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"His singular appeal as a politician was “customer service.” He answered the phone calls of his constituents. Personally. He showed up to their door to attend to their little problems. And constituents never forgot that."
this is how you win elections people.... he never lost.
He was a 4/10 Mayor and the left-wing pinko-commie-socialists that run the city painted him as a 0/10 Mayor.
On March 20 2016 03:22 killa_robot wrote:
On February 26 2016 09:31 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
On February 26 2016 08:54 killa_robot wrote: B) Jobs have more to do with your connections than education anyway
vast oversimplification. a big reason you build your most valuable "connections" is due to productive competence. and, most of the time that starts off with being able to read and write and use logic effectively.
Seeing as the discussion originated from a post about Ontario Universities : go to a co-op school like Waterloo and you can start building your people network long before you graduate.
Yeah... no. It's nice to believe that, but nearly all research into job searching shows that most jobs are not even publicly advertised (AKA - The Hidden Job Market). The thought that education matters more than access to said jobs doesn't even make sense.
You're right though in that being competent is all it takes to impress most people (which is rather sad). You still need to actually impress others for it to matter and to get ahead though. Education by itself doesn't usually accomplish that.
when u enroll in the waterloo co-op program you are granted access to amazing job search resources and a fuck-tonne of employers are aggressively recruiting on campus. Your direct competition for jobs is other students in the same program you are in.
i easily found/retained employment for all 8 of my co-op work terms and so did almost all my classmates. The very few that didn't find a job didn't want a job.
We graduated with solid work experience and if we were diligent a nice little job-centric social network. Lots of guys in my class are making 100K+ 5 years after graduating due to a combination of talent, hard work and opportunism.
Congrats? You found that your university was really well connected, which is the key to success. You're literally supporting my exact argument, lol.
well connected because of the top notch abilities of its students. the recruiters are looking for the absolute best engineering students. and they know where to find them. the abilities of the students to produce makes the "connections" possible.
ability comes first... social connections are teh effect.
ability and talent is the cause... social connections with really good project managers and recruiters comes later merely as an effect.
I think you legitimately believe that. I mean, you and others you know are successful, so I guess hearing it's not because of skill is hard. You're still under the impression people get where they are in life because of their own hard work and skill it seems (hint: they don't).
On April 05 2016 12:32 killa_robot wrote: It's always sad when a person loses an argument so badly they can only resort to calling the other person a troll.
And that's not the root of money's value. Like, at all, lol.
sad when someone makes a negation and does not provide a real counter. its always sad.
you've got the video plus my comments and from you.. nothing.
Why are we talking about UFC in the Canada politics mega thread, I wonder what I missed.
I guess everyone has heard but Tom Mulcair lost his position as the leader of the NDP. Personally I think that was a good choice. On a personal level I felt like he was pretty much just an aggressive derisive person and I never really learned what the NDP was actually standing for, except for the usual all-day childcare or something. But that one issue is not really enough to convince me.
For example if you went to their website during the campaign, its just an endless series of posts denigrating the conservatives and/or the liberals. Its hard to find their actual positions. Then go to the liberal website, its very clear and obvious what their positions are on dozens and dozens of issues, and I can easily find the ones I care about like the environment and global warming. And there I see a very progressive stance...just perfect.
I hope the next leader of the NDP is more focused on substance. Personally I think they should try to become the super-progressive party again, I think its a better fit for them and they may one day share the balance of power if we actually do move beyond first past the post. I guess it doesn't matter too much to me as I think the liberals are doing a pretty good job, but it would be nice to have a serious alternative that's obviously not the conservatives...(anything but conservative ).
I'm actually sad to lose Mulcair. I don't know if he would've made a great prime-minister, but he was a great leader of opposition. Apparently bringing the NDP into the centre is not what the NDP had in mind, but that's exactly what allowed me to vote for them to get rid of the Conservatives this time around (particularly positions around TPP, watchdog secret services, etc). The so-called Leap Manifesto is appalling to me, but I guess the things that would allow a typically Conservative voting person to vote NDP is exactly what makes them lose their base.
But I would've liked to hear more substance from pretty much everyone. Mulcair would talk about wanting to develop industries in Canada, which is intriguing to me, but I never heard how he intended to accomplish that- that makes the promise less intriguing.
Jack Layton almost succeeded in supplanting the Liberal Party, and re-branding the NDP as the new progressive option of choice for Canadians. If he had lived, it's entirely possible he'd be the prime minister now. But Mulcair is not Layton, and no one thinks Mulcair can match his predecessor's charisma.
I think that removing Mulcair as leader of the NDP makes sense, even if Mulcair himself didn't do anything terrible to warrant losing his job. Ultimately, Mulcair cannot win the national election unless the Liberal Party kills itself. Perhaps someone else can.
That said, the NDP will probably have to wait at least nine years before they can seriously challenge the Liberals again, assuming Trudeau can be at least as likeable as Harper (safe bet).
I think Layton will be one of those big 'what if' questions in Canadian political history. Could a Layton led NDP have taken the 2015 election? We'll never know. Certainly Layton was the first time I began to seriously consider the NDP as a possible election choice for myself.
On April 13 2016 12:06 Falling wrote: I'm actually sad to lose Mulcair. I don't know if he would've made a great prime-minister, but he was a great leader of opposition. Apparently bringing the NDP into the centre is not what the NDP had in mind, but that's exactly what allowed me to vote for them to get rid of the Conservatives this time around (particularly positions around TPP, watchdog secret services, etc). The so-called Leap Manifesto is appalling to me, but I guess the things that would allow a typically Conservative voting person to vote NDP is exactly what makes them lose their base.
But I would've liked to hear more substance from pretty much everyone. Mulcair would talk about wanting to develop industries in Canada, which is intriguing to me, but I never heard how he intended to accomplish that- that makes the promise less intriguing.
What exactly made you prefer the NDP to the Liberals if you don't mind me asking?
Mulcair seemed extremely manipulative and I didn't really believe a thing he said, and I never got that impression of him of being truly intelligent, just playing that political game pretty well.
I mostly wanted the Conservatives out so they could re-evaluate and become a better party worth voting for. And to be very cynical my riding has only voted Liberal four times in the last century, (bouncing between PC, NDP (a LOT of NDP years in the 60's, 70's, and 80's), Reform/Alliance, and Conservative) so Liberal isn't much of an option.
But aside from that, Trudeau had his last name going for him, but he didn't have much of a draw for me. Whereas I had watched enough Question periods and quite enjoyed Mulcair as a parliamentarian. Furthermore, in the cases of electoral reform (vouching system particularly) I had watched a few of the committee hearings and felt the NDP pushed the hardest on the issues I mostly cared about, which was largely to do with how we do democracy- something that I thought Conservatives had lost sight of despite coming from the Reform party that was concerned with government transparency. The Liberals were (and are) super wishy washy on the TPP- at the time we didn't know what was in it, but I disliked how it was being handled. Now I think there was good cause for concern for sovereignty and IP issues, and yet the Liberals as wishy washy as ever. I liked their stance on the anti-terror legislation, demanding checks and balances for our spy organization (I still don't understand how the Conservatives could be so bad at that when a hallmark of conservatism should be suspicion of giving unchecked power to the state.) Liberals were too wishy washy for me.
And heck, if I was concerned about fiscal conservatism, I had Mulcair promising me a balanced budget. I don't know how much I believed him, but for all their rhetoric, it's not like the Conservatives were getting their budgets balanced- that election budget I could hardly count considering they balanced it in part by one time bursts of cash by selling off assets- if there is structural debt issues, that really is only a temporary election fix and next year's budget would be back in the red.
But it's hard to say how much the political reality of the Liberals being a non-factor in my riding affected by decision making.
To give you a sense, 2015 Liberals did surprisingly well (to me) in that NDP got 24K, Con 15K, and Liberal 15K. 2011 was more typical- extremely close race between Con and NDP and nothing to the Liberals. 23K Con, 21K NDP and 3K Liberal, 2.5K Green.
Or 2008, 26K Con, 23K NDP, 4.5K Green, 2K Liberal.
Basically, you might as well vote for Green over Liberal for the last decade or so.
I mostly wanted the Conservatives out so they could re-evaluate and become a better party worth voting for.
Experience suggests that when a party is defeated at an election, they tend to double-down on their ideology to placate their frustrated voter base. It's easier than to honestly evaluate yourself and your ideology to find flaws, and correct them. I'm not holding my breath that the CPC will become more transparent and accountable to voters.
I think Stephen Harper worked very hard to make his party palatable to centrist Canadians. Finding someone who can keep the right-wing nutjobs quiet and out of the press isn't easy. And yet like their American counterparts, the conservatives need that crazy demographic group to have a chance of winning a national election.
Historically, Canadians like to give their governments 10ish years before growing sick of them (and so the pendulum swings). I'd say we're in for 2-3 Liberal majorities before things get really exciting again.
Historically, Canadians like to give their governments 10ish years before growing sick of them (and so the pendulum swings). I'd say we're in for 2-3 Liberal majorities before things get really exciting again.
I suspect this is true.
For the Conservatives, I was interested in where Michael Chong was going as I was liking his fights for greater MP autonomy. His fights for democratic reform, I have very much liked. But then he started talking about flatter taxes, so I don't know.
On April 13 2016 12:32 Falling wrote: I think Layton will be one of those big 'what if' questions in Canadian political history. Could a Layton led NDP have taken the 2015 election? We'll never know. Certainly Layton was the first time I began to seriously consider the NDP as a possible election choice for myself.
I strongly suspect Layton would have been able to contest an election against Harper. I sincerely doubt Trudeau would have chosen his "time" to run against Layton when he was riding the crest of the Orange wave. I bet Trudeau would've played the waiting game, there by letting Layton take on Harper. If Harper wins, then he jumps in next cycle. If Layton wins, he jumps in next cycle to challenge layton.
Historically, Canadians like to give their governments 10ish years before growing sick of them (and so the pendulum swings). I'd say we're in for 2-3 Liberal majorities before things get really exciting again.
I suspect this is true.
For the Conservatives, I was interested in where Michael Chong was going as I was liking his fights for greater MP autonomy. His fights for democratic reform, I have very much liked. But then he started talking about flatter taxes, so I don't know.
dont know where this 10 years thing comes from.
9,13,9,5,0.5,17,5
both of the 9s include low PC popular vote levels where the PCs win by splitting the left wing vote ... those wins were not "canadians like to give their governments 10ish years"
this is no different, historically, than how law enforcement treats lie detector tests. they are looking for "the untainted word of god" that provides some ultimate perfect answer. and this predisposition leads them to believe lie detector tests actually work. same thing here.
For an already economically challenged city, it's another tragedy on top of misery. Luckily no one died, but stories of people watching their homes turned to ashes is really unfortunate. Now I'm hearing that Notley cut the firefighting budget in Alberta, and while I doubt that had a direct correlation, can't exactly spell well for her.
EPT
).
