Thursday, May 31, 2007

Why waste money on ads...

when you can just show Dion in action.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Snakes on a Plane: Egypt Edition

700 of them to be precise.

Free Homes. It is in the Constitution.

Did you know the the Canadian Constitution guarantees housing, shelter and food to everyone in Canada? I was not aware of this either, but according to 'protester' David Cunningham of the Anti-Poverty Committee, these rights are included in the constitution.

Listen to the interview here, the constitution comment starts around the 7:45 mark. Ht SDA

Damn, and I have been wasting all this time working to pay for all of those things when all I had to do was put out my hand and get my constitutionally granted house.

Time to head downtown and trash Premier Stelmach's office. Maybe someone could let the CBC know that I am on my way so they have time to set up their cameras.


Al

Monday, May 14, 2007

Another GT Moment

This little gem from our old friend Garth Turner, who has written a little critique of the CPC website on his blog. He seems to have an issue with some spelling on the CPC site and writes the following:

"Do the young ones know how to spell ‘aloud’? If the Cons are feeling so confident, then why’s half their web site a trashing of Stephane Dion? Have the blackhead-poppers replaced Doug Finley? Do Conservatives think Canadians want negative politics? Have they read a poll lately? Do they think stupid, out-of-contenxt pictures will make people vote for them? Are these the folks you want running the country?

And, no, we’re not making this up."


I do not know who the "we" are who write your blog Garth, but maybe you could get one of them could run a spell checker.


updated: The old Garth supports cuts to the court challenges program among other things, but his current party is against that. Ht: Christian Conservative



Saturday, May 12, 2007

Duceppe Out of PQ Leadership race

Breaking: Gilles Duceppe has decided not to seek the leadership of the PQ and has chosen to throw his support behind Pauline Marois.

Update : CTV has the story here.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Nicolas Ruszkowski's first order of business

For Nicolas Ruszkowski, who has been brought on to help improve Stephane Dion's image, this should be his first order of business.

No more pictures like this one.


Stephane Dion with disgraced former Liberal candidate Farhan Chak

Thursday, May 10, 2007

AFP, Call your lawyers.

A good rule of thumb for MSM in general, and AFP in particular:-- Fact checkers are always cheaper than lawyers.

Some more advice:-- A simple 30 second Google Search can go a long way in preventing your organization from looking incompetent to your customers/audience.

For those of you in what we Bloggers like to refer to as the MSM (main stream media),which is of course a money making business where credibility should matter, would it not make sense for you to actually check stuff out before you send a story out on the wire around the world where it is picked up by and sourced by other news organizations, bloggers and anyone else who is interested? Basic fact checking; is that really too much to ask for?

It just might be if you take a look at a recent story, that I think most of you are already familiar with: the Mike Lake / Bigfoot story.

Consider the following:

On Feb 16, 2007 a petition was brought to the constituency office of MP Mike Lake by Ross Shuliak and Todd Standing of Sylvanic.com. The petition asks for the government to provide protection for the creature known as Bigfoot, and was signed by over 300 people mainly from Western Canada.

Watch it on video here *Please note in the video where Mr. Shuliak acknowledges that, by Mike Lake accepting the petition, it does not constitute his support for the petition.

March 28th, 2007. Mike Lake tabled the petition in the House of Commons and at no point did Mike Lake speak about the petition in the HoC, nor has he ever indicated his own support for the petition, but rather he presented it to the Clerk of Petitions where it was deemed to be in order and was accepted.

April 5th 2007. Here is how the Edmonton Sun covered the story (Original link but now PPV) (Highlighting mine)

Max Maudie Edmonton Sun: "An Edmonton MP has presented the government with a petition to protect Bigfoot.

Edmonton-Mill Woods- Beaumont MP Mike Lake offered the petition up March 28 in the House of Commons on behalf of a constituent who’s convinced Bigfoot exists and needs legal protection.

“You don’t make judgment calls on petitions,” Lake told Sun Media yesterday. “We try to do it as a service to constituents.”
Asked whether or not he believed in Bigfoot, the Tory offered a firm “No,” followed by a chuckle.
“But if he did exist, I’m sure he would vote NDP,” Lake kidded.
Todd Standing, 33, is the Bigfoot seeker behind the petition, signed by about 500 people, he said.
He claims to have at least 12 seconds of video footage that proves Bigfoot exists. He’s worked it into a 30-minute documentary.
The movie is called Sylvanic, a derivative of a native word used in southern British Columbia to describe the “shadow guardians of the mountains,” said the moviemaker.
The fact the petition will now be considered by the government is a “huge victory,” said Standing.
“Now that we’re in the nation’s business, people are going to start taking me seriously. People ask me, ‘Why would you do it? It doesn’t make any sense.’
“Of course it makes sense, because I’ve really found the species. Anyone could go out and execute these animals, and I can’t allow that to transpire.”
He won’t say where in the Rocky Mountains he caught Bigfoot on camera.
“When you have a Bigfoot discovery, men with guns show up,” he said. “People lie and deceive and cheat because it’s worth millions when you (find Bigfoot and) become famous.”
The government hasn’t yet responded to the petition, but has 45 days from the time it was presented to do so."
The facts were clear and concise, and the story passed without much notice or fanfare from anyone; that changed however, when another story made it out on the wire, because in this story the facts had somehow changed.

May 2nd, 2007. A new AFP story appears: Picked up world wide by the other media outlets and bloggers alike. A Google search reveals over 12000 hits on key words from the story. (Highlighting mine, and shortened for brevity)


OTTAWA (AFP) - Bigfoot, the legendary hairy man-like beast said to roam the wildernesses of North America, is not shy, merely so rare it risks extinction and should be protected as an endangered species.
So says Canadian MP Mike Lake who has called for Bigfoot to be protected under Canada's species at risk act, alongside Whooping Cranes, Blue Whales, and Red Mulberry trees.
"The debate over their (Bigfoot's) existence is moot in the circumstance of their tenuous hold on merely existing," reads a petition presented by Lake to parliament in March and due to be discussed next week.
"Therefore, the petitioners request the House of Commons to establish immediate, comprehensive legislation to affect immediate protection of Bigfoot," says the petition signed by almost 500 of Lake's constituents in Edmonton, Alberta.
A similar appeal has been made to the US Congress.
Down through history, there have been numerous, if unsubstantiated sightings of Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch in North American folklore......


Another version or perhaps morphed evolution of the same story from a Canadian Newspaper, The Province *Not sourced directly to AFP, but too similar in wording for coincidence.

Protect Bigfoot as species at risk: MP

Published: Thursday, May 03, 2007

OTTAWA -- The sasquatch, the legendary hairy man-like beast said to roam the wilderness of B.C. and other parts of North America, should be protected as an endangered species, says MP Mike Lake.
He wants the sasquatch -- a.k.a. Bigfoot -- to be protected under Canada's Species at Risk Act.
A petition to the House of Commons, signed by almost 500 of Lake's constituents in Edmonton and due for debate next week, asks the government "to establish immediate, comprehensive legislation to effect immediate protection of Bigfoot."
A similar appeal has been made to the U.S. Congress.
Bigfoot researcher Todd Standing, who was behind the petition, claims to have proof of the sasquatch's existence and says he fears for its safety.
One might think that The Province might know that petitions do not get debated in the HOC in Canada, but then again I am a media optimist and still hold out some hope.


May 5th, 2007. Another slightly morphed version? appears and can be seen here. This version differs in that it comes from The Press Association and it now refers to the petition as "His petition", but it also continues to get some basic facts wrong.


To put it nicely, the above stories do not reflect the facts as they occurred, and even a simple fact such as where those 500 people who signed the petition live was not even checked out. Just about any Blogger would do a better job than this, and even a new Blogger would never be so stupid as to attribute words and views to Mike Lake that are simply not true and which could be easily verified in minutes. There is a term for this, but I cannot think of it at this time; perhaps the legal department at AFP might be able to help me out with my little memory lapse, but I digress.

A simple Google search or even a phone call could have prevented it all, but once the story managed to hit the wires, more fuel was to be be added to the fire as numerous bloggers of all political stripes and from all around the globe have commented on Mike Lake based on these news stories. To be honest, I can not blame them at all if the source of news they were using was itself corrupt; after all, a trusted source for news had come up with the story so why would anyone suspect that AFP did not check the facts? They are the pros after all.
A tip of the hat to Calgary Grit, Cowboys for Social responsibility, and Scott Tribe, Liberal Bloggers who all love to nail it to the Conservatives on a regular basis, but upon learning the facts of this story have since changed their stance on the entire affair. It is not often that Conservatives and Liberals agree that a news story is bogus, but in this case the truth is clear.


So there you have it. A very poorly researched news story is released, it gets picked up by MSM and bloggers worldwide, is read by countless numbers of people who now believe it to be the truth, and all the while doing yet untold damage to the credibility of Mike Lake.

What can be done? I do not know, but if AFP were to issue a correction on this ASAP, and perhaps think about employing more fact checkers, it would be a good start.


And lastly for your entertainment may I present yet one more 'version' of the story.
This morph sums it up nicely as it now includes the little gem that Mike Lake is a member of the RCMP.
I mean if the original story is not factual anyway, why not just add a little homegrown make believe into it before posting it to the web. Note how in this version Mike Lake has some new words attributed to him, not found in any of the other versions of this story. "According to Mr. Lake, the creature that is also known as the Sasquatch is real, and is endangered."


From the RCMP version:
A member of the Canadian Mounted Police by the name of Mike Lake has officially notified the Canadian Parliament that he believes that Bigfoot should be added to the Nation's, Species at Risk Act. This is similar to the Endangered Species List in the United States.

According to Mr. Lake, the creature that is also known as the Sasquatch is real, and is endangered. The reason, he says that there have not been more sightings in North America of Bigfoot is because the creature is endangered, not necessarily shy like many believe.

Garbage in, garbage out I guess.



Al


Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Friends of Denis Coderre

No, this post is not about Denis' Facebook buddy list, but rather a list of what some of his others friends recently had to say about Denis.

Fuddle Duddle, The Sir Robert Bond Papers, and at least 1 of the Maple Three, are not happy with Denis and have some thoughts on his future in the Liberal Party of Canada. It is nice to see them all come together under the unifying leadership of Stephane Dion for such a good cause.

Speaking of the ongoing Coderre/Doan fiasco, our old friend Garth speaks out here, and Cerberus has some thoughts on how bad the politics of this reflects on the Liberals.

And to think some Liberal supporters have said that last week had been their best week in opposition. I would hate to have seen a bad week.

And what post on the friends of Denis Coderre would be complete without a reference to his pal Marc Yvan Coté of adscam fame; whom both Coderre and Dion want to let back into the Liberal Party even after Coté admitted that he had received $120,000 in $100 bills from the executive director of the party's Quebec wing and distributed that money to 12 Liberal candidates in the 1997 federal election. Who were those candidates anyway?




Al

Sunday, May 06, 2007

This time they have gone too far!!

The evil conservative right wing agenda has revealed itself. They have finally gone to far, and I do not know about you, but I am not going to put up with this nonsense in any way shape or form from the Harper government

I do understand that sometimes things are done by governments to try to gain the votes among certain select areas of the population, but this is so over the top that I have to speak out on behalf of my country.

What am I talking about you ask?

Earlier today ,while I was visiting an official website of a department of the government of Canada, I came across this and managed to get a screenshot of the madness.


Please click on the picture below to enlarge and feel the outrage.


Yes, it is true. The Conservative government, in cahoots with Environment Canada, has decided to eliminate Mondays from the calender!!!!

It might be a subversive way to help meet our Kyoto targets, or it just might be a ploy to piss off Paul Martin's buddy Bono and appeal to Bob Geldof, but either way this outright pandering for votes must stop immediately. I am unsure how Stephane Dion feels about this, but all I can say is that so far his silence on this has been greatly disturbing.


Al

I don't like Mondays either, but come on.

Friday, May 04, 2007

Shane Doan, exposing stupid politicians everywhere.

Gilles Duceppe digs that hole just a little deeper with his latest thoughts on the Shane Doan fiasco.

From The Star : Gilles Duceppe said it was wrong to make Doan captain of Canada's world championship team while the star forward remains embroiled in two defamation suits related to the alleged anti-French slur. "When someone robs a bank he's presumed innocent until proven guilty – but I don't know many people who'd name them bank manager while the trial's still on," Duceppe said. "They want to name him captain even before the verdict comes in. It makes no sense. It's an insult to Quebecers."


My sides are hurting here from the laughter. Gilles figures that Doan should not be the captain of Team Canada while Doan is involved in 2 lawsuits with Denis Coderre, but it is OK for himself to be the leader of the BQ while he is involved with Stephane Dion in a defamation suit of his own.

Priceless.


Al

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Farhan Chak steps aside

As just reported on local news, Farhan Chak ( I will leave out the Dr. part) has stepped down as the Liberal candidate in Edmonton Millwoods Beaumont.

The Globe has the story here. Steve Janke has it here, with some worthwhile commentary.

Bloggers do make a difference.

Some History : http://stevejanke.com/archives/223406.php

http://stevejanke.com/archives/224367.php

http://stevejanke.com/archives/224485.php


Al

The more you know

The Dion led Liberals continue to be inept.

I am surprised that the Liberals continue to go on about the Afghan detainee story when they know that the longer this remains an issue, the more that comes out about their major role in the entire mess. I noted last week that the Liberals have a very short memory regarding the facts of the matter and the longer this goes on the worse off the Liberals look for playing politics for politics sake. Dumb politics; unless you really do think the average Canadian voter is too stupid to figure out the truth. Think Mark Holland and the boxes all over again, as what first looks like good news for the Liberals turns out to be an poor political mistake in the end.

--------------------

Speaking about dumb politics:

Why are the opposition parties wasting the governments and everyone else's time on Shane Doan? This is the type of crap that puts the average Canadian off politics, and yet some of theses clowns in Ottawa couldn't care less what the average Canadian thinks and will pursue this only for their own political gain. Pathetic.

Isn't Denis Coderre involved in not 1, but 2 different matters of litigation with Shane Doan in regards to this very subject? I am not a lawyer nor do I play one on television, but should someone already involved in a matter before the courts, be speaking out publicly on the matter or be using his position in parliament to do ANYTHING at all that could effect these court cases? The optics on this look bad to Denis, but it is par for the course of late with how the Libs are doing things.

----------------

* "What a stupid B&%$^#!"

Dions new pal Elizabeth May put her foot in her mouth a few days ago when, among other things, she compared the governments climate change stance to the appeasement of the Nazis. Even Dion, who ignored the subject in the House, eventually had to come out against the over the top remarks by May; "We should not use it -- for the very reason that in the spectrum of power, the Nazi regime is beyond any comparison, so I'm uncomfortable with the reference to Chamberlain about anything else than what happened in the Second World War.", but that didn't seem to have any effect on May as she made matters even worse when she tried to defend herself. She is fitting right in with the Liberals in the bad optics department.

* To borrow the lame excuse Elizabeth May tried to use: I am only quoting someone else, so I claim to neither agree nor disagree with the quote and assume no responsibility for it.

I think about as many people will believe me as did believe Lizzy with that one.


Al