Skip to content

Month: February 2017

About Bill C-23, “armed US border guards in Canada”

Published by MichelV69 on February 24, 2017

Post Views: 1,455 First, go read: https://openparliament.ca/bills/42-1/C-23/ … this process started with the CPC government. But even that doesn’t mean it’s automatically bad. If, as a Canadian, you have never travelled by air or train into the United States, the rhetoric around this bill about “armed American guards” on Canadian soil empowered to do “strip searches” can seem pretty outrageous. Here’s the thing … if you’ve ever flown out of Halifax, Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver on your way to the USA, you were already part of a similar set of rules. In fact, if you’ve ever traveled to the United States of America by car, you have voluntarily put yourself at the mercy of the exact same set of rules.  As soon as you set foot in US territory, you…

Continue readingAbout Bill C-23, “armed US border guards in Canada”
Leave a Comment

“My Team Sucked” — Denying Good Play In MMOs

Published by MichelV69 on February 17, 2017

Post Views: 1,304 The other evening I was playing one of my favourite MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online game), “World of Warships“.  Over the dozen or so matches I played, there were three really outstanding games.  Everything on my team went well — good communication, skillful play, good sportsmanship and smart tactics. In all three matches, someone on the other team made a statement like along the lines of VBG.  My team sucked.  They played about as well as a bunch of potatoes. “VBG” is online short hand for “very bad game“;  it’s the polar opposite of the ubiquitous “GG”, or “Good Game“.  “GG” is like shaking hands with the other team at the end of a bowling match or a hockey game.  It’s being a gracious winner and…

Continue reading“My Team Sucked” — Denying Good Play In MMOs
Leave a Comment

From Pearl Harbor, to a Lack of Federal Voting Reform in Canada

Published by MichelV69 on February 10, 2017

Post Views: 849 First, A Bit of History Ok, so I know you think I am stretching here, but give me a chance to explain why voter reform was doomed by an event more than seventy-five years ago. On December 9th, 1941, Imperial Japan declared war on the United States of America. To this point, most historians will agree that the USA was maintaining a public neutral face(1 2 3) in the war in Europe, and the war in the Pacific. While the US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized the danger the Axis powers represented, “…The American public was decidedly isolationist and antiwar. Memories of the expense of World War I — in lives and money — were still fresh. In 1934, Congress passed the Johnson Act, which…

Continue readingFrom Pearl Harbor, to a Lack of Federal Voting Reform in Canada
Leave a Comment

PM Trudeau’s White Elephant

Published by MichelV69 on February 1, 2017

Post Views: 498 So, Keystone XL will be PM Trudeau’s White Elephant gift from the USA. We literally cannot afford to say no … but we cannot afford to agree to it, either. As a result of a decade of systemic decline in the Canadian economy of almost everything -except- resource extraction, the nation had no “airbag” to soak the impact of a collapsing global oil market. For example, the lower Canadian dollar would have been a boon to our manufacturing sector … save that the manufacturing sector had atrophied in the previous decade.  This, in turn, did remarkable damage to the over all fiscal liquidity of the nation. To fix house that hasn’t had repairs in ten years, you have to go to the bank and get…

Continue readingPM Trudeau’s White Elephant
Leave a Comment