Mmmm....Mint...

David Dingwall, a former Liberal cabinet minister and possibly the winner of the 2005 Silliest Name Award, has resigned as president of the Royal Canadian Mint after being caught up in an imbroglio over expenses he rang up last year.

The mint...appears to have picked up a $1,400 tab for Dingwall's membership in an Ottawa-area golf club, and $1,500 in membership fees in the Nova Scotia barristers' society.

So...I'm saving up enough money to try to pay for next semester's tuition, and this jerk takes my tax money and spends it on his golf memberships? Here's an idea, Dingbat: OFFICE EXPENSES ARE THOSE THAT ARE NECESSARY FOR THE RUNNING OF YOUR OFFICE. Now that we've got that cleared up, let's take a jaunt down memory lane to remind us of the high moral character of this fellow:

The golf membership was at the Rivermead club, just across the Ottawa River in Aylmer, Que., a favourite hangout for the capital's political and business elite.
The documents also show the mint picked up $5,900 in operating expenses for a car leased on behalf of Dingwall.

Dingwall, who served in cabinet under Jean Chretien, has faced other controversies since he was retired from politics by his Novas Scotia constituents who turned him out of office in 1997....It was reported in July that a Cape Breton business development group paid Dingwall $20,000 in money it had obtained from the federal government's Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. Part of the money was apparently paid for Dingwall to lobby ACOA -- an agency he once oversaw as a cabinet minister -- for even more money on behalf of the business group.

Yeah, this comes on the heels of finding out he 'failed' to register as a lobbyist for a Pharmaceutical company based in Toronto. What a guy.

Heh heh.

Heh. File this under "Awesome Burns."



I'm taking a class on the history of espionage at my University. The professor, of course,is a loony nutbin who believes that the CIA watches everything she does and comes from most assuredly a liberal stock. She often talks about how university is supposed to be the best time of your life, and fondly recalls how she and her friends would sit and talk about how to "save the world and make the world a better place" over coffee. She then went on to do a law degree and settled for a cushy job at a university. Yeah.



Surprisingly, to her credit, her liberal slant hasn't been all that psychotic. However, some of the students in the class are Grade-A crazy leftist idealogues. When a discussion of the morality of Operation Ajax came up, the professor asked us if we felt such an operation was ethical and if we would condone it if put in Eisenhower's shoes (note to all: it's a very bad idea to badmouth Eisenhower in my presence). It came to the point where this one girl started saying the CIA should have known that it's actions in Ajax would help lead to the Islamic revolution 26 years later, even after the professor reminded her that hindsight was 20/20. The professor, quite appropriately, asked her what people she thought should be in charge of such operations. I could bear this diatribe no more.



"Psychics?" I suggested.



The laughter was well worth the wait.



Of course she actually said that women would be better in charge than men (surprise). Graciously, this was countered by another girl in the class who said she completely disagreed and that she would wholeheartedly have endorsed Ajax. She then proceeded to remind everyone of Condoleeze Rice. That, coupled with the look of disgust on many students' face as the leftist was making her rambling, loony argument, gives me hope for the world.



Heh. Burning liberals gives me great joy.

Urban Dead

I'm taking a slight break from politics to tell you about something I find wholeheartedly addictive (No doubt upon hearing this, the Liberals will look for a way to tax it).

Urban Dead is a browser-based, grid-mapped, free-to-play multi-player game where you play the survivor or victim of a zombie outbreak in a quarantined city centre.

This game is enormous fun. Despite only being allowed 50 turns per character per day (which never seems enough!), it's incredibly captivating (creating multiple characters to play as solves this problem). Just thought I'd let you folks know how much fun you could be having.




God that zombie picture is creepy.

Sorry for the lack of Updates...

But I've been rather busy as of late. Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa.

So it seems that our perfidious book-cooker Finance Minister Ralph Good(fornothing)ale has done some fiddling with our enormous surplus in order to make it seem like it's something(!) smaller that what it actually is. Apparently there was a lot of last minute spending (all for those vote-getting social issues of course) when the Liberals realized that perhaps Canadians might start to question the necessity of all these taxes we're paying. Minister Goodale has this to say:

"It clearly demonstrates the benefits of prudent, long-term fiscal planning."

No, I think it actually demonstrates what happens when you tax the citizens to death. Conservative Finance Critic (and all around bang-up guy) Monte Solberg gets it right:

"It's outrageous, how the government has manipulated the books to try and hide the true size of the surplus," said Conservative finance critic Monte Solberg.

"This is a cooking of the books that sets a new standard for dishonesty. If this happened in corporate Canada, heads would roll and investors would demand a true accounting."

Good on ya, Monte.