Their parents: "We... We wanted them to be doctors/lawyers. We, just bought this CD ought of the blue one day, my wife and I thought it was harmless. Something called 'Parliament'. The name alone seemed institutionally reasonable. Next thing I know. Coming back from work one day, with them dressed up. All our hopes and dreams were shattered"

This is the House of Commons. You're thinking of the House of Lords. That place is wig-city.

>> ^blankfist:

When did they stop wearing the powdered wigs?

>> ^undefined:

Wigs in parliament would just be silly!


Punny!

Your video, MP's Tie "Too Loud" for Parliament, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Wigs in parliament would just be silly!

They've never done that in parliament. That's only in the high court.

>> ^shogunkai:

>> ^EMPIRE:
how surprising that the vast majority of the politicians in the chamber don't even get up from their seats. Fucking animals. You see someone take a fall like that, and you don't run to see if they're ok, you are a terrible terrible person (or squeamish, which I doubt was the case).

Or you realize that you will be stopping the paramedics from doing their job since everyone in the room is blocking them.


What're you talking about? Paramedics are now magicians who appear instantly when a person gets hurt? They take at least a few minutes to get to the scene. I mean the fuckers who remain seated, didn't even shift in their seats, and just watch the guy jump, and couldn't care less.

>> ^EMPIRE:

how surprising that the vast majority of the politicians in the chamber don't even get up from their seats. Fucking animals. You see someone take a fall like that, and you don't run to see if they're ok, you are a terrible terrible person (or squeamish, which I doubt was the case).


Or you realize that you will be stopping the paramedics from doing their job since everyone in the room is blocking them.

@dystopianfuturetoday

I wouldn't call anything in here untruthful, only one-sided (I agree with Engels on that). He treats Chavez with kid gloves (for example lightly glossing over Chavez taking control of the country for 18-months when he by-passed parliament or Chavez's increasing move away from capitalism towards socialism). But I suspect, as I said in the last post, that's because the film is meant to be counter-point rather than a "truth-finding" film. The truth most likely lies somewhere in between these two portraits (Western media and the film) and to find it I would rather rely on more unbiased information such as that from Amnesty International.

Thank you sir!

In reply to this comment by radx:
The shape of things to come? Let's hope not. *promote

By the way, it was carried by 323 votes to 302.

I totally agree that it's not simple. That's why all of this bothers me so much. Congress members like to see it black and white, what they want (and their contributors want) should be kept or voted in. What they don't want (and their contributors don't want) is communist/socialist/anti-american/against God/whatever. There absolutely no sway with these people, and that's because they are paid to think the way they do. It's not the best interest of the country, it's the best interest of who paid them off.

It's pretty blatant when the people who are making out like bandits during a very bad economic recession if doesn't become a depression and still want more tax cuts and profits, while the food banks don't have enough food and people are literally losing their houses because they won't extend unemployment benefits.

And trust me, unemployment in the US does not pay enough to cover what you would have made with a job. Especially when healthcare is primarily provided by companies and not by a universal health plan, people simply can't afford coverage on unemployment and they are not provided coverage unless they meet stringent criteria.

And it has been shown that unemployment benefits stimulate the economy, for every dollar put into unemployment compensation a 1.60 or some such is generated. Rich tax cuts don't even come close to generating that, not even in the same ballpark. And they are supposedly the people who make the world go round if you listen to the bought and paid for Congress members.


In reply to this comment by Smugglarn:
While I agree with som of waht you say there is a caveat to all those wonderful programs. In my country (Sweden) the model of governance was that the ruling party (Social Democrats) essentially paid their voters with unemployment programs and social security benefits. You could actually earn less working than going on benefits. Immigrants who by nature of their endeavours are quite industrius and hard working quickly became pacified and dependant on the system. The only thing asked of the poorer classes is to vote "correctly" every four years. Remember though - they are only loyal voters for as long as they are not suffering as much . As soon as they get successful they get the full force of the tax system and change alliances. It stifles entrepreneurship and innovation.

Thankfully the Social Democrats were voted out. Regrettably, there is a high unemployment rate, a nationalist party gained a lot of seats in the parliament and violence plagues the projects and large cities around the country.


The left seeing the voters abandon them cry out for expanded immigration and more refugees. At first glance this could be thought of as a compassionate move - but in reality they want more party members to feed the machine. On the other hand the right want to expand immigration as well - for specialists nad other high quality workers - but also for cheap labour obviously.

What I'm rambling about is that it is not that simple.

In reply to this comment by Porksandwich:
Really no one knows what will fix the economy, often times opinion of the economy means just as much as actual changes. If people think the economy is in the toilet, they play safe with their money....if they think it's great they invest in more risky things (to me the tech bubbles demonstrate this, they don't know WTF they were investing in half the time but it sounded good).

But it strikes me as odd when you see a sudden decline in the economy and opinion of it tank....that they don't undo what they changed a few years prior to the economic downturn. Yes there are outside influences and other hard to account for things. But if tax cuts on the rich stimulated the economy in a beneficial way, we would not be in the situation we are in. Yes bank deregulation and other stupid moves, plus a blind payout to people who abused the system really hurt us. But the people who made those decisions also tend to be rich people with rich friends, after all it takes millions upon millions to campaign for any federal level job and you're going to notice the guy giving you a couple hundred thousand versus the guy who gives you 10 bucks.

As for making up the taxes in other methods...sales, consumption, sin tax, whatever you want to refer to. 1% of the population can go day to day without buying as much or can go to lengths to offset or remove the tax burdens they would otherwise face if they have many resources at their disposal. They could simply live somewhere else where those taxes do not effect them. And the rest of the people making, I think it's 250k or less a year to be the non-rich, they simply do not have the resources to avoid living near their jobs and are going to have the basic necessity expenditures as any rich guy.

I mean we all have things we need in common.
Food

Shelter (electricity, gas)

Toiletries (unless we're gonna wipe our asses with tree bark and not wear deodorant or brush our teeth),

Methods of transport (which is usually going to be a car, most places have pathetic public transport and riding a bike in sweltering heat or freezing cold is not going to cut it)

Medical - which at this point in time you have to be pretty destitute or disabled to receive government help with. And everyone at some point in their life is going to need medical assistance whether it's through a fault of their own or not. It's a stupid system where if you can't afford your treatment "RIGHT NOW" you may end up crippled and a burden on everyone else for the rest of your life over a few thousand dollars.

Rich people don't need to eat any more than poor people, they might have richer tastes but they can survive on poor people food. Rich people don't need any more than the minimum shelter. Same with toiletries, fancy colognes and perfumes are frills. BMWs versus 20 year old clunkers, rich can drive beaters too. Medical, rich people are going to have the basic care they need when they need it at every stage of their life....because they are rich and of course luck in genetic lotteries count for a lot.

So unless every rich person lives extravagantly INSIDE the US at all times, taxing them on anything but income is only going to get what they spend money on inside the country...even though they make their money and protect their money and assets utilizing what everyone else helps subsidize - roads, utilities, police, firefighters, etc.

It's the "I got mine, so fuck you." attitude that seems to be popular now. You can see it in a lot of things, unemployment extensions (I got a job, so fuck you.), universal health care (I'm not sick, so fuck you.), public transportation (I own a car, so fuck you.), Visa workers/offshoring (I can get cheaper labor, so fuck you.), etc.

So we end up with absolutely no positive future growth besides what you can afford to do for yourself. And we have more and more people falling onto government welfare programs where they are going to find themselves stuck until the problems become so blatantly apparent that no one can deny that paying your share benefits you just as much as it benefits others.

No. What happened was the victim/shopkeeper was robbed and the thief got away. Some time later the shopkeeper saw the thief near the store so he ran out and "arrested" him (read: tied him up and locked him in a delivery van).

The problem is that Canadian law is pretty clear that a citizen can arrest someone during the commission of a crime. It's not so clear on arresting someone who is currently not committing any crime - even if the person is known to have committed one in the past.

In the end, the shopkeeper was vindicated in his arrest and two Members of Parliament have introduced bills to amend the citizen's arrest provision in the Criminal Code.

>> ^ponceleon:

Wait, so the Toronto guy was holding the wrong person?
>> ^Skeeve:
I totally agree. Though there were some extenuating circumstances in the Toronto one, like the fact that the citizen who held the thief did so long after that actual theft, having recognized him sometime later. (The citizen was found not guilty in the end, as it should be.)

YOU'RE welcome wormwood

In reply to this comment by wormwood:
Funky stuff is good!

And with that, my P is gone. Thanks for the (p)romote.

In reply to this comment by marinara:
*promote. I like it when people try and tell me funky stuff is good

Funky stuff is good!

And with that, my P is gone. Thanks for the (p)romote.

In reply to this comment by marinara:
*promote. I like it when people try and tell me funky stuff is good

I do believe this is what they call an ass handing.

or was that just something that guy in the park made up..?>> ^Tymbrwulf:

2:12 - Professor Philip Stott:
He has not published scholarly articles in the field of climate change, although he has published books on the subject.
Writes books instead of having his theories subject to peer review.
2:18 - Professor Paul Reiter:
The UK government has said that Reiter "does not accurately represent the current scientific debate on the potential impacts of climate change on health in general, or malaria in particular. He appears to have been quite selective in the references and reports that he has criticised, focusing on those that are neither very recent nor reflective of the current state of knowledge, now or when they were published" - Source
2:33 - Professor Richard Lindzen:
Jerry Mahlman, director of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, did not accept Lindzen's assessment of the science, and said that Lindzen had "sacrificed his luminosity by taking a stand that most of us feel is scientifically unsound."
3:07 - Professor Patrick Michaels:
Office of Science and Technology Policy director, John Holdren,[8] told the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, "Michaels is another of the handful of U.S. climate-change contrarians … He has published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science."
He also gets money from fossil fuel companies.
7:06 - Patrick Moore:
Moore has earned his living since the early 1990s primarily by consulting for, and publicly speaking for a wide variety of corporations and lobby groups such as the Nuclear Energy Institute.[36] Monte Hummel, MScF, President, World Wildlife Fund Canada has claimed that Moore's book, Pacific Spirit, is a collection of "pseudoscience and dubious assumptions."[41] Dr Leonie Jacobs of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands has accused Moore of being paid by the timber industry in order to deliberately mislead the public about logging.
He is accused of having "abruptly turned his back on the environmental movement"
I wish they would source the people on all the other claims. Would be nice to fact check those as well.
What kind of debate are you trying to start here, blankfist?