Red Tory v.2.0
So ... the CPC thinks it can win people over with a strong HARPER branding?
Delusional, simply delusional.
Go figure. Makes no sense to me, but what do I know.
can't fault them for knowing their audience.
KEvron
RT,
They are selling Harper.
I do take issue with:
"...an asinine bunch of wankers the Conservative Party has become of late."
You ALWAYS saw them as an asinine bunch of wankers!
I kept waiting for the comparison with some other party, but I saw that you were wise enough not to go there.
Tomm
You ALWAYS saw them as an asinine bunch of wankers!
Conservatives, not always.
Harper's party - total wankers.
The only party that stands up for Canadian values is the BQ - go figure that one out....
CWTF,
I'm not gonna try.
I'm still planning to vote CPC whenever the next election comes along, but I'm a little off politics right now.
The stupidity, blatant hypocrisy, and the giant sucking sound that is the majority of politicians talking about my tax money is leaving me a little disillusioned.
I'm checking to see if I can get the Canadian people to pay my psychotherapy bill. My analyst agrees that my issues are so not my fault.
You have a point there. I didn't mind them during the Stanfield years and voted for them a couple of times during Clark's tenure... since they were taken over by Reform/Alliance I haven't had the slightest bit of respect for them.
RT,
Yes, I can see that you never bought into the grass roots movement of Preston Mannings'. The Alberta-American individualism pathway that was a basis of the Reform Party.
Do you at least understand how the Liberal and media hegemony of the 60s and 70s played a role in the need for Reform?
If you truly understood that, you are allowed to weep for our nation.
We have what we have, not because of Harper, but because of the past (e.g.Trudeau, Lalonde, the CBC, etc.).
Harper is trying to fix it... and he's losing.
Throughout much of Reform’s ascendancy I lived in Alberta and didn’t share the attitudes that seemed to drive the party — the embittered resentment, disaffection with the federal government, Western alienation, wannabe republicanism, and so on. Needless to say, it was all quite foreign to my west-coast sensibilities. It still is.
The Alberta-American individualism pathway that was a basis of the Reform Party.
Yep, I'm mightily impressed by an "individualism" that subsumes itself into one faceless, massive collective identity (e.g. "Albertan", "American") in order to claim moral altitude over another (e.g. "Easterner", "the rest of the world"). Things become so simple then.
I wonder: if I look through the historical record, would I find Albertans crowing about their "individualism" during the time when Ontario was funnelling colossal dollars from its own wealth into a province that, until the early '50's, comprised a few thousand people and some cattle and hadn't the fiscal wherewithal to sustain a single urban fire-station much less anything resembling a modern infrastructure?
I seem to recall "Wild" Bill Aberhart actually complaining that Ottawa didn't plough enough money into the province to help it cope with the Depression. Selling wheat to China was a huge boon to the Prairies and really began their ascent into something remotely resembling solvency, though that little tidbit is missing from the angst-ridden memory banks of Prairie populism (probably because it involves a Dominion initiative to feed the "Reds", embarrassing to Prairie folk on both counts, I imagine).
I'm so fed up with this horseshit that I would be first in line to vote my assent in an Ontario plebiscite proposing that the province take all measures to recoup the funds it has spent on Alberta since 1905. We could begin by demanding that Albertans rip up the train tracks (at their own expense, of course) and pay back every dime of prosperity that has accrued from that Ontarioan initiative. I'm not sure how we could put a value on the RCMP's services to the province over the last century, but I suppose we could just arm Albertan Natives with some modern field howitzers and let them raze Edmonton and Calgary. Good riddance, frankly.
Sir Francis,
WOW!
Serious bile.
Are you suggesting we begin discussing the Crow Rate? Social Credit? The political cliques that ran Canada in the 30's and their attitude towards the West? or perhaps you meant to discuss the universal suffrage movement that began in Alberta?
Sir Francis, maybe its folks like you that cause some of the western angst?
Sir Francis, maybe its folks like you that cause some of the western angst?
Notice how *we* are always collectively blamed and shamed. Must be that "individualism" thing.
...of course, no one dare point out that Ezra Levant is an Albertan. Don't. Anyone. Dare.
It's the munee, Tomm. The munee. I'm sure Albertans understand that.
By the way, I'm declaring war on "folks."
Sorry, Red, but enough's enough.
SF — I think you’re exaggerating more than a little when you state that Alberta didn’t have “the fiscal wherewithal to sustain a single urban fire-station” until the 50s. In fact, I think the population was around 90,000 during the 40s so I’m guessing there was a fire-station at that time.
Anyway, we’ve had the discussion here before about the ludicrous tale concerning the “rough-hewn individualists” of Alberta and how that’s pretty far from the truth in actuality, although it does make for a pleasing story.
The striking thing about Alberta — and something that anyone who’s lived there will likely corroborate — is that most people one meets either come from other parts of the country, or their families are quite recent transplants, say within the last 30 years or so. This makes all the mythology about the province’s hardy pioneer roots and its native, individualist “exceptionalism” something of a joke, as these aren’t really the defining characteristics of the population at large. If anything, Alberta has been shaped over the last 40-50 years by successive waves of opportunistic economic migrants seeking to profit from the resource economy.
Ti-Guy — I've been trying to avoid it. 
Ti-Guy,
Pardon my English. I use "folks" too frequently and did do a little "I, you, we, they" when I should have been less sloppy with my pronouns.
I was brought up in Alberta with their rather lacksadaisical English system. I passed Greade 10 English by reading utopian & fantasy literature. Gotta love the pedological advances meant to sweep our society of cultural bias.
Is Ezra Levant from Alberta? Cool!
I happen to quite like "folks" in casual conversation as opposed to alternatives like "you people" or "your ilk" and other such terms freighted with negative connotations. But in deference to the wishes of some, I'm striving to be more creative in this regard.
I want to ask both of you: Do you say "folks" in real life dialogue? I've lived all across this country, I speak general Canadian English fluently (which doesn't vary all that much from region to region, with the exception of Newfoundland; no one in Alberta can tell I'm from Ontario, for example) and I don't ever hear other Canadians say "folks."
I'm trying to determine if it's a genuine regionalism or some kind of written affectation.
It bugs the hell out of me, but if it's really the way both of you speak, that's fine.
...where I come from (the wilds of Northern Ontario), "youse" is colloguial. I don't write it, but I quite often say it. Or did, before I became refined...
...
Speaking of Northern Ontario, if the Harpies want our vote, they should freature more bingo. A million people (a Saskatchewan's or a Manitoba's worth) are theirs for the taking.
Ti-Guy — Yes, I’m afraid that I do, but I come by it honestly. It’s not at all an uncommon idiom in Yorkshire. Before you raised an objection to it, I never really thought twice about it.
Yorkshire? I thought you were born in Canada.
Nope. Whitby, England. We moved here in 1966. I became a citizen when I was 12. Much to my consternation at the time.
How old were you when you moved here?
Just six, but I wasn't happy about it.
Well, I'm sorry. But that doesn't license you to use "folks."
It's just not good enough for my standards. Sorry.
...
Whitby, England...
Cue theme to Heartbeat.
Serious bile.
LOL. Serious dose of reality. Wear it, Tomm. It'll feel fresher than a thick lashing of toothpaste in the morning.
SF — Heh. I used to watch that with my mum on Saturdays. And Emmerdale too, but don't tell anyone.
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