Posts from — October 2015

There is a pop-up screen that is appearing from the Internet Defense League. It concerns more stupid legislation to weaken your defenses against hacking to make it easier for the government to spy on you.

I will honor the Canadian practice of delaying reporting until the polls close. The numbers in italics are the projected seats based on pre-election polling. The numbers in bold will be the actual results When released.

The BBC has live coverage, the CBC has a live scoreboard of results.

Indications are that there has been a large turn out with long lines all over the country.

Official results:

Liberals :
146 184

Conservatives :
118 99

New Democratic Party :
66 44

Bloc Québécois :
7 10

Greens :
1 1

A majority in this Parliament requires 170 seats out of a total of 338, and the Liberals have won a majority.

The CBC’s Éric Grenier has been tracking the opinion polls: Liberals poised for win barring Conservative surprise

After 78 days, it all comes down to tomorrow. And the polls, at least, suggest that the day will go to the Liberals, installing Justin Trudeau as Canada’s next prime minister.

​Up to and including those published by early Sunday morning, the Liberals have led in 17 consecutive polls, including surveys conducted by eight different polling firms using an array of methodologies.

The leads are in excess of the margin of error, but, no matter what the methodology, the polls are dependent on the respondents telling the truth. The only poll that matters is the one that will take place tomorrow by voters marking ballots.

Even Less Bright

Squirrel!!!!

[Editor: Hadley’s chances of catching Godot are a good deal higher than catching a ‘tree rat’.]

Friday Ark

The Canadian election will be ending on Monday, the 19th, after more than 2½ months of campaigning, the longest since the 19th century. They had the time for 3 English and 2 French debates and to print and put out all of the necessary signs.

At the start of the campaign the three leading parties (Conservatives, National Democrats, Liberals) were all polling at 30% each. The latest poll shows the Liberals at 34%, the Cons at 32%, and the NDP slipping to 23%. This indicates another coalition government being formed.

The betting favorite is a Liberal/NDP coalition, but it’s safer just to wait until the votes are actually counted.

In the US system, a couple could marry and be waiting for the birth of their second child before the voting takes place.

Did the Tories hire Karl Rove? Canada election: Brothels advert provokes row

The governing Conservative party says in the newspaper adverts that a win on Monday for the Liberal party would mean “brothels in our communities”.

It also warns a Liberal government would legalise marijuana, “making access easier for kids”.

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, whose party leads the polls, said the ads are misleading but his focus is on Canada.

His party has also been running controversial adverts – one has suggested the Conservatives could revoke Canadian citizenship with a new law.

The Conservative adverts about brothels and marijuana ran in Punjabi and Chinese, aimed at those voters in Vancouver and Toronto.

It is highly unlikely that anything the government does, other than handing it out for free, is going to make ‘access easier for kids”. There are already brothels in Vancouver and Toronto, they just don’t advertise. Vice-based political advertising is out-dated, not conservative.

Real conservatives would want the free market to deal with the sale of marijuana and sex, not the government… 😈

The BBC headline writer referred to it as a Hamlet Moment – Joe Biden: Will he take on Hillary Clinton or not? Very unlikely as the first debate would have been the best entry point for a real run, and CNN made provisions for him, but he showed no interest.

Israel’s Netanyahu urges talks to calm Jerusalem violence. The Palestinians aren’t going to play along anymore. Netanyahu has not honored any of his promises to or agreements with the Obama administration, so Abbas has no reason to believe that he would honor an agreement with the Palestinians.

NOAA released its long range prediction: Strong El Niño sets the stage for 2015-2016 winter weather

Forecasters at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center issued the U.S. Winter Outlook today favoring cooler and wetter weather in Southern Tier states with above-average temperatures most likely in the West and across the Northern Tier. This year’s El Niño, among the strongest on record, is expected to influence weather and climate patterns this winter by impacting the position of the Pacific jet stream.

It looks like the Northeast is going to get a break after last year’s snowocalypse.

The Democratic candidates made CNN cry by not acting like four-year-olds with a sugar high. Hillary noted that Bernie Sanders didn’t approve of every gun control legislation that was proposed in the Senate. Bernie said that everyone is tired of hearing about the “damn e-mails”.

The candidates talked about issues and what they wanted to do. I heard a GOP pundit complaining about ‘all the Democrats talked about was what the government was going to do for people’. It sounded like the GOP isn’t in favor of “promoting the General Welfare”.

What is not debatable is that I don’t want to install Windows 10 at the moment, but Micro$oft really wants me to. Today I went through the monthly patching of the operating system, and they attempted to sneak it by me. If I let them decide what to install I would have downloaded a couple of Gigs of Win10 (sic) because they selected to download and install it rather than the patches for Win7.

Via skippy, The Tech Republic covers The Windows 10 privacy debacle: Five big issues to consider. The short version is that the defaults are not good for your privacy.

To live in Florida, but we get more than our share.

The BBC notes Florida woman charged after streaming drink driving:

Viewers of Periscope, Twitter’s live-video streaming app, alerted police to a woman who appeared intoxicated and was streaming a video of herself driving around Lakeland, Florida.

Police eventually found Whitney Beall, 23, and charged her with driving under the influence.

“I am…drunk,” she said at one point in the video, swearing.

Periscope users sent her messages on Saturday night imploring her to stop driving before she hurt someone.

No-one was hurt in the incident, police said.

Ms Beall said on the video that she had a flat tyre and did not know where she was. Periscope viewers helped police pinpoint Ms Beall’s location after they spotted local landmarks in the background.

Her attorney entered a Not Guilty plea at arraignment. The plea indicates that the attorney is hoping for a deal in the sentencing, because the entire Periscope stream is admissible, as is the field sobriety test captured by the patrol car’s dash cam. She should have agreed to the Breathalyzer if she wanted to drive again…

Ian Verrender, the ABC’s business editor, looked at the Trans-Pacific Pact and concluded – We’ve been sold out by the TPP sham:

Where is Cleisthenes when you really need him?

The man considered the father of democracy would be aghast at the turn of events last week, when 12 countries around the Pacific Rim gathered together and happily agreed to sell out their citizens, to elevate the interests of global corporations above their own sovereign law.

The NAFTA disaster showed the effect of these ‘trade agreements’ – the rich get richer and the poor get screwed.

It’s the second Monday in October, so it is Thanksgiving Day in Canada. Have a happy one.

The US Federal government has decided to call it Columbus Day, even when it isn’t on the 12^th of October which was the second Wednesday in 1492. But it’s okay that the holiday can be on the wrong day, because Christopher Columbus [AKA: Cristoforo Colombo, Cristóbal Colón] didn’t find what he was looking for and identified what he did find incorrectly. The important thing is that a large area of the map got changed from “here be dragons and sea serpents,” to “here be gold and cannibals” and no mention was made of the oppressive heat, mosquitoes, or hurricanes.

[Read more →]

I was helping a neighbor file a government form on-line today and that was two hours I will never get back. This was one of the worse forms I have ever encountered. Not only was it often illogical, they asked multiple choice questions and didn’t supply a correct answer. Others were true/false questions that were worded to have more than two answers.

The worse part was when you got to the end and had to swear under penalty of perjury that all answers were true. When you testify in court you swear to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” … except you have two lawyers making damn sure you can’t tell the whole truth.

Writing questionnaires is a skill that requires training and experience. Not everyone can do it, and many of those who can’t seem to work as government contractors.

Turkey enters mourning after Ankara blasts killed almost 100:

Turkey is beginning three days of mourning after two blasts at a peace rally in the capital Ankara killed at least 95 people on Saturday, the deadliest ever such attack in Turkey.

The attack left 245 people injured, with 48 of them in a serious condition.

TV footage showed scenes of panic and people lying on the ground covered in blood, amid protest banners.

The government called the blasts a “terrorist act” and angrily rejected allegations that it was to blame.

People were demonstrating against the ongoing violence between the PKK [Kurdish separatists] and Turkish forces. The bombs could have been detonated by groups associated with the PKK, or the Turkish government, or ISIS, or some other homicidal group of whackoes looking for some media coverage.