Elders Scroll V: Skyrim, is due to be released. Some video of the scenery and characters that was released by Bethesda, the maker of the game, has me drooling: If Harper is going to send this country to Hell in a handbasket, as I believe he will, at l…
Continue readingAuthor: Scott Tribe
Scott's DiaTribes: Rae the reformer?
Bob Rae said a couple of very interesting things regarding the reform and rebuilding of the Liberal Party over the weekend that caught my eye – the main one being his idea of opening up the LPC leadership race to a US primary style – but al…
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: The Dean of Peterborough
My reaction to Dean Del Maestro’s criticism of Justin Trudeau as being a “bad Catholic” isn’t going to be as ticked off as some – maybe because I’m not a Catholic. I’m more amused that Del Maestro has appointed…
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: F-35 Irony
There are rumblings in some circles that the Conservatives are very close to ditching their commitment to buying the F-35 “Stealth” Fighter jet for the armed forces – due to burgeoning costs and so forth. Others aren’t so sure &…
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: All wanna-be owners of 50 caliber sniper rifles, rejoice
.. for soon, the yoke of government oppression will be lifted from you:
The powerful Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle (were) used in the 1989 Montreal massacre and this summer’s Norway bloodbath. Sniper rifles that can pierce light armour from a distance of up to 1.5 kilometres. Or one that can drop a target two kilometres away. They are all weapons that will soon be declassified under the Conservatives’ bill to kill the long-gun registry and freed from binding controls that now see them listed with the RCMP-run database…Restricted or prohibited firearms such automatic assault rifles, sawed-off shotguns or handguns are not affected by the bill and would remain […]
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Bravo, Quebec – will other provinces follow?
In a Conservative majority Parliament, it will be the provinces that will at times have to oppose the Conservative right-wing agenda, and Quebec is doing so with the long-gun registry:
Quebec and Ottawa are on a collision course over the scrapping of the long-gun registry, with the province refusing to destroy data that the federal government wants to eliminate as part of its bid to scrap the controversial legislation. Ottawa claims that the data is under federal control, but Quebec says it will not shred the information, which the provincial police force has collected over the years under current legal provisions. And the province says it needs additional data […]
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Thoughts on the long gun resgistry’s future – or its potential future incarnation
The Conservatives have decided to go even further then they previously stated in going after the destruction of the long-gun registry – now, not only will they kill it, they want to destroy all of the database of long guns collected, in order to try and prevent a future federal government from resurrecting it, or a provincial government from doing its own.
Is this surprising? Nope. The fate of the long gun registry was sealed when the Conservatives got their majority, and since they’ve gotten their majority, they’ve tended to use it to taunt their political opponents. Part of this is no doubt intended to mollify their core constituency […]
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Thought on the Supreme Court panel process
I didn’t get a chance to address this when it came up the last week and a bit, but I wanted to say that the MP panel that “questioned” Harper’s Supreme Court nominees seems to me to be a big waste of time and taxpayer money. It could possibly be my reaction to some of the questions that were lobbed the nominees way – not just by the government MP’s but the opposition MP’s as well – but overall, if the panel has no power in objecting to the judges and say, voting to reject them, I don’t see the point in it.
Does that mean I want […]
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Climate change sceptic sponsored study group: Global warming is real.
This is very amusing:
The Earth’s surface really is getting warmer, a new analysis by a US scientific group set up in the wake of the “Climategate” affair has concluded. The Berkeley Earth Project has used new methods and some new data, but finds the same warming trend seen by groups such as the UK Met Office and Nasa. The project received funds from sources that back organizations lobbying against action on climate change.
Where did those funds come from?
…Funding came from a number of sources, including charitable foundations maintained by the Koch brothers, the billionaire US industrialists, who have also donated large sums to organisations lobbying against […]
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: You know your crime bills are way out in right field….
…when Texas conservatives/Republicans condemn it as not workable and overly expensive, and instead believe money spent on rehabilitation and such is the smarter way to go, and much more effective:
On a recent trip to Texas, an array of conservative voices told CBC News that Texas tried what Canada plans to do – and it failed…Rep. Jerry Madden, a conservative Republican who heads the Texas House Committee on Corrections…found that Texas had diverted money from treatment and probation services to building prisons. But sending people to prison was costing 10 times as much as putting them on probation, on parole, or in treatment. “It was kinda silly, what we […]
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: #Occupy Toronto pictures.
While in Toronto for the day on Saturday for our Progressive Blogger meet-up, some of us bloggers sauntered down to Bay Street to check out the Occupy Toronto “pre-protest” protest that had sprung up. There was about a crowd of 1000 there – quite a few gawkers, reporters and curious onlookers out of that bunch. There were a lot of placards and a lot of people handing stuff out. I personally got a “Free Private Bradley Manning” pamphlet – he who helped leak docum,ents to Wikileaks. Some of the stuff we saw was a bit out there. I know that because one of the bloggers down there with […]
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: A break from blogging – now a meeting with bloggers
I’ve been on vacation for a week – hence the inactivity here, if you’re wondering why nothing new in a week. I’m still on vacation, but I’ll be meeting up with some of our Progressive Blogger membership (and some invited g…
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Ontario election aftermath & is it time for mandatory voting?
It was a fascinating result last night in Ontario (I say that as someone interested in political science, not as a Liberal partisan). It’s not often in a First-Past-The-Post electoral system that you see a party fall exactly 1 seat short of a majority, but that’s what happened in the case of Dalton McGuinty and The Ontario Liberal Party. Late polls indicating a majority never materialized, or the PC party again had more dedicated partisans coming out to vote. That said, the Liberals were way behind in polls 2-3 months ago, so a win, even if it fell short of a majority, has to be a satisfying outcome for […]
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Please vote today in Ontario
All the polls are done (we think – last minute ones seem to keep trickling out). So are all the debates. It’s voting day in Ontario.
Last election the turnout was 52%. Very pathetic. I encourage you, no matter who you support, to exercise y…
Scott's DiaTribes: Polls aplenty in Ontario
To recap in the last day, Ekos, Nanos and Ipsos all indicate the Liberals are close to or will get a majority (Ipsos even went so far as to say in an interview that it’s over – the Liberals will win), while Abacus is showing a tighter Liberal lead that could go either way, and now Angus Reid has released a poll this AM saying they have a slight PC lead.
I’m not sure if that’s it for polls – Harris Decima is the only major pollster I haven’t seen release anything of late – but it appears it will again come down to who can get their […]
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: The closing days of the Ontario campaign
Only a few days left until Ontario voters get out to vote for their next provincial government, and the polls that came out on the weekend still had a neck and neck race. Ekos released a new poll this AM which seemed to indicate the Liberals were pulling away just a tad, but it still is close.
It will be interesting from my standpoint to see a) which polls were closest (online, IVR or traditional phone) and also the similarities/differences to the Ontario vote from the federal election in May, and what can be learned from that.
Also, with regards to a rumour of Harper coming to Toronto to […]
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: The Canadian Supreme Court rejects Conservative ideology for facts.
Not only am I pleased with the Insite rulling, I’m pleased it’s unanimous, in a strong rebuke to the Conservative government, who’s been trying to close this since 2008:
A supervised needle injection site for heroin addicts in Vancouver has gotten a constitutional reprieve following a landmark ruling Friday by the country’s top court. In a decision that sharply pits the court’s view of a coherent drug strategy against the Conservative government’s, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled 9-0 that the federal government cannot refuse to extend a legal protection to addicts and clinical health workers at the InSite clinic in Vancouver’s gritty Downtown Eastside who would otherwise […]
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Borys Wrzesnewskyj… I propose “call me Borys” for the campaign slogan
I’m going to need to first off learn how to pronounce Borys’s last name correctly. Secondly, like a couple of other Liberal bloggers, his entry into the Liberal leadership race is very intriguing.
Now, I don’t know a lot about Borys, other then his participation in the Ukrainian motion and such that is described in the original article, so just because he seems a good grass-roots canddiate doesn’t mean I’m going to support him until I research him a bit more.. but this party and this party leadership race needs a good shake-up, and if Borys can supply that, that’s half the battle for […]
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Ontario debate – no knockout punches – McGuinty appears to have done well
So the Ontario debate has come and gone. There were no real “gotcha moments” last night, which is bad for the opposition parties, since you’d like to get some momentum for your side by laying a licking on the governing Premier. In fact, it appears the immediate public impression from 2 different sources was that Hudak finished last. Ipsos-Reid had Dalton Mcguinty narrowly winning last night, while a second poll from CP24 in Toronto did have NDP leader Andrea Horvath narrowly leading Mcguinty. In both cases, Hudak was last with 25%.
He had better hope that’s not a provincial wide trend. It can’t be too encouraging when the Toronto […]
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Ontario leaders debate tonight is big
We enter the Ontario leaders debate tonight with a new poll from Ekos released today showing the Liberals with a 4 point lead over the PC’s and the NDP in the mid-20′s. According to threehundredeight.com, combined with the findings of another poll release last night by Abacus (with their new polling methodology), that would lead to a bare Liberal majority.
Therefore, I would submit the pressure is on the opposition parties’ leaders to perform well. Hudak needs to do so to salvage what has been a fairly miserable campaign for him (losing a massive lead in less then 3 months to now possibly losing the election outright). Horwath on […]
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