faggy High Level Bridge on their way to Buddy's Bathhouse. As a result, they polluted the city crosswalks by painting their disgusting epicene flag on the roadside.
This year is going to be even worse, with sperm bumping MLAs courtesy of Alberta's ridiculously ill-advised Orange Wave, and Faggot-Familiar Alliances recently being implemented in your children's schools against your wishes. They'll be riding high, and while I certainly applaud anybody who shows up with a baseball bat and gives them a lesson in anal pain unrelated to their flamer lifestyle, it's far far better to just stay away.
There will be a day to defeat the poofters. We will do it, we will do it swiftly and with as much violence as we deem necessary, and when we are done the pillow biters will be yesterday's news in this beautiful province and cowardly pederasts like Kris Wells will be either run out of the province or buried six feet under it.
As the rally was starting, a curious thing happened: the media kept tweeting how media outnumber the ralliers. That literally never happens. Here's an Edmonton SUN article that shows a rally consisting of exactly eight people (Les Hagan, far-left fascist from Action on Smoking and Health, sits in the middle and doesn't count). Notice that nowhere does the article give you any idea that this rally is a couple activists paid for by their unions. Yet that rally literally gave way to Minister Chubby's anti-menthol announcement the very next day.
I wasn't entirely surprised that the rally wasn't a huge turnout-event. There were 27 Facebook confirmations, apparently, and somewhere between 30-50 people showed up. Yes, even when numbers are this small, politics plays a role in the crowd estimation process. Regardless, the turnout was fairly decent by protest standards, though the media had and will do their best to downplay it.
The problem is, and he's is particularly bad for this in general, but the problem is that Ezra Levant violated the Five Commandments of Conservative Rallies. I understand a lot of readers may be hearing this concept for the first time, so allow me to summarize.
Commandment The First: Conservatives Shall Not Rally Not showing up to riot is a failed conservative policy says Catherine McMillan, and she's absolutely right. Conservatives tend not to show up to protests to nearly the degree that leftists do. Mostly this is because we aren't a brainless and easily-swayed mob, marching out like Zombies to chant "Rachel" or "No Blood for Oil" or any of the other goofball slogans that the left cling to. In fact, one of the hallmarks about a bunch of right-wingers getting together for a rally or march or any event is how poorly any attempt to drum up a chant or a specific slogan to say. The problem is that most of the right are very critical and independent thinkers, not just interested in picking up a union-written pre-manufactured sign and yelling slogans of alternating hate and hope in a display of groupthink that would make George Orwell turn beet red if he witnessed. As a result whenever you see right-wingers rallying, mentally multiply the crowd by a factor of 500 to figure out how many left-wingers would be out at were it one of their rallies. Ezra therefore erred in having the rally in the first place: it would always look mediocre compared to a rally held by leftists, especially since he wasn't paying any of them to show up like the unions do.
Commandment The Second: Conservative Rallies Shall Be On Weekends
Ezra's second mistake was having the rally on a Friday afternoon. Another problem with conservatives rallying is that the target audience are all industrious and hardworking people who work full-time (and often beyond) at real life jobs in the real life private sector. Unlike the lazy unproductive losers who inhabit public sector unionized jobs (and even private sector unionized jobs), they can't just tell work that they'll be taking the rest of the day off to go protest a coffee company's policy of advertising on their in-house TV network. I'm not meaning to minimize #BoycottTims in any fashion here, but in all honesty there's no way that almost any political cause is as important as staying at work and getting paid money and not fired. Again, lazy public sector unionists can just leave at any time to go rally: they put it in their contracts for Christ's sake. This is because leftists aren't actually worth having at work, they can disappear for hours and life goes on. Conservatives have real jobs that they have to remain at during working hours or all hell breaks lose. The sheer uselessness of liberals ensures that a weekday rally will always favour them. Rallies that involve conservatives need to take place over the weekend. Commandment The Third: Thou Shalt Provide Suitable Notification
Early on Friday afternoon, one of my coworkers came to my desk in a huff, in desperate need of somebody to join him for golf tomorrow. I was about the eighth person he'd asked, and after me was the ninth and tenth who all said no. The reason? We all had other shit on the go. You can't just recruit us on Friday afternoon to play golf Saturday morning, especially not on the morning after a Stanley Cup Final game is being played! Likewise, Ezra planned this event on Thursday evening and held it at noon on Friday. Conservatives tend to be pretty active folks even on our days off, and even for leisure. We have golf tournaments, camping passes, lake trips, quad trips, 4-H events, all sorts of kids events and family commitments. Unlike liberals, who I think lay about playing PS4 and waiting for a rally where they can smash stuff (more on that in a minute), Conservatives can't just leap into the Prius and drive down to protest the latest outrage en masse, even if (as per the First Commandment) they actually were interested in doing so.
Commandment The Fourth: Remember the Television Cameras, and Keep it Interesting
Partly because of the First Commandment, a conservative rally ends up being really really boring television. It's a bunch of well behaved people standing in a group, maybe some signs, some speeches they will applaud during and after, and then they will neatly file off leaving no trace of their presence. As the Tea Party showed in the US, conservatives don't even leave litter behind after a rally. This means that the visiting media don't have angry chants to film, they don't have violent conflicts with police to put themselves dramatically between, and they don't have the photos of burning bank tellers. Basically there's nothing there to generate a lot of column-inches, unless you can find a way to make the event more visually interesting. Typically you need counter-leftist protesters, but in this case that won't be possible since the protesters don't actually drink at the coffee shop they'd placed the demands on. Commandment The Fifth: Honour Thy Church
Finally, the best way to get a right-wing protest to take place is to involve the real (ie. not mainstream) churches right from the get-go. This probably wouldn't happen in an oilsands-defending protest like this one, but it certainly helped when one of the largest rallies in Canadian history took place on Parliament Hill in May. (Of course, the media made it about two naked women instead. At least it met the Fourth Commandment. Otherwise CTV would have followed CBC and Global's lead and not published the story about the rally at all. You get the feeling that had 2500 people showed up at Ezra's Calgary event the CBC would figure out a way to bury the story behind a Nenshi cat retweet or something.)
I think these five commandments can be summed up in a single phrase: "Don't. Just don't." Because the turnout/aggravation ratio for conservative events is so much lower than it is for liberal events, and because the nature of the rally makes it easier for the media to ignore (if you're lucky) or ridicule (if you're not), you're generally better off not having the rally at all. Conservative activism in Canada works best in the "Quiet Revolution" sense. It's how the CWB and C-68 were killed in the past half-decade. It led to the birth of the Reform Party, was encapsulated in Ralph Klein's "Martha and Henry from Rimbey" gag, and helped eliminate the federal deficit. It has been the avenue for successful cultural and political change from the right for decades, and it's the best avenue to put pressure on Tim Horton's to change their affiliation with the Tides Foundation and Margaret Atwood.
Trying it leftist style, with an angry mob at Tim's, just won't work. As Kate said, conservatives don't show up to riot, and it's failed us in the past over and over. Better to accept that and work around it then try to fight a leftist bonfire with a conservative BIC lighter.
I made a joke that I could show stock footage of a river and then find that after viewing it 27% of the viewers supported the Liberal Party. Just in case the link rots away, a recent EKOS poll puts the Liberals at...27% In other words, the ad didn't change anybody's mind, and I could talk about how the Conservative/Liberal/NDP breakdown in the viewership was 30/27/29 but as a political ad it was garbage: it didn't change any minds.
Anyways, that was the joke. But I got to thinking...would it work?
If you got three rooms with 1000 people each, polled them about which political party they would vote for (if any), and then played the same stock footage followed only by an ad for one of the three political parties (a different party logo for each room), would it change their minds?
The conventional wisdom should be "no", and you're probably right. In an ideal world, it would be no. This lazy video didn't tell me about Party X's campaign, nor did it say what Party Y or Z would do or why I should approve of any of them.
And yet, somehow, deep in my being I have this sinking suspicion that it would make a difference. I think that afterwards you would see that some, maybe not a lot, but some of these 1000 people would change their vote to support the party whose logo was on the ad. Even more insane, I'm going to guess that each party would find different numbers of people changing allegiance based on this "ad".
I'll go on a limb here and say that the further left the party, the more this nonsensical ad will change their vote.
Many Albertans are rightfully upset today that the Tim Horton's coffee chain has backedoutofan advertising agreement withEnbridge, following a coordinated effort by Margaret Atwood and Judy Rebick (last seen galavanting with Avaaz.org).
The Enbridge ads would be the "E = awestruck" and "E = making memories" ads available on YouTube.
In response, several Albertans including yours truly and Members of Parliament started announcing we would #BoycottTims over their capitulation to Starbucks-drinking progressives like Atwood. Many noted that Tim Horton's is already not the first choice of the fair-trade-non-corporate-latte-sipping crowd.
WhatcanIdo?
It's simple: show Tim Horton's that their decision to remove inoffensive advertisements just because it offends social justice warriors is hurting them in their pocket.
Tomorrowmorning, postaphotoofyourcoffeereceiptorcoffeecupfromaTimHorton'scompetitor, and be sureto tag it with #BoycottTims. Put it on your Twitter feed and include @timhortons and the hashtag. PostthepictureonTimHorton'sFacebookpage. Instagramit. Showthemthecoffeeyoudidn'tbuyatTimHorton's.
There's an open debate on Twitter right now whether or not Tim's business comes from oilfield workers versus social justice warriors. Let Atwood post a picture of her attractive face drinking a Tim's coffee. Unless Albertans rally together and show that we don't appreciate implicitly slandering an industry that eventheNDPagreeemploys tens of thousands and enriches the lives of millions more, the next time the Atwood crowd decide to silence us the recipient will back down even faster than Tim's did. And it's not like Tim Horton's has a business model that would work well if the oilsands get shut down, fuel gets more expensive, and Canada's economy declines.
† For those unfamiliar, progressives dislike for the Progressive Conservatives seemed to amplify the more and more 'progressive' and less and less conservative it became ‡ The North West Upgrader is, as it's name suggests, technically an upgrader and not a refinery. If you're involved in the industry you understand and are intimately aware of the numerous differences between a refinery and an upgrader, however from a public policy standpoint the two are essentially identical and may be tossed around interchangeably in this post.
The whining progressives got their wish, however. The PC government was kicked out of office, far left activist Rachel Arab is now premier, and she's going strong on her agenda to extract a "fair share" from royalties, end the Alberta Petrostate, and...build oil refineries with taxpayer dollars. Hell, even the CBC is against it!
Since refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast are already working with spare capacity, why would anyone commit to building a new plant? The refinery game isn't easy. Plants are expensive to build, tough to operate and prone to cost overruns.
"Unless you see some sort of policy that's coming from the government that's saying, 'We'll jump on board and we'll help you get this value-added sector of the provincial economy started,' I can't see a stand-alone commercial development happening," says Dinara Millington, vice-president of research at the Canadian Energy Research Institute.
Alberta may contain vast oil reserves, but as a hub for converting that crude into gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel, it's hamstrung by geography.
An ideal location for a refinery would include access to tidewater, so the end product could be easily shipped to where it's needed; existing infrastructure; and proximity to big markets to limit transportation costs.
Compared to the Gulf Coast's refinery row, landlocked Alberta comes up short.
We all know that progressives tend to tell lies and half truths even when talking to each other, but even by the hypocritical and nonsensical standards of the Alberta NDP this is pretty rich.
Now the NDP did run on a "refine more of our oil here" platform, but it was either skimmed over or missed by the same voters who skimmed over or missed the implications of everything else in the NDP platform. This will be a straight up oil producer subsidy. It may even achieve its goal of "creating more jobs here" (though I have a weird feeling these will be legislatively mandated union jobs) but with unemployment fairly low it doesn't seem a high priority.
Remember that we're already well compensating the people who mine the bitumen out of the ground, in fact that's the entire crux of the Norwailing argument: we're foolishly letting the workers in Fort Mac obtain this oil wealth that we could be skimming away to give to lazy social workers in Edmonton. Giving the oil wealth to people actually working is a sound policy, and while a subsidized refinery isn't the best idea I suppose it's better than increasing the taxes and royalties and dedicating that money to lazy public sector workers like teachers and nurses.
Don't get me wrong, a taxpayer-funded refinery was a bad idea when Stelmach signed onto it (Ted Morton, God bless his soul, fought in cabinet against the idea and was resoundingly voted down) and it's an even worse idea with Rachel Arab signing onto it. However...
However...the money that Rachel Arab's government would spend on building this refinery would be money she couldn't use to bribe lazy public sector workers like her husband. These refineries would also lower the earning potential of the oilsands as a whole§ and cost corporate profits and therefore further reduce the amount of money going into general revenue. Besides the opportunity to teach the Dippers both in government and their insane supporters a valuable lesson (if you increase the tax rate and make businesses uncompetitive, your bottom line loses out), it again deprives the treasury of money, forcing Rachel Arab and her government to start breaking their unrealistic campaign promises even faster than they otherwise would have. It's a little bit of short term pain for some seriously long-term gain.
§ This is a subtle argument, but an important one. Currently bitumen is extracted and is sold to market with some amount of upgrading (between 0% and 100%). The money earned by the oilsands is therefore the value of the sold product minus the extraction and upgrading costs to get it to that point (E1 = V1 - X - U1). Under Rachel Arab's refinery scheme, additional upgrading is performed before sale, and the profit is now the difference between the new sold product minus the extraction and upgrading costs to get it to the original state minus the cost to bring it up to the new Notley-approved state (E2 = V2 - X - U1 - U2). If E2 - E1 < V2 - V1 + U1 then the oilsands earnings are reduced. The fact that the market isn't already investing is a pretty clear indicator that this inequality isn't met, therefore the oil production as a whole is losing money.
It's a small consolation, knowing that the Alberta NDP have painted themselves into a corner that they won't be able to get out of. They can build the refinery and offend all of their anti-pipeline and anti-oilsands supporters (it's worth noting, of course, that refined oil still needs to ship out of the province), or they can not build the refinery and offend the supporters who voted for the NDP on their union jobs and "let's develop our resources at home" crowd. If they don't build the refinery, then any royalty revenue they snatch from oil producers will be a direct siphoning off, killing even more investment and reducing revenue further, and then also not living up to their campaign promises (not just the refinery, but of working with the industry).
No matter which way Rachel Arab swings this it will be bad for Albertans. The good news is it will be even worse for her party.
On Tuesday the dreaded "TRC" report came out telling us which new spending on the Red Indian was going to be required.
I'm going through the list myself with a few things to note, that post will be up in a day or two. For now, watch as Ezra covers some of the nuttier bits.
Health Minister Sarah Hoffman made the announcement Sunday after Premier Rachel Notley hinted at a complete ban on flavoured tobacco earlier in the week.
The government claims the move is an effort to protect young people from starting smoking and help prevent cancer.
First off, didn't we just have an election campaign last month? Did you remember hearing anything about a ban on menthol cigarettes? If this was such a critical issue that the NDP will enact this ban before even their much-ballyhooed minimum wage hike, why didn't we hear anything about this during the campaign? Is this part of a big government nanny state secret agenda that the NDP have been working on? (Answer: yes).
So what else has the NDP been planning to do for months that they lied and deceived Albertans about during the election? What else is on the NDP secret agenda?
Secondly, and this is a minor point but worth considering, look at this retarded statement by chubby retard Hoffman:
Hoffman said an underground market isn’t something she’s particularly concerned about. “I personally think Albertans in general follow the law and if something is illegal for purchase I think that they will probably respect that,” she explained.
Apropos of nothing, 8.4% of Albertans smoke marijuana which is illegal. In other words, according to this fat slob Hoffman, the same Albertans who flaunt marijuana laws are going to be totally subservient to her new menthol ban.
Finally, does this sound familiar to you? Does it seem like you've heard this before? Well, you have, but not in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. No, you've seen the Sarah Hoffman The Unhealthy Health Minister before, at least you had if you'd seen Yes, Prime Minister. The episode "The Smokescreen" covers smoking bans and higher cigarette taxes, and covers a lot of the ground that Sue Hoffman isn't smart enough or energetic enough to look into. For one, smokers save the British NHS a shitload of money by dying before the really expensive healthcare treatments come into play. This probably won't be good news to any smokers trying to plead their case, but it at least does so, convincingly. In other words, all the liberals trying to use financing the public healthcare system as their justification is out of luck. (Of course, as I'd noted, if there's a problem with publicly funded healthcare and the costs of funding people's lifestyle choices, the solution is to get rid of the publicly funded healthcare). Anyways, the episode ends with pro-smoking advocate Leslie Potts, who coughs so much he can't even thank the Prime Minister for the plum cabinet role, as the Minister of Health. While he's the nicotine-addict and Hoffman is more like the pork-belly-addict, the parallels are pretty similar.
Okay, it's not a perfect metaphor, but that's okay, I have one better. As so often happens, it's South Park. You may recall I've done a few South Park sidebars when their episode touches on a current political issue. But this is even bigger. They made an entire episode entirely about Sarah Hoffman.
Don't believe me? I actually put together a video related to the South Park episode below. If you don't mind the sound being half a tick off for the entire episode you can watch the actual episode online here.
In the seventh season episode "Butt Out", anti-smoking crusaders are so lame and square that they actually encourage more youth smoking than they prevent, and so the town of South Park calls on anti-smoking activist Rob Reiner to come to town and eliminate smoking.
The gag is, just like Sarah Hoffman, Rob Reiner is a fatso who has no problem scarfing down a plate of cheeseburgers and becoming the size of a small planetoid. Yet when it comes to smoking, there's no restrictions on the liberties of others that's too small in order to serve the cause. At several times in the South Park episode it's shown that smoking, whether or not it's bad for you, is something that adults do that make them happy. Rob Reiner and Sarah Hoffman absolutely hate that somebody is enjoying themselves in pursuit of this vice, which at the end of the episode Stan calls Reiner out on. Even when "children" are supposedly saved -- bans on smoking in bars in the South Park episode, bans on underage teens buying cigarettes in modern rights-restricted Alberta -- the moral crusader continues on, banning things because somewhere somehow a citizen is enjoying themselves with it.
And so it is in Rachel Notley's NDP government: the fat healthcare minister is really worried about your vice but the sycophants who love this disgusting party assure us she'll get around to restricting the sort of stuff she loves sucking in her mouth any (day/week/election cycle) now.
The government of course shouldn't be getting involved in either issue, and there's no argument in favour of the methol ban that makes any rational sense whatsoever. Again, kids are smoking marijuana which is far less legal today than Hoffman will make menthol cigarettes in September. Meanwhile it actually hurts actual adults: those who like smoking menthols and those who make a living selling it to you. That's another blow to an economy that's already reflexively flinching knowing further assaults by the NDP are coming. Meanwhile what we ingest isn't something that should be regulated in the name of our personal health either. Again, remember from above that the "saves the healthcare system" argument doesn't hold any water.
Even if it did hold water, of course, this isn't a strike against unhealthy diets or drug ingestion habits, it's a strike against public healthcare in general. If the two options are to ban unhealthy lifestyle habits (and the NDP should be careful, since sodomite MLA Michael Connolly's lifestyle is even more unhealthy than Hoffman's) in order to save the bottom line of an overwhelmed and already bloated public healthcare system, or to abolish such a system entirely and increase rather than decrease the freedom in Alberta, obviously the latter is the best option. If the health minister has a problem with smoking, it's probably easier to just get rid of the health minister.
Of course, both figuratively and literally, you won't be able to dislodge the Alberta NDP's Health Minister with a fork truck.
Because she's a fat fat fat fattie, get it?
The list of people who noticed the rather unhealthy lifestyle of the minister attacking other lifestyles as unhealthy, of course, forms right over there. There were no shortage of people snickering about our fat health minister as soon as she was named. Whether you disagree with that or not is a matter of some debate, but one thing I will make perfectly clear.
As soon as Sarah Hoffman started banning menthols and interfering in the liberties of Albertan citizens, every single insult became 100% acceptable.
That's right, 100% acceptable. Call her an ugly fat cow until you're blue in the face. Make jokes about her being a whale, a cow, a sow, and even a tuna. For her crimes against the people of Alberta children should spend all day throwing rocks at her. Taunt her, insult her, rip into her every single personal flaw until she has a nervous breakdown and cries herself into a rubber room. For freedom-haters like her, nothing is nor should be off limits. Don't stop. Keep it up. Ideally the pressure will get too much for her [so at least in that regard she'll match the zipper on her pants. -ed] and she'll resign in disgrace and humiliation.
This will serve two useful purposes. First, it will send a clear message to the NDP overlords that we Albertans are going to at best ignore their edicts, at worse actively and violently resist them. Secondly, especially post-Drever, it will deprive them of another seat. The majority might be safe for Rachel Arab right now, but there's a long long five years coming and every one of them we pick off now is another byelection to get the Wildrose in there.
In a Facebook post, southern Alberta vice-president Jordan Lien body-shamed Health Minister Sarah Hoffman and suggested her decision Sunday to ban the sale of menthol tobacco products should be followed by a ban on sweets and soda.
“Our morbidly obese Health Minister Sarah Hoffman is going to ban the sale of menthol tobacco produces in Alberta as of September,” Lien wrote. “I would assume then that if health is the chief concern, that all sodas, candy, processed sugar products … and fast foods ... should then follow?”
Lien apologized for the comments, which was his big mistake. Never apologize to these people. Ever. He called his own remarks "dumb" (which, they weren't, they spoke to the fact the minister singled out other people to be the victims of her policy-making) and "insensitive" (which, sure they are, but as per above Hoffman is a fat statist bitch who deserves no less).
PC leader Rick McIver (who, it must be noted, does not directly have the ability to discipline or fire Lien) gets a C+ grade for his rather amateurish comments regarding the incident.
After learning of the incident, PC interim leader Ric McIver said while comments on policy are always acceptable, personal comments are not.
“I will have a discussion with the author of the comments,” McIver said. “All Albertans are must be respected. All Albertans must be treated with dignity.”
He didn't completely call for Lien's head which I suppose is better than nothing, but he also let the narrative be about Lien.
This story isn't about Lien's bad behaviour, it's about Hoffman's. Don't let the fat cow redirect the story like this. McIver should have tried something more along the lines of this one.: As PC leader I will strive to ensure that all those involved with our party clearly and decisively denounce policies enacted by this government that negatively impact Albertans. These policies are wrong regardless of individuals who implement them, and I have grave concerns about government policy being set over a weekend in secret meetings without consulting the stakeholders impacted by them. As we've seen with Mr. Lien, people can get very emotional and hot-headed when discussing policy and can speak in ways that distracts us from the issues at hand. I implore this government to consider the implications of their policies before acting, and be aware that as they take away the rights and freedoms and livelihoods of Albertans this comes at a price, and the price for that is going to be criticism of their actions. Lien's comments were not born in a vacuum, but rather frustration over a government making a move widely seen as one-sided and hypocritical, without providing any suitable forum for opposing views to be heard and considered. If this government continues to try and mould Alberta in their socialist image, they will continue to be resisted.
With a statement such as that, McIver forces Rachel Arab onto the defensive and instead the talk goes immediately back to the policy.
If further questioned, McIver could try to couch it a little (but not much more than that!) in the language of apology and reconciliation, but always warn that freedom has taken a step back in Alberta and all Albertans need to be vigilant and not be bogged down over nonsensical social-justice-warrior buzzwords like "body-shaming". This term, meant to stifle any debate about the hypocritical behaviour of Rachel Arab's government, is a classic of the far-left and their ludicrous worldview of micro-triggers and the like.
What we can say definitively isn't that there's nothing "sexist" about Lien's comments, which is why cowardly twits like far-left University of Alberta lobbyist Cristina Stasia are the go-to quote machine for the CBC. Besides having too much cushion for the pushin' herself, cowardly Stasia shows her retardation when she describes Lien's comments as "sexist" and "targeted" at her gender.
To prove cowardly Stasia wrong, here's the entire text of Lien's comments.
So if I'm understanding this correctly...our morbidly obese Health Minister Sarah Hoffman is going to ban the sale of menthol tobacco products in Alberta as of September. Where does the nanny state begin and end? I would assume then that if health is the chief concern, that all sodas, candy, processed sugar products (all bazillion of them) and fast foods, etc. should then follow? As well as as all flavoured liquor products etc? Ridiculous.
The closest thing to a "gender" reference in there is the word "nanny" [and, I suppose if you're feeling charitable, "Sarah" is a gender reference. -ed], he doesn't even use a female pronoun in his comments: it's written in second person as if he's talking to Hoffman herself (or a menthol-ban supporter). The CBC is just going off on a "sexism" tangent here for no good reason.
Shit, as we've been flooded with news stories about to make abundantly clear, there are tons of women in the NDP caucus. Since they're NDP, they'll be denouncing bad policy. Since they're women, cowards like Stasia will call any complaints about what they do "sexist". As the Patton quote (from the movie, not the man, the man never said this) above mentions, what's a ruffle to the Minister's pride really worth? This is politics, and while not quite as bloodthirsty as war it's also not really that less vigorous and intense.
Will the sensitive little princesses in the Alberta NDP whimper and cry and run to the CBC with tales of "sexism" after every mean conservative points out that hundreds of hardworking men will be unemployed due to whatever stupid economic policy they've decided on this week? In plainer English, are the NDP womenfolk man enough to handle the political arena?
If not, then resign. If so, prove it. This week at least, your XX chromosomes have proven not quite up to the task.
