Stephen Harper is Delusional

No sooner than I say this thread is over and I get yet another scandalous tidbit:

Conservative MP Peter Penashue has resigned, given up his seat in Parliament.
This clown from Labrador has done ZERO since the 2011 election and has been hounded by the Official Opposition for 2 years on his illegal campaign donations.

The truth came out this week, and Penashue is guilty as sin.
A Conservative? A swindler? A Fleecer?
SAY IT AIN'T FUCKIN' SO....
LOL

He resigned, saying he owes it to his constitutents to be accountable and he will run in a by-election.

UM,

first of all, the election was 2-years ago.
Penashue didn't do anything until he was found guilty this week.
Harper didn't fire him, didn't say boo, as far as I can tell.
Penashue was paid $155,000 a year with benefits and expense accounts with taxpayers money for 24 months and he was illegally sitting in his seat.
How many other Tory MP's are guilty as sin yet mum's the word?
ALL OF THEM AS FAR AS I'M CONCERNED.

FUCKING GONG SHOW FOLKS.....

This op-ed piece in today's NY Times is the best description of the Tar Sands oil and Keystone XL pipeline issue and the whole situation re:petroleum industry in Canada at present and its grip on Canadian politics. This comes in the wake of the news of a tar sands leak in an Exon-Mobil pipeline in Arkansas right now that spewed out thousand of barrels of oil and caused many houses to be evacuated, oil right in their backyards.

Here's the link to the piece, but I'll reprint it below as well: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/op...f=opinion&_r=0


The New York Times
Monday, March 31, 2013
The Tar Sands Disaster
By THOMAS HOMER-DIXON
WATERLOO, Ontario

IF President Obama blocks the Keystone XL pipeline once and for all, he’ll do Canada a favor.

Canada’s tar sands formations, landlocked in northern Alberta, are a giant reserve of carbon-saturated energy — a mixture of sand, clay and a viscous low-grade petroleum called bitumen. Pipelines are the best way to get this resource to market, but existing pipelines to the United States are almost full. So tar sands companies, and the Alberta and Canadian governments, are desperately searching for export routes via new pipelines.

Canadians don’t universally support construction of the pipeline. A poll by Nanos Research in February 2012 found that nearly 42 percent of Canadians were opposed. Many of us, in fact, want to see the tar sands industry wound down and eventually stopped, even though it pumps tens of billions of dollars annually into our economy.

The most obvious reason is that tar sands production is one of the world’s most environmentally damaging activities. It wrecks vast areas of boreal forest through surface mining and subsurface production. It sucks up huge quantities of water from local rivers, turns it into toxic waste and dumps the contaminated water into tailing ponds that now cover nearly 70 square miles.

Also, bitumen is junk energy. A joule, or unit of energy, invested in extracting and processing bitumen returns only four to six joules in the form of crude oil. In contrast, conventional oil production in North America returns about 15 joules. Because almost all of the input energy in tar sands production comes from fossil fuels, the process generates significantly more carbon dioxide than conventional oil production.

There is a less obvious but no less important reason many Canadians want the industry stopped: it is relentlessly twisting our society into something we don’t like. Canada is beginning to exhibit the economic and political characteristics of a petro-state.

Countries with huge reserves of valuable natural resources often suffer from economic imbalances and boom-bust cycles. They also tend to have low-innovation economies, because lucrative resource extraction makes them fat and happy, at least when resource prices are high.

Canada is true to type. When demand for tar sands energy was strong in recent years, investment in Alberta surged. But that demand also lifted the Canadian dollar, which hurt export-oriented manufacturing in Ontario, Canada’s industrial heartland. Then, as the export price of Canadian heavy crude softened in late 2012 and early 2013, the country’s economy stalled.

Canada’s record on technical innovation, except in resource extraction, is notoriously poor. Capital and talent flow to the tar sands, while investments in manufacturing productivity and high technology elsewhere languish.

But more alarming is the way the tar sands industry is undermining Canadian democracy. By suggesting that anyone who questions the industry is unpatriotic, tar sands interest groups have made the industry the third rail of Canadian politics.

The current Conservative government holds a large majority of seats in Parliament but was elected in 2011 with only 40 percent of the vote, because three other parties split the center and left vote. The Conservative base is Alberta, the province from which Prime Minister Stephen Harper and many of his allies hail. As a result, Alberta has extraordinary clout in federal politics, and tar sands influence reaches deep into the federal cabinet.

Both the cabinet and the Conservative parliamentary caucus are heavily populated by politicians who deny mainstream climate science. The Conservatives have slashed financing for climate science, closed facilities that do research on climate change, told federal government climate scientists not to speak publicly about their work without approval and tried, unsuccessfully, to portray the tar sands industry as environmentally benign.

The federal minister of natural resources, Joe Oliver, has attacked “environmental and other radical groups” working to stop tar sands exports. He has focused particular ire on groups getting money from outside Canada, implying that they’re acting as a fifth column for left-wing foreign interests. At a time of widespread federal budget cuts, the Conservatives have given Canada’s tax agency extra resources to audit registered charities. It’s widely assumed that environmental groups opposing the tar sands are a main target.

This coercive climate prevents Canadians from having an open conversation about the tar sands. Instead, our nation behaves like a gambler deep in the hole, repeatedly doubling down on our commitment to the industry.

President Obama rejected the pipeline last year but now must decide whether to approve a new proposal from TransCanada, the pipeline company. Saying no won’t stop tar sands development by itself, because producers are busy looking for other export routes — west across the Rockies to the Pacific Coast, east to Quebec, or south by rail to the United States. Each alternative faces political, technical or economic challenges as opponents fight to make the industry unviable.

Mr. Obama must do what’s best for America. But stopping Keystone XL would be a major step toward stopping large-scale environmental destruction, the distortion of Canada’s economy and the erosion of its democracy.

Thomas Homer-Dixon, who teaches global governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, is the author of "The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization."

Thanks for all that Chris.
The tarsands (and I use the word TAR with emphasis) are a major disaster.

What people need to remember the most is that Canada's Conservative government eliminated all accountability on the environment with last years' ominbus budget. They ripped up the Environmental Assessment Act, tore it to shreds.
Did you hear about the Canadian pipeline rupture this week? That's spilling oil into Alaskan waters right now?
NO ONE WILL BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE.
And Canada is even giving lax entrance to our borders for immigrant workers who want to work cheap on our tarsands oil that needs to ship to China YESTERDAY. 4$ an hour? Come on over! You want a job? Badly? Come on up to Canada! Harper needs your cheap labor!
He'll make sure your *petty* foreign dreams are realized. He'll even wink and smile at you. (Until you walk away- then he'll cackle with The Fleecer that he's "running" things ricky tick.....LOL

These pipelines are being rushed and rammed through all over the world.
No one can stop it.
The economy trumps the environment.
And it always will.
Human greed trumps everything else. Sanity left the building a long time ago. There is no accountability.
It's just like a Toronto city cop told me: "There is no justice. There is a justice SYSTEM. In China you can get justice. A different kind of justice, but justice nonetheless. Not here in North America. Not Ever".

And Joe Oliver, Harper's environment goof, is an absolute liar and shuck and jive Master.
I've watched him and listened to his King Hell Loon gibberish for years.
He has never made sense and he never will. He does what Harper tells him to do.
Joe Oliver has never had an original thought.

I heard about the pipeline spill in Arkansas today, I don't think I knew about the Alaska one, though it's all getting to be a blur.


What does that mean about justice in China but not Canada? Isn't that a bit extravagant? Anyway I don't get it.

Quote:

---

These pipelines are being rushed and rammed through all over the world.
No one can stop it.
The economy trumps the environment.
And it always will.
Human greed trumps everything else. Sanity left the building a long time ago. There is no accountability.

---

This is true, but we can expose it and oppose it, like Bill McKibbon and his 360 people. I reviewed his THE END OF NATURE in 1989. That was the year my friend Zoray Andrus and my father died. It seems it was the year Nature died too.

If Obama turns around again and okays the Keystone XL Pipeline, his minuses will once and for all outweigh his pluses. I know he has done some good things, but he's also ridden the corporate global dominance train too much of the time. Rumor has it though that some good shifts are taking place in the Congress.

I can't find anything about a Canada tar sands spill -- on US Google. But the Arkansas event is good for the anti TXL movement.

Profound about your father and friend passing. You have my sincere sympathies.



You're absolutely correct about Obama.
He has to stop drop on this XL pipeline. IT'S NOT GOOD FOR ANYBODY RIGHT NOW EXCEPT GREEDHEADS IN ALBERTA AND HARPER'S GOVERNMENT.
The environment is not something to trifle with. You saw what happened in Arkansas this week- that is what you get when these pipelines are rammed through. RUPTURES.
Spills that make that evil shit flow right into your backyard. You have to evacuate. What a nice surprise to have one morning, huh?
You wake up and your whole house may be ruined.With no one accepting responsibilty. Oh you may get lip service, but that's all it is.

Where's the caveat that if a pipeline ruptures and lives are destroyed, the company responsible will compensate you three times the loss?

That's a law the Feds could look into with the people's interests in mind, no?

re: justice in China

The cop who said that to me was Chinese, and I don't exactly know what kind of justice he was referring to, but he was DEAD SERIOUS when he said it and I believed him. We just had a case of a Toronto city cop killed by a guy with a stolen snowplow end with the guiilty man being deemed not criminally responsible (the assholes name is Richard Kachkar) by reason he was psyhotic at the time of the crime.

Well, during the very recent trial, he was sane, sober, and "felt terrible" about what he'd done.

Aw, let's weep for a man who was psychotic for a day, killing a city cop by clipping him in the head with the plow, a cop with a young wife and a young son, a son who wonders if the man who killed his daddy is gonna come for him next.
His wife made a media statement after the verdcict, saying her husband deserved way better than this, and that there is no closure, no justice, no end.
City Police officers can't even get Justice, boys and girls. NEVER FORGET IT.
Piece-of-Shit Kachkar is being sent to a mental facility where he can be assesed. No jail time. No manslaughter charge even stuck.

Yay Yay Yay.
Hallelujah.

I can only repeat that KXL is a crucial issue for Obama. But so are the drone killings. He's proven just a bit too in the open about his ordering executions of American citizens without trial. He is stealthier than Bush (whose open belligerence may seem refreshing by contrast) but the drone attacks have proven not to be as stealthy as maybe was planned. Obama is hard to figure out. He has done some good things that Bush could or would not have done, but some analysts make it look like he has done more to crush democracy in America than Bush II did. His actions on Guantanamo and foreign prisons and rendition don't seem to make much difference.

Yes. Obama is a stealthy mofo.

He's been using stealth to his advantage for a while now and I'm not sure it is a good thing.
I do not like overt stealth in any Leader unless he is doing serious good, unless we see some results that justify that kind of deception.
I'm not entirely sure what he's doing. I'm in his corner, but the hairs are standing up, one by one...

I have to agree with you Chris. There is something about Obama that has zero to do with "hope and change".
And his Admin isn't very forthcoming with details.
With Bush you could sniff out the general gist, as he was belligerent.
Obama is playing us, but to what end I have no clue. I happen to think he's a decent man, but that could change in a heartbeat.

Should I wait it out? Wait it out for his Major slip-up? Will he let the world down somehow?
I HOPE he's got his bases covered...

Interesting today on Democracy Now show an expert on the gun issue said Obama's much applauded State of the Union bit about how all the victims families "deserve a vote" was just a way of saying it would get a pro forma consideration and then be passed over. If so, how cynical can you possibly get? Anyway he is already letting the world down in major ways, and it has taken over four years for some of his supporters to realize it, though the disillusion set in pretty quick. How great it was, on the first election night, though! The delight, the joy of black people! So sad.

Exactly.

Obama knows the whole game now, after 5 years in office. So his chess moves are now a result of knowing what he can and cannot get done. I'm actually quite sure he even knows what he will do every single day until the next U.S. election.

That sound about right?

He is calculating, and he knows much better what he is doing that at the outset. I think you give him a little too much credit though, especially in view of his inability to put together a team that is the best possible, and his inability to get some of his major appointments through easily due to the opposition's focusing on nothing more than blocking his every move. How are you going to know where you will go if they're people out there to stop you every time?

I hear you.
Like I said, he knows the game now.
He's gonna do what he's gonna do.
Let's see if he slips up in a way that destroys everything he's stood for.
He's ripe.
But I think it's all calculated, if only for the next election.
Which means we don't have much.
The supposed "best man" isn't the best man.
Who do we look to after Obama? Yikes.

Disillusionment shouldn't be this sad.
There's gotta be more meat on the bone....

After Obama the deluge? But we always think that way. American politics ain't a very pleasant subject nowadays. Some things are good of course. We have good medical treatment if we can pay for it. Everybody has a TV and a cell phone. Poor people carry smart phones, that's for sure. And they shop, even if the carts full of goods they take away are from the Dollar Tree Store. But young people even with a decent education have a hard time finding a job. People work harder than their parents did, longer hours, for relatively less money, and less vacation time. Those few politicians who have good intentions can't accomplish much in Washington because of a Republican party shifted far to the right and dedicated to obstruction and obfuscation. Lobbyists have a power and a wealth to wield it they never had in the past. Education is in a parlous state. The infrastructure has just beren given a rating of D+ by experts. America sees far more gun violence than countries in Europe, and Canada, India and Australia, and in the individual sates there is much opposition to combating that. THe NRA, the gun lobby, is more powerful than the public and the gun industry itself.

This is America, a country in a state of perpetual war, openly dedicated to the value of torture, rendition, targeted assassinations and indefinite detention. Into this political world post Bush and post 9/11, how can you expect a "good" president?

The flaw in your latest statement is: "Let's see if he slips up in a way that destroys everything he's stood for," because he has never really stood for anything. What did he campaign on? What solid thing? There is nothing. He stood for nothing. He offerred nothing.

1. "Yes We Can"
2. “Change” versus “More of the Same”
3. "Vote for Change"
4. "Change We Can Believe In"
5. "Our Time for Change"
6. "It's about Time. It's about Change"
7. "Stand for Change"
8. "Organize for Change"
9. “We are the change we’ve been looking for. Change can’t happen without you.”
10. "I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington . I'm asking you to believe in yours."