Conservatives

Election projections for your riding; who to vote for to simply beat Cons

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , 8 Comments

Canada’s election at the moment looks like a choice between another Conservative minority, or a Conservative majority government, unless everyone were to suddenly vote Liberal strategically. In Canada, one can gain a majority government (e.g., enough seats to mean your party basically wins every parliamentary motion) with a mere 35% of the popular vote with our current political breakdown. That means that with a minority government, it’s well possible that at least 65% of the country disagrees with the party in power. In the case of Conservatives vs. Everyone Else, that is assuredly true. The Conservative Party of Canada, since being created in a coalition between the Progressive Conservatives and the Reform TeaParty a few years ago, makes up the entirety of the right half of the political spectrum. The Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Greens all make up the left, with the only outlier that could possibly be called right-wing being the Bloc, whose prime motivating reason for existence is secession of Quebec from the rest of the country.

So we have a political climate today wherein the Right has unified into a coalition for the purpose of leading our country off a cliff (or more accurately, siphoning money from the pockets of the average Canadian and directly into the pockets of big businesses, as though Reaganomics ever worked for anyone!), and the only way to kick them out is to form some sort of coalition on the left. Well, the only way short of strategic voting, which really hurts when you don’t particularly like one of the alternatives.

If you’re willing to suck it up and swallow your pride in order to vote strategically for the sole purpose of tossing the bums out, and just need to know which party to vote for in your riding, here’s an excellent tool, wherein you can find out what the current projections are for your specific riding and therefore decide whether to vote strategically for the Libs, NDP or Bloc, depending.

Sorry, my loyal Green readers… they’re simply not competitive anyplace at the moment, even in Vancouver where they’re running double-digit candidates. However, if you want to vote for the competitive challenger in your riding, you can ask someone in a less competitive riding to vote for your first choice via PairVote.ca — that way your party doesn’t technically lose your vote, and you still get to make a difference in the more competitive race.

Or you could, you know, vote Conservative if you really want to. Or if you’re unmotivated, you can just let the Conservative in your riding win. You know, if you happen to think that the problem with Health Care is that we have TOO MUCH of it. Or that the economy would benefit most from CEOs pays increasing while normal folks’ wages stagnate. Or if you think they’re all just going to pull the same bullshit nonsense that the Conservatives actually have as party planks, and the other parties actively oppose. Whatever. It’s up to you, of course. I merely reserve the right to hate you for not doing whatever you can to stop the avowed party of privilege.

Vote, please. Your vote could very well mean the difference between us ending up with the same nonsense we’re already living in a Conservative minority, or much worse in a Conservative majority.

Election projections for your riding; who to vote for to simply beat Cons
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How strawman arguments and shitty authors undermine #atheism

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

I haven’t read anything by Anthony DeStefano aside from his anti-atheist screeds on various news journals like USA Today, but I have no doubt merely by looking through the title list that he is a man of deep conviction in that which he cannot see. He’s written a book for children called Little Star, all about how the baby Jesus is very tiny but is our Lord. He’s written a book for grown-up children about how awesome a place Heaven is. And he’s written a book about all those things you can’t see but that the Bible assures you are really really real. And since you know other people believe it, they must really really REALLY be real.

So today we have a Serious Author writing a Serious Article in a Serious Journal about how atheists are superstitious “Materialists” who are simply incapable of comprehending that the parts of this natural world that we haven’t figured out yet are actually impossible to decipher, because God wants it that way.

Of course, it’s not quite fair to say that atheists believe in nothing. They do believe in something — the philosophical theory known as Materialism, which states that the only thing that exists is matter; that all substances and all phenomena in the universe are purely physical.

What nonsense.

We’re off to a running start.
Continue reading “How strawman arguments and shitty authors undermine #atheism” →

How strawman arguments and shitty authors undermine #atheism

Fox vs video games: the Bulletstorm shitstorm

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , , 2 Comments

The other day, when I saw it appear on the Playstation 3’s “What’s New” splash, I downloaded a demo for a first-person shooter game I hadn’t heard anything about before, called Bulletstorm. The demo video preceding the actual playable level pretty much set the expectations for the game — chaotically violent grindhouse with over-the-top game mechanics, protagonists with generally more machismo than intellect (even the girl) who are quick to make lewd sexual references, and buckets and buckets of blood. Despite its outlandish presentation, the demo was actually fairly fun. The ability to kick enemies and have them thereafter hang in mid-air long enough for you to aim at specific body parts is a bit silly. but otherwise my first impression was that with some polish, the game has potential.

I had no idea that potential that I saw was the potential for lulz when Fox News lost their shit over it. But there you have it. Turns out I’m not prescient — whoda thunk it? Though, given their earlier performance in grossly mischaracterizing Mass Effect’s “full digital nudity and controllable explicit sex” (which, as it turns out, is no more controllable or explicit than any sexually tinged and artistically presented offering on Fox Network’s prime time block), I should have seen it coming.

In the new video game Bulletstorm due February 22, players are rewarded for shooting enemies in the private parts (such as the buttocks). There’s an excess of profanity, of course, including frequent use of F-words. And Bulletstorm is particularly gruesome, with body parts that explode all over the screen.

But that’s not the worst part.

The in-game awards system, called Skill Shots, ties the ugly, graphic violence into explicit sex acts: “topless” means cutting a player in half, while a “gang bang” means killing multiple enemies. And with kids as young as 9 playing such games, the experts FoxNews.com spoke with were nearly universally worried that video game violence may be reaching a fever pitch.

“If a younger kid experiences Bulletstorm’s explicit language and violence, the damage could be significant,” Dr. Jerry Weichman, a clinical psychologist at the Hoag Neurosciences Institute in Southern California, told FoxNews.com.

In their private parts! Such as the buttocks! You just can’t make this up.

More commentary below the fold.
Continue reading “Fox vs video games: the Bulletstorm shitstorm” →

Fox vs video games: the Bulletstorm shitstorm

Teen pregnancy more prevalent in prudish societies

Jason Thibeault, , 2 Comments

What… a… surprise. Know what you get when you teach kids that sexuality is off-limits and sinful, as the American conservatives do? You get pregnant, STD-ridden kids! Meanwhile, societies like the Netherlands, where kids are allowed co-ed sleepovers and are taught about safe sex, have drastically fewer underage pregnancies and STDs. And by drastic, I mean American kids’ pregnancy rates are eight times higher. EIGHT TIMES!

Furthermore, Dutch teenagers are less likely than American teens to engage in sex outside a committed, monogamous relationship. To recap: Dutch teens are having safe sex in the context of loving relationships and under their own roofs, while American teens are engaging in alarming rates of unprotected sex in questionable relationships god knows where.

So, why the huge cultural divide, especially given how much time, energy, and money America funnels into the prevention of teenage pregnancy? Essentially, it boils down to this: the Dutch treat their teenagers’ emerging sexuality as normal and healthy, and react accordingly. Contraceptives and reproductive health care are readily available. Conversely, in America we tend to treat teenage sexuality as a demon to be fought. We throw money into unrealistic abstinence-only education programs while simultaneously neglecting to educate our youth on their bodies and sexual health. We throw up barriers to birth control and abortion services.

Schalet believes that this can, in large part, be attributed to religion. Americans are far more likely to claim religious devotion that the Dutch. Shlalet also points to another interesting potential cause for the differing approaches to teen sexuality: the Dutch seem far more likely to validate their teens romantic feelings, whereas American parents tend to trivialize those emotions as “puppy love.”

The study is right here. Funny how sensical the results seem to me, where I am disabused of the notion that only through abstinence can one effectively curb these issues, and that sexuality is a moral vice. Underage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases are not a consequence of moral failing — they are a consequence of inadequate education and pushing kids out of safe and loving environments. The real moral failing is in teaching kids abstinence exclusively.

Teen pregnancy more prevalent in prudish societies

Harper government intentionally suppressing inconvenient truths

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , 3 Comments

Remember how rules changes in 2007 basically muzzled climate scientists in Canada from providing interviews with journalists about evidence-based climate research? Remember also how a troll on this blog suggested it was really just the public losing interest in, you know, being “guilt-tripped” by the media about the current state of today’s climate?

Documents were recently obtained by Postmedia News proving these policies are in fact governmentally mandated. Apparently, climate scientists are not allowed to discuss floods or the last ice age without special clearance either.

The documents say the “new” rules went into force in March and reveal how they apply to not only to contentious issues including the oilsands, but benign subjects such as floods that occurred 13,000 years ago.

They also give a glimpse of how Canadians are being cut off from scientists whose work is financed by taxpayers, critics say, and is often of significant public interest — be it about fish stocks, genetically modified crops or mercury pollution in the Athabasca River.

“It’s Orwellian,” says Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at University of Victoria. The public, he says, has a right to know what federal scientists are discovering and learning.

Scientists at NRCan, many of them world experts, study everything from seabeds to melting glaciers. They have long been able to discuss their research, until the rules changed this spring.

These policies are squelching legitimate studies based on legitimate scientific evidence, out of some misguided fear that they may be used against Harper’s politics. To translate: reality might have political ramifications that are detrimental to the Conservatives’ platforms.

NRCan scientist Scott Dallimore co-authored the study, published in the journal Nature on April 1, about a colossal flood that swept across northern Canada 13,000 years ago, when massive ice dams gave way at the end of the last ice age.

The study was considered so newsworthy that two British universities issued releases to alert the international media.

It was, however, deemed so sensitive in Ottawa that Dallimore, who works at NRCan’s laboratories outside Victoria, was told he had to wait for clearance from the minister’s office.

Dallimore tried to tell the department’s communications managers the flood study was anything but politically sensitive. “This is a blue sky science paper,” he said in one email, noting: “There are no anticipated links to minerals, energy or anthropogenic climate change.”

But the bureaucrats in Ottawa insisted. “We will have to get the minister’s office approval before going ahead with this interview,” Patti Robson, the department’s media relations manager, wrote in an email after a reporter from Postmedia News (then Canwest News Service) approached Dallimore.

Are you outraged yet?

Harper government intentionally suppressing inconvenient truths

Harper wants Canada to have its own Fox News

Jason Thibeault, , 21 Comments

Evidently Stephen Harper is not satisfied with running a minority government like one long game of chicken, or having the truth inconveniently turn up every time they try to pull the wool over Canadian citizens’ eyes (remember “unreported crimes are skyrocketing” as an excuse for pouring billions into unnecessary new jails? You should — it wasn’t THAT long ago!). Now our favorite local tin pot dictator has gotten envious of the propaganda machine available to the right-wingers in the States and wants to make a Schedule-1 cable channel (on every TV watcher’s dime!) for Fox News.

But wait, you say! Fox News is already on most Canadian cable packages! Oh, but therein lies the rub — that particular channel is quite hostile to Canada, and wouldn’t toe the Canadian Conservatives’ line. That’s why Harper, Murdoch and Ailes all met to discuss creating Fox News North, a move that would be entirely funded by every cable-subscribing goon in the country, most of whom would have no idea they were doing so (and probably wouldn’t care). George W explains.

Mr. Harper not only plans to create a right-wing Conservative-talking-points style network here in Canada, but he would like it to be a Category 1 digital station, meaning it will be a mandatory part of one of the digital cable packages and funded partly by every viewers cable television fees. There is currently a petition being prepared by Avaaz.org that will run in major Canadian Newspapers once 100,000 signatures are collected.
[…]
The bigger issue here is not whether Canadians want or need a right wing news agency. The issue is why a sitting Prime Minister is actively working to get a license for any network. Another good question is why a former spokesman for our Prime Minister should be in charge of the political coverage of Sun Media group, one of the largest media consortiums in our country.

Stephen Harper needs to focus on the task of running a country, not on building a conservative propaganda feedback loop. The network itself would also require a systematic dismantling of CRTC regulations regarding balanced coverage during our election cycle, something I can only imagine would make Little Stevie beam with joy.

Go sign the petition. The last thing we need is a far-right propaganda machine of Fox News’ ilk, further coarsening our political dialog and driving the polarization that’s happening all around us — a polarization that smacks uncannily of having been engineered to ruin the good thing we have. Or, rather, had. At this rate, if we ever shake Harper free from his position of power, rebuilding the democratic processes that have already been shat upon is going to take far longer than a term or two. Much of the damage of polarization and of coarsening the political discourse is already done. We’re no longer, as it were, “above” that kind of nonsense.

Harper wants Canada to have its own Fox News

Could the elimination of the long-form census be an underhanded plot?

Jason Thibeault, 25 Comments

While I can’t help but sense a tinge of hyperbole in Paul Martin’s words regarding Harper’s government’s decision to drop our mandatory long-form census, I also tend to agree with the sentiment behind them.

“This is not the way to run a democracy,” Martin told reporters on Sunday, when he and Duncan appeared at a rally in his hometown of Windsor with Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.

Martin says he sees the census decision as part of Stephen Harper’s larger attempt to clamp down on information and free discussion among Canadians.

“I think it’s quite conceivable that what we’re dealing with is a government that essentially wants to control the information flow,” he said.

Martin said that in all his years as finance minister, the long-form census data was crucial during his consultations with municipalities and a whole host of medical, hospital and non-governmental organizations.

As well, he said that Canada’s ability to collect and make policy surrounding census data was an object of international admiration.

I am, as I hope you’ve figured out by now, decidedly on the side of collecting as much information as possible for the purposes of finding our way through the world — whether scientific, political or economic. Nothing has ever been gained by humanity (but much has been gained by tin-pot dictators) by intentionally going out of our way to reduce the amount of information available with which to make informed decisions. Eliminating the long-form census is a good way to throw sand in the eyes of people who make decisions about budgets, and the people who put certain political parties into power.

While I feel Martin’s words are hyperbolic, I still wouldn’t put it past Harper’s government to be doing this cynically, as a way of ensuring that people are not provided with the information to know that their budgetary plans are not in everyone’s best interests. I’ve seen that sort of dirty pool one too many times from conservatives south of our border, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly the sort of nonsense going on here.

Could the elimination of the long-form census be an underhanded plot?

The Nexus of Religion and Political Talking Heads

Jason Thibeault, , , 4 Comments

Is there some kind of requirement I was unaware of, that states, if you’re a Republican-boosting political talking head, you absolutely have to have delusions of grandeur such that you believe you understand the mind of God? The mind of the deity that your fellow religious folks have postulated but thus far been unable to prove, yet you somehow have insight into what such a deity would consider right and wrong? It’s one thing to have Pat Robertson claim that Haiti’s earthquake was God’s retribution for them making a deal with the devil (by daring to oust their totalitarian French dictators and consigning themselves to poverty as penance), but it’s another thing entirely to make the claim Rush Limbaugh did recently:

You know, a couple of days after the health care bill had been signed into law Obama ran around all over the country saying, “Hey, you know, I’m looking around. The earth hadn’t opened up. There’s no Armageddon out there. The birds are still chirping.” I think the earth has opened up. God may have replied. This volcano in Iceland has grounded more airplanes — airspace has more affected — than even after 9/11 because of this plume, because of this ash cloud over Northern and Western Europe. At the Paris airport they’re telling people to head to the train station to catch trains out of France, and when people get to the train station they’re telling people, “There aren’t any seats until at least April 22nd,” basically a week from now. It’s got everybody in a shutdown. Earth has opened up. I don’t know whether it’s a rebirth or Armageddon. Hopefully it’s a rebirth, God speaking.

If God’s pissed about health care reform, he has abysmal aim. Iceland is nowhere near America. Hell, there’s the Yellowstone supervolcano that he could have used to blow the whole continent to smithereens if he wanted to. And if he absolutely needed a natural cause behind it — since God’s supposedly almighty and can supposedly create the universe ex nihilo, why’s he always got to use the scientifically predictable and demonstrably natural disaster route all the time? And how come he can’t just take credit for these supposed interventions, rather than leaving behind all sorts of evidence that, say, Haiti is on a tectonic fault, Iceland has volcanos, Katrina formed due to converging weather patterns, etc.?

Meanwhile, Glenn Beck evidently has his “The Plan” book dictated to him from The Big G Himself, who’s evidently a ghost writer while he’s not busy creating natural disasters to punish people for stuff that needs no punishment. Making Beck, technically, a prophet. Gag me.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Beck and Limbaugh are very much respected figures in conservative political circles. And even more respected in the batshit insane wings of those circles. How are statements like these not peeling away moderate, religious conservatives from loyalty to them? The mind boggles.

The Nexus of Religion and Political Talking Heads

Climate conspiracy

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , , , 12 Comments

I’ve been putting off working on this, but it’s been humming in the back of my mind for a while now, not the least reason being that everyone in the blogosphere seems to be talking about it.

The core of the issue at hand is climate change, and the ground that denialists have been gaining over the past 18 months. And the problem I have is, people are far too willing to suggest that every scientist in every country in the world that agrees that anthropogenic climate change is in the process of attempting to perpetrate the greatest conspiracy hoax ever, and has somehow been able to keep hundreds of thousands of people who are “in on it” quiet about the fact that it’s all a hoax, and all this supposedly for “money”.

And yet, there’s far more money in preventing humankind from moving off of petroleum while the oil companies have 99% of the Earths’ oil reserves under their control presently, and have tapped hardly any of it at all. So, conspirators at the top of the oil heap spread anti-science, and those with vested interests in defeating science (e.g., conservatives and religious leaders), as well as those that stand to make a lot of money off the perpetuation of current technology, become the “true believers” of the denialist movement and fight tooth and nail against the general scientific consensus that exists. And many, maybe most, of these people honestly believe that it is more likely that scientists are just trying to destroy the gravy train they’re riding on, than that scientists are presenting the facts in an unbiased manner and it just so happens to threaten said gravy train.
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Climate conspiracy