Where's AChimp?

[KevinTheOmnivore]

I'd like to get his thoughts on today's election in Canada...

[10,000 Volt Ghost]

He's waiting for the jets to come back.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

OK.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

OK, Jets are back. Where's AChimp?

[10,000 Volt Ghost]

The Hockey Thread.

[executioneer]

he showed up in some other thread when he was mentioned, maybe he'll be summoned for this one too

[Pentegarn]

10k is right, learn to like hockey if you want some AChimp time

[kahljorn]

THIS THREAD IS HILARIOUS

[AChimp]

Hi!

Election thoughts:
- Harper was due for a majority government. The Conservatives have lost twice to poor Liberal leaders, so if he didn't win a third time there would have been a lot of push from within the party to replace him. He was kept to minority governments in previous elections by being framed as "Bush Jr," but now you have Obama so people have short memories. This will finally give them the opportunity to pass all the bills that have stalled for the last four years; they're wrapping all of their crime bills up into one super bill and a bunch of other things.

- Most of the country was expecting this, but hoping that it wouldn't happen.

- It really isn't going to change anything. Harper has run his minority government like it was a majority for the last four years and the other parties didn't have the balls to stop much of what he was doing.

- The NDP landslide in Quebec was a huge surprise. The shift was huge with the population basically completely rejecting the Bloc; a lot of the NDP candidates that got elected were the placeholders and a few of them didn't even bother campaigning because they weren't supposed to win. Whether or not this is a sign that Quebeckers finally stopped caring about sovereignty remains to be seen.

- The implosion of the Liberal party is probably complete. Poor leadership choices for the past three elections makes those of us in the Centre wishing for Chretien to come back and start swinging his dick around again. The Conservatives have been able to frame the past few Liberal leaders as weak. Paul Martin became "Mr Dithers" because he took so long to decide stuff, hoping for problems to fix themselves. Stephan Dion... WTF is this guy saying and why did he adopt the Green party platform? Michael Ignatieff was an "elitist" who has spent more time outside of Canada than in it.

- Canada tends to flip back and forth every 12 years. The Conservatives fuck everything up then we elect the Liberals to fix it.

I know a lot of people who were really pissed off that the Conservatives got a majority, but then they did dumb shit like vote for the Green party. Then they all started crying about vote reform and how we should have proportional representation or have run-off elections, ignoring the fact that it would require major constitutional changes that would NEVER get approved. Just a bunch of hipsters selfishly crying about how small they feel IMO (one guy told me that he doesn't vote because "no party represents his opinions" so I told him to fuck off and move to Afghanistan).

Right now there are huge divides on the Left and the vote is split between the Liberals, NDP and freaky Greens. In the 90s, the Right was split between the Conservative and Reform parties; eventually they merged and started chipping away at Liberal support in the centre. People are talking about how something similar should happen between the Liberals and NDP. The resulting party would be a left-of-centre party, but a lot of NDP supporters dislike the fiscal conservatism of the Liberals.

One good thing that Harper will be doing in the short-term is eliminating our "dollars for votes" program. For every vote that a party received, they were entitled to something like $2 in federal funding for the next two years. This is the only thing that has propped up a lot of small parties who don't have a large base for donations. Hopefully this will kill the Bloc and Green parties and level off the playing field for the next election.

Personally, I don't think Harper is the bogeyman that a lot of people make him out to be, despite that fact that I still thing he's a douche (they guy was photographed shaking his kid's hand when he dropped him off for school... way to go, dad!) He has definitely changed our elections to be more of an "American style" with constant negative attack ads. The Conservatives air ads through the year even when there's no election on, which is a super greasy tactic in most Canadians' minds.

[AChimp]

Man, I got all excited to talk about Canada but now all I have is blue balls. :(

[Fathom Zero]

Hahaha

What about beer?

[AChimp]

This thread is now about beer.

[Fathom Zero]

AChimp, what, for your money, is the best Canadian beer that money could buy? What do you reach for the most?

[Evil Robot II]

Does Molson run the canadian government and wireless industry?

[AChimp]

I drink a lot of Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale, which is a national brand that you might be able to acquire in the USA.

I find as I get older, the more I dislike dark beers. :(

[AChimp]

Does Molson run the canadian government and wireless industry?

If by "run" you mean "fuels" then yes.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Chimpy, how big a deal is "Arctic sovereignty" up there? Is the country worried about territorial disputes up there?

[AChimp]

The current government likes to make a big show of parading through the North with military exercises and stuff, but the average Canadian isn't really concerned with what's going on. There are disputes between Canada and Russia about where the actual border is based on international waters and the location of the continental shelf. If I recall correctly, Russia had one of their submarines plant a flag on the ocean floor a few years ago that resulted in a lot of posturing on both sides. There's a ton of oil up there, but it's too expensive to drill right now so no one is really fighting over anything.

For most people, the islands are so far away that they don't really matter. If anything actually happened, it wouldn't take much to get Canadians all riled up about it, though. There's some island near Greenland that had some Danish sailors plant a flag on, so we sent a bunch of guys there to kick it over. This resulted in a lot of chest-puffing and calls to invade Denmark.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Island

Since then, we've pretty much agreed to split the island in half.