Also, I can’t search because I’m not a paying member.
I have no problem with him, but Lib, as we call him, has cheesed some people off good. Some of it, even he’ll admit, is his own fault; some of it is because he’s rather dogged in argument and some people take it personally.
These threads should give you some idea:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=265487&highlight=libertarian
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=256466&highlight=libertarian
I would recommend a name change for everyone’s sake.
Thanks for the links… your advice is worth pondering, but I think I’ll keep the name for now.
Well, I would bow to your judgment of the reasons for Rae’s screwups. Yet another potential factor in the mix would be how Rae’s cabinet interacted with the existing bureaucracy, but I have no idea what issues there might have been there.
I agree that a federal NDP govt scrapping NAFTA would be a disaster, and I realize they have some protectionism in their platform. And you’re right - the primary provincial responsibilities of health care and education compliment the (imho) strong points of NDP philosophy, where federal responsibilities such as foreign trade, defense, etc, do not. Still, there’s a good deal of overlapping responsibility in many areas where a strong NDP voice at the federal level is not anything I’d view as a bad thing.
But really, I mostly just wanted to counter the “The NDP ruin every province they govern, and it’s because they’re social democrats” meme that seemed to be going down. Anyone who can look at the record of the Romanow government and think that it was a disaster, given the circumstances, has got an…ummm…interesting outlook on politics. I think Romanow’s fiscal accomplishments are far more noteworthy than Klein’s, given what he had to work with.
Hey, where are you, Sam? Did you lose interest?
Resurrecting this thread (for old times sake) to see if people have changed much over the decades. But mainly since I wanted to post this excellent Coyne column. But it doesn’t matter. Trudeau has one this round and lost the war. The handwringing won’t matter, but democracy is weakened.
It’s actually kind of scary how relevant many of the descriptors are.
I wasn’t involved in this thread the first time around.
What do you think of your prediction now, @Sam_Stone? It appears to me as if the Reformers won the war. I expect Erin O’Toole would agree with me too.
I think the entire political situation changed after Covid. The alliances have shifted all around. I’m not sure what you are asking though - do you mean the old western Reform party eventually won? Or ‘reformers’ won, meaning more progressive PCs?
The issues that are energizing conservatives today are very different than they were just a handful of years ago. The world changes.
I will pointbout though that after Harper the Conservatives picked Sheer, and then O’Toole. Neither of which were from the ‘reform’ wing. Covid and Trudeau’s response and other policies and scandals have re-radicalized the right.
Which is somewhat strange considering the burden of having to wear a mask and such was put upon them by provincial governments. Well, no fear of that now here in scenic Alberta! Yay us, I guess.
The separatists and accelerationists have found a pool of discontented, wrongheaded citizens to convert and a populist figurehead who’s either dishonest or stupid enough to cater to them for the sake of her own power. I’m still flabbergasted that there are thousands of people in this province who look at what the right has wrought in the US and thought “I want me some of that.” Kenney was right; the lunatics are running this asylum now.
But the fuse that started the whole trucker mess, for instance, was a federal policy, as were existing border restrictions, as were restrictions related to airlines, so on and so forth. Someone who didn’t like masks or vaccine rules or whatever had plenty to blame both levels of government for if they chose to. The fun of living in a federation is you have twice the people to be mad at.
They’re a bunch of separatists for whom living in a federation is apparently no fun at all. And they have no one to blame for their foolishness and lack of testicular fortitude but themselves. Possibly their parents goofed as well.
In other Canadian politics, Justin Trudeau, Bill Morneau and several others are under criminal investigation for obstruction of justice in the SNC-Lavalin affair:
This should have happened four years ago.
The headline has been changed significantly from the earlier version.
Quick, get me my fainting crunch.
Here’# the letter the RCMP sent to Democracy Watch:
Relevant paragraph:
If there isn’t an investigation going on, they lied to DW to keep from releasing documents requested under the Access To Information Act
If this is or isn’t a thing, nothing will come of it in either case.
Yeah, I tend to agree.
How is this for an assessment of Trudeau’s performance by noted radical left muckraker Brian Mulroney?
Who could possibly be more trustworthy than Brian Mulroney?