Stephen Harper Cartoons

CANADA - Stephen Harper Cartoons:

Harper's tax cuts hurt coffers during recession

CANADA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper confirmed today he would use millions to help out hard hit Ontario , but Harper's ability to respond to the crisis has been undercut by his own government's record of tax cuts, which has emptied federal coffers, the parliamentary budget officer concluded in a report released yesterday.

Budget officer Kevin Page concluded the federal Conservatives are likely to run budget deficits "in the near term," possibly beginning this year, and that the fault lies as much with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty as it does with the weak economy. Page's report projects a budget deficit of $3.9 billion in 2009-10. But it adds that, if the economic downturn proves worse than expected, next year's federal deficit could hit $14 billion.

Page says the deterioration of the federal government's financial picture in the first nine months of 2008 is not so much the result of the weakened economy as Flaherty's policies, particularly the latest reduction in the GST and reduced corporate income taxes.

In his opening speech to the 40th Parliament, Harper pledged to make federal regional development funding available to high unemployment communities in southern Ontario for the first time. But he was sketchy on details such as how much money the Conservatives will commit or when funds might be delivered.

The government is hampered by a weak financial picture and its own dwindling coffers, which will be laid bare when Flaherty delivers his fall economic statement to Parliament next Thursday.

Harper defended his government's policies, denying his goals was just to give tax cuts to the rich. Over the past 18 months, the Conservatives have shown a distinct preference for corporate tax cuts rather than new direct spending on social or economic programs by Ottawa.

Harper has also remained mum on whether Canada will help General Motors, Chrysler and Ford plants, which are currently warning they may go bankrupt. If the US bails out the automotive industry but Canada does not those companies may go south of the border permanently.

TheCall to stop Homosexuality

RELIGION - On November 1st approx. 10,000 religious wackos gathered for a day of prayer, fasting and gay-bashing (this event was dubbed "TheCall" by the event organizers). Their goal? They thought that if they had enough people praying to Jesus together that God would somehow get rid of homosexuality in California.

I am not kidding around. This is what they actually thought would happen.

Now admittedly, Proposition 8 (a gay marriage ban) did pass 3 days later during the United States election, so the religious wackos are viewing that as an answer to their prayers for now.

Some of them also believe homosexuality is caused by the devil, and that it can be exorcised. That idea is pretty fruity all by itself.

Such people form the backbone of Christian Conservatives and frankly they give conservatives in general a bad name.

I mean... who actually believes God will wave his hand and poof the gays will stop being gay? It doesn't work that way. Never has, never will. God gave mankind free will to do whatever they want.

All this does is reveal that there is at least 10,000 religious bigots living in California.

And HOW exactly is this a conservative issue? It isn't. Its just a religious one. I wish religious wackos would stop calling themselves conservatives because they evidently don't know the difference.

SPECIAL NOTE

During his two terms in office George W. Bush did not endorse a single piece of gay rights legislation, but neither did he oppose any. He even met with the group Log Cabin Republicans, a right-wing gay rights group. Officially Bush is opposed to gay marriages due to Republican policy, but he's made no real efforts to hinder gay rights and has actually done the reverse with appointments.

Bush is the first Republican president to appoint an openly gay man to serve in his administration, Scott Evertz as director of the Office of National AIDS Policy. His nominee as ambassador to Romania, Michael E. Guest, also became the first openly gay man to be confirmed by the Senate as a U.S. ambassador.

So if George W. Bush can set aside his differences, why can't religious wackos?

Americans buying guns like crazy after Obama win

UNITED STATES - Sales of rifles, pistols and ammo are surging in parts of the United States, as many gun owners fear President-elect Barack Obama's administration may seek to tighten ownership of certain weapons.

"The day after the election, I had many more calls than usual from people looking for semi-automatic rifles," said David Greenberg, the owner of the Second Amendment Family Gun Shop, in Bisbee, Arizona, who sold out of AR-15 rifles in recent days. "There seems to be a fear they will be banned, and it's fairly likely."

Gun stores and trade groups have reported a spike in firearms sales in the run-up to the Nov. 4 election victory of Democrat Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden, who many perceive as strongly pro-gun control.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the shooting, hunting and firearms industry, reported a 10 per cent jump in gun sales this year based on its analysis of an excise tax placed on firearms and ammunition, and a spokesman said the increase had grown dramatically ahead of the election.

Obama stated his support for the right to bear arms during campaigning, although both he and Biden back a permanent ban on assault weapons – military-style semi-automatic rifles – and "common sense measures" to keep guns away from children and criminals, positions which spurred concern among some gun enthusiasts.

In McPherson, Kansas, gun dealer Steve Sechler said demand at a gun show last weekend jumped by more than 50 per cent as buyers rushed to stock up on guns including Kalashnikov and AR-15 rifles.

Obama loyalists say gun owners need not fear curbs when he takes office in January. The Democratic governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland, told a rally last month he had spoken directly to Obama about the right to bear arms. "If you are a sportsman, if you are a gun owner, if you are someone that honours and respects the Second Amendment, you have nothing to fear from Barack Obama," he said.

The lobbying arm of the powerful National Rifle Association, however, stoked concerns during the campaign, calling Obama a "serious threat to Second Amendment liberties."

Among other complaints, they accused Obama of endorsing a 500-per cent increase in the federal excise tax on firearms and ammunition – a comment he made as an Illinois state Senator in Illinois in 1999, but has not repeated since then.

Remember my article about whether the KKK might try to assassinate Obama?

Well, there is always a second possibility. A member of the NRA might try to assassinate Obama too.

Mind you, that would only leave Joe Biden in the president's seat and even more determined to ban assault rifles.

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8 Year Old Shoots Father and His Friend

YESTERDAY - An 8 year old boy in Arizona has been charged with two counts of premeditated murder after he gunned down his father and another man with a .22 rifle, St. Johns Police Chief Roy Melnick said. The boy has since confessed to the murder, but investigators are still trying to determine if the deaths were accident or intentional.

Incidents like this, school shootings and the like, will fuel the belief that banning guns and creating tighter controls around children and guns will make a difference in the USA. Remember that America has more guns than cars, people or even pets. Americans LOVE their guns.

The Republican Blame Game

The Republican blame game has begun. See this post about Barack Obama's win for example.

The financial meltdown, the George W. Bush legacy, leftist media, the touchy-feely slogans of “reaching across the aisle”...

But frankly it was all Sarah Palin's fault, or more specifically John McCain's fault for picking her.

This morning a Fox News reporter who'd been on the McCain plane related how McCain's campaign manager hemmed and hawed when asked about Palin's effect on the Republican ticket. So evidently McCain's inner circle is blaming Palin too.

See Also:

Palin raising fears among Republican conservatives

Sarah Palin Prank Call from Nicolas Sarkozy

If John McCain kicks the bucket...

U.S. jobless claims hit 7-year high

Is Sarah Palin becoming a liability for John McCain?

Saturday Night Live Parody of Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton

Sarah Palin, America's right-wing sweetheart

America shifts to the Left

Extremism in America's right wing has scared Americans into voting for Barack Obama.

Congratulations to President Obama for running a flawless campaign.

Democrats in the USA should be thanking Sarah Palin for f*&king up John McCain's election bid and causing no end of scandals.

China and India reshaping world

POLITICS - Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch says the ongoing metamorphosis of China and India from historic backwaters into economic powers will help reshape the world in the next few decades.

The News Corp. chief gave an upbeat assessment of the future and made a vigorous case for free markets despite troubled economic times and what he called "naked, heartless aggression" in the world.

In the first of a series of speeches in his birth country of Australia, Murdoch spoke Sunday of "the great transformation we've seen in the past few decades, the unleashing of human talent and ability across our world, and the golden age for humankind that I see just around the corner."

He said China and India are great countries whose people are only recently emerging from long histories of being "incarcerated by communism or caste." The rise of their economies is creating a new middle class that would be three billion strong within 30 years and that is setting a new benchmark for global competitiveness.

"The world has never seen this kind of advance before," Murdoch said. "These are people who have known deprivation. These are people who are intent on developing their skills, improving their lives and showing the world what they can do."

Murdoch, whose New York-based conglomerate includes Twentieth Century Fox, Fox News Channel, Dow Jones & Co. as well as newspaper stables in Australia and Britain and the online networking site MySpace, described the global financial crisis as one of many challenges facing Australia.

He urged Australia to embrace internationalism and touched on a range of global issues, from international security to the commercial opportunities offered by the world's need for cleaner energy.

Murdoch's remarks came in the first of six lectures to be sent out on radio nationally by the Australian Broadcasting Corp. – this year's edition of an annual series of talks by prominent Australians.

Murdoch said that in another speech he would give his opinions on the future of newspapers, which are suffering a severe downturn, especially in the United States, as advertising revenue is lost to the Internet.

He made a strong pitch for freer trade between countries, taking agriculture as an example and saying that reducing artificial barriers is a moral and strategic issue.

"So we must continue to leverage our connections and continue to push when others have left the conference table," he said. "The global trade dialogue should echo with Australian accents."

Touching on security, he chided Europe for appearing to have "lost the will to confront aggression" and said NATO should be reformed into a group based on common values, not geography, and include countries like Australia as members.

"In this promising new century, we are still seeing naked, heartless aggression – whether it comes from a terrorist bombing in Islamabad or a Russian invasion of Georgia," Murdoch said.

"We can lament these developments, but we cannot hide from them," he said, noting Australia's contribution of troops to Afghanistan and Iraq.

In an interview published in The Weekend Australian on Saturday, Murdoch said governments have only limited power to fix the financial crisis, though they could make it worse.

Murdoch warned that a rise in protectionism in the United States "could add to all sorts of tensions in the world financial system and the world trading system and eventually all the way down to employment."

Conservatives Vs Christians

POLITICS/RELIGION - It used to be that Conservative government meant you believed in a small government. The idea is relatively simple, there are basically three types of government sizes:

1. Dictatorship, a government so small that its basically just the leader giving orders to his/her underlings. Dictatorships are typically rife with corruption and even brutal military actions. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

2. A small "conservative" government which tries to run things more efficiently by having less people and less bureaucracy. In theory it is more efficient, but runs the risk of corruption and nepotism. If there is corruption ideally they must also be accountable for their actions.

3. A large bureaucratic government in which there's lots of forms to fill out and issues are debated constantly in order to prevent nepotism and corruption. Corruption can still happen, but the bureaucracy is there to try and keep it in check.

In recent years the word Conservative however has been co-opted by the Christian right-wing. Today the words Christian and Conservative tends to go hand-in-hand and its reached a point where its becoming both annoying and distressing.

For me, when I tell people I am a Conservative I usually have to stick a Progressive in front of it in order to differentiate myself from Christian wackos. I myself was raised a Christian, I do celebrate Christmas/Easter/etc., but I don't attend church and I also celebrate Halloween (which is considered to be a pagan holiday and forbidden by the more "orthodox" Christians), and I haven't read a bible in years.

I don't have any problem with people believing in god, the god or even a multitude of gods. You can believe in reincarnation for all I care. Your choice, not mine.

What I find distressing is the growing number of Conservative Christians in politics. George W. Bush, Stockwell Day, Stephen Harper, John McCain, Sarah Palin just to name a few. These are people who actually BELIEVE in Adam and Eve.

Even I, a born and raised Christian, doesn't believe in the existence of Adam and Eve. Oh sure, I'm sure there's a first man and woman who could be considered the first humans ever, but it was the result of evolution. I'm not going to get into the dynamics of whether there's such a thing as divine evolution so lets just say I believe God is a divine creator, who created the universe and everything in it, and in doing so also created evolution. God being all-knowing and wise likely has a very good reason for creating evolution and its probably something to do with survival of the fittest.

The point I am trying to make is that Conservative Christians actually believe all the things they read in the bible. They believe in Adam/Eve, that Jesus really walked on water and performed miracles, and they also believe in the Apocalypse.

And its the Apocalypse aspect that scares me. These are people who don't just believe in the Apocalypse, they're waiting for it to happen. Take a look at the number of Christian gun clubs there are in the United States and Canada. You know what they're training for? A religious war. A Jihad. The Apocalypse. Call it what you will, it all amounts to killing people of a different faith just because they call their god a different name like Allah or Jehovah or Dios.

I stuck the Spanish word for God "Dios" in there because thats all it really is, a linguistic difference. Allah is the Arabic word for god and Jehovah is the Hebrew word for god. Same god, different languages and slightly different religions.

And I say slightly for a reason. Islam and Christianity are so ridiculously similar its amazing they fight back and forth. Islam also has Jesus Christ (he's considered a prophet), Abraham, the Great Flood, Adam/Eve, the Commandments, etc. Judaism also has many of the same stories, except for Jesus who they believed was a charlatan.

I consider myself a god-fearing Christian, and by that I mean I am expected to do good in the world or else I will punished in the next. Killing people in the name of my religion doesn't seem very good to me. I don't care what lies we tell ourselves, its still murder and inherently wrong.

What disturbs and worries me is the percentage of people online who claim they're in favour of lining up Jews, Arabs, Homosexuals and basically anyone they don't like and shooting them all. Thats the kind of dictatorship sentiment you'd hear from a Hitler-wannabe. They would never admit it publicly, but they'll say it online just to piss people off or promote their racial/religious views.

And that is not Conservatism. Its fascism. It has nothing to do with small government that takes responsibility for its actions and is accountable.

Lets take an issue like abortion. This is not a Conservative issue, its a women's issue and a religious one too. On one side we have religious folks who think its wrong (they argue it counts as murder) and that it should not be allowed, and on the other side we have women/men who think its up to the woman to decide for herself because there's no proof a fetus is alive at early stages of pregnancy (it has no brain or heart of its own). Nothing to do with small government, everything to do with personal beliefs.

Lets take another issue like free health care. In Canada this is a no brainer as both conservatives and liberals support free health care, and indeed so does much of the industrialized world. The United States is the only country in the Americas or Europe that DOES NOT have free health care. There are those in the USA who say they should adopt an European/Canadian style of health care. This doesn't have anything to do with small government either.

The real reason why these Christian right-wingers profess to be Conservatives is because they know small governments are closer to dictatorships and are more easily corrupted. They think if they can just get enough pro-lifers or anti-free-health-care people into the Conservative government then they can control the moral direction the country takes.

But thats not how government or society works. People want their freedom and they deserve free health care. If we deny them something it will backlash in our faces and we will see liberalism, large bureaucratic governments and fiscal irresponsibility.

Conservative governments are about being small, fiscally responsible and accountable. Its not about forcing people to worship Jesus. End of story.

$300 Million to Enlarge Stephen Harper's Caucus

CANADA - Something occurred to me today about last week's election. Stephen Harper knew when he called the election that he would most likely win a minority government (and he did win a minority).

What he also knew is that the polls were in his favour that he would enlarge his party's caucus.

So... Harper's government called a new election and spent $300 million dollars of taxpayers money, and the only result was Stephen Harper enlarged the size of his caucus (pun intended).

As a taxpayer I think Canadians should be really pissed off right now. Harper called this election just so he could maintain his grip on power by enlarging his caucus. Talk about ego.

Politics really annoys people at times, and wasting taxpayers' money on one man's ego ranks high as one of many voters' pet peeves.

Barack Obama Vs the KKK Assassins

UNITED STATES - What happens if Barack Obama wins the American election? Will the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) try to assassinate him?

To research that question I decided to do a simple Google search for the words "Barack Obama" and Assassin. I got 433,000 hits.

Heck, an image search got 119,000 hits.

To double check this speculative idea I did of search of the white supremacist forum website Stormfront for the same words. I got 17 results for the words Barack Obama assassin out of the 13,500 Stormfront pages that mention Obama.

The topic on top of the forum list moaned and groaned about the "What If" scenario of possible repercussions against the KKK if someone did actually assassinate Barack Obama.

Instead, and I was quite shocked by this, the people on Stormfront seem surprisingly supportive of Obama... in a reverse logic sort of way. They think that a black president will be so horribly bad that the KKK will somehow grow in popularity.

He also bitched and moaned about losing the America of his "forefathers", affirmative action, that black people are unqualified to work higher paying jobs, and that Obama was a sign of a discrimination against whites. Reverse logic or just plain bonkers?

In conclusion it doesn't look like they will try to assassinate Obama. Instead they seem intent on trying to take advantage of the situation, in hopes of bolstering their numbers.

SPECIAL NOTE: The KKK has been considered a terrorist organization since 1871. Why hasn't the US government got rid of these terrorists?

Stormfront collectively doesn't support Republicans either. They think the Republicans are too pro-Israel and John McCain strongly supports Israel. They hate Sarah Palin too because she's a woman and even questioning "Is Sarah Palin Jewish?" They also despise George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell. No surprise there.

I assume Barack Obama has been thanking Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell for paving the way to his presidency (I have little doubt Obama will win). Rice and Powell have raised the glass ceiling for African-Americans in politics and by doing so now allows Obama to remove that glass ceiling completely. Powell has even pledged his support for Obama. That is bipartisan politics, the kind of politics a centrist like myself likes to see.

Taking a look around what the Stormfront/KKK people had to say they seem to favour a third party candidates like Chuck Baldwin, John de Nugent and Ron Paul. Never heard of them. In the world of politics, third parties in the USA are not worth mentioning.

I guess we can't be too surprised from the crap Stormfront people say. They apparently think the Jews killed John F. Kennedy and that the recent $700 billion bailout of Wall Street investment banks is... a Jewish conspiracy to steal American money.

According to White Supremacists everything is a Zionist conspiracy, including the NASA moon landing, the Iraq War and everything else the White House does. They're completely convinced the Jews control everything.

Frighteningly stupid and ignorant in my opinion. I know its a stereotype to say that racist people are ignorant, but its so true.

And don't think that Canada doesn't have racism too and its share of stupidity. Just look at the Conservative Party and their lack of non-White MPs. Not very progressive at all. (I miss the Progressive Conservatives.)

If I had a vote in the US election I would definitely be voting for Barack Obama under the current circumstances. As a centrist Conservative my gut feeling is that McCain is an old fool and doesn't know what he's doing, Sarah Palin is a puppet and the only real leader is Barack Obama.

People will recognize real leaders when they see them. They stand up for others and look forward to a day when we can stand united and strong, regardless of sex, race or creed. They stand up for Freedom, and isn't that what every American wants?