Happy Canada Day!

[Darren Dirt]

and therefore here's a "political" joke that I just found... (I didn't know it was more than just a blog entry when I first started reading the words)

I recently asked my friend's little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be Prime Minister some day.

Both of her parents, Liberals, were standing there, so I asked her, "If you were Prime Minister what would be the first thing you would do?"

She replied, "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people." Her parents beamed.

"Wow... what a worthy goal." I told her, "But you don't have to wait until you're Prime Minister to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where homeless guys hang out, and you can give them the $50, you earned, to use toward food and a new house."

She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Why doesn't the homeless guys come over and do the work, and you can just pay them the $50?"

I said, "Welcome to the Conserative Party."

Her parents still aren't speaking to me.

...found on this site that has tons of bee-OOOOO-tiful photos of nature etc.


PS: for Canada Day activities, check out these pages...
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Travel/Canada/1746339/story.html
http://www.edmontonceleberatecanada.ca/AlbertaLeg.htm

[Thorin]

Yeah, that guy (Don Sinclair) lives in St. Albert and has written several letters to the editor in the St. Albert Gazette.  There is a basic problem with his political statement - both the provincial and federal Conservative parties have been handing money out like crazy over the last several years.

We haven't had a provincial Liberal government in a very long time (not since 1921!), so I can't speak to how the provincial Libs compare to the provincial Conservatives when in power.

As for the federal parties, the only difference I found between the fiscal policies of the federal Liberals and the federal Conservatives is who they give their money to - both actual taxes and expenditures have risen under Stephen Harper.

For instance, did you know that to give us a reduction in GST, Harper's government rolled back a reduction in personal income tax that Paul Martin had brought in?  Martin wanted to increase the basic personal amount credit and raise the cutoffs for each tax bracket, thereby reducing the amount of tax owing - this would help low-income taxpayers more than high-income taxpayers.  When Harper got elected, he rolled back Martin's changes and reduced the GST - this helped high-income taxpayers more than low-income taxpayers.  In either case, though, actual revenue went up, not down, in the year each of these would have been or were implemented!  So sure, we paid less more tax, but we still paid more tax!

For a good example of how the Liberals and the Conservatives differ on who they give their money to...  The Liberals gave a couple billion to the Gun Registry.  The Conservatives gave several billion to the Auto Industry.  Neither party had the guts to give the money back to the taxpayers!

Back to the quote - that's a very black-and-white us-vs-them US-Democrat-vs-Republican view.  The truth of the matter is that the Liberals and the Conservatives (at the federal level) are really not diametrically opposed.  They both do a lot of the same things, but in a slightly different way.  I guess what I'm saying is it's too bad you're espousing this blogger's black-and-white view by repeating his words.

[Darren Dirt]

"Here's to the new boss[es]... SAME AS THE OLD BOSS[es]"

Yup, 2 sides of the same coin... the "give us your hard-earned money for fear that you might spend it on what YOU choose to value in your life, we'll make those decisions for you thank you very much [based on the implicit threat of violence for noncompliance, i.e. at the barrel of a gun]" coin.



anyway, this is a "hooray for this great country we were lucky enough to borned into" Day thread, not a "the left and right are both wrong" thread

[Thorin]

Dunno about y'all, but I got up way too early and stayed up way too late, and didn't eat a home-cooked meal all day!

(pancake breakfast, hotdogs in the park, and Safeway Chinese food FTW!)

[Melbosa]

HCD, if a bit late!

[Mr. Analog]

Woo! Super late here... yay Canada!