Category: Politics

Why Newt Gingrich Should Get The Republican Nomination

On By WinstonIn Humor, Politics, Rants, Society, U.S. Election 2012Leave a comment

Photo by: Joe Burbank/Orlando SentinelPhoto by:  Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel

For those who don’t know, I don’t live in the U.S.  I live in Canada, which means I still have a large vested interest in the activities of our friend and neighbour to the south.  As such, I have been following with some interest the campaigns for the leadership of the Republican party.  So far, I’ve been a little less than impressed by their “circus of the week” approach to selecting a front runner.

In their rush to find a political outsider who supports family [read Christian (read very narrow interpretation of Christian)] values, they have produced a series of truly spectacular failures with Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Michelle Bachman being just a few.  For me however, the most incredible candidate to date has to be Newt Gingrich.  This is a man who utterly typifies the very essence of modern democracy.

After serving for a number of years as the Speaker of the House, Mr. Gingrich then spent several more years selling himself and his political connections to the highest bidder.  All the while, he steadfastly refused to list himself as a lobbyist.  No-no!  He was just a consultant.  The beauty of this is not his non-lobbyist delusions.  The beauty lies in his ability to convince delegates and possibly himself that he is not a “Washington insider”.  That is hilarious!  But it’s not the best thing to come out of his campaign.  It gets better.

Mr. Gingrich also found time to work as a consultant for Freddie Mac.  You may have heard of them.  They, along with Fannie May, are the lending giants behind the sub-prime mortgage fiasco.  You remember that.  The record foreclosures, the collapse of the housing  bubble, and the bank bailouts that led to massive protests and the simultaneous destruction of faith in both business and government.  Yup.  Newt took a pile of consulting bucks from them.  This is still not the best part of his candidacy.  Nope.  The best part is his staunch defence of FAMILY VALUES.

That’s right.  Newt Gingrich values family so much that when Bill Clinton had an affair with Whitehouse intern Monica Lewinsky, Gingrich led the drive to have him impeached.  So it’s clear that he values family a lot.  The only problem, he isn’t sure which family he actually values.  You see Newt was cheating on his own wife whom he later divorced so that he could marry his paramour.  Okay.  That happens sometimes.  Right?  Maybe.  But then he cheated on that wife, divorced her and married paramour number two.  The second wife (first paramour) is now claiming that Newt “Super-Stud” Gingrich had asked her for an open marriage.  She declined, which she alleges is why he now married to paramour number two.

All of that would be “Yeah. Whatever.”  if he weren’t in danger of becoming the leader of a party which spends every possible moment screaming about Family Values and Christian Values.  Apparently, Newt never heard the bit about letting he who is without sin chuck the first brick.  The Republican  faithful seem to have missed the irony of having their holier than thou party led by someone who’s moral compass got smashed when his mistresses stepped on it.  Repeatedly.

Against the rest of the Republican circus, he polls well.  Against President Obama, the polls tell a significantly different story.  I’d like to see Obama get a second mandate.  Id like to see what he could do with another four years.

That’s the real reason why Newt Gingrich should get the Republican nomination.

Cheers, Winston

p.s.  I was just reading that Herman Cain (former candidate and pizza magnate) has thrown his endorsement to Newt Gingrich.  Mr. Cain dropped out of the running for the Republican nomination amid allegations of sexual harassment and marital infidelity.  His endorsement of Newt proves that birds of a feather really do flock together.

W

The Uncritical Thinker

On By WinstonIn Discrimation, Global Issues, Personal, Politics, Rants, SocietyLeave a comment

A post has shown up in the Facebook updates of a couple of people I know which got me a little wound up.  Being me, I quite naturally fired off a response and moved on, but I couldn’t get it out of my head.  It kept nagging at me, so I did a bit more digging.  Turns out it’s good thing I did.

The gist of the post states that the Prime Minister of Australia made a public statement that Muslim immigrants who want to live by Sharia Law should go elsewhere.  It alleges that she then went on to say that if they wish to stay, they should learn english and accept that Australia is a Christian country founded on Christian values etc.  Basically, the entire rant is blatantly racist and offensive to anyone who takes the time to think it through.  The idea of the leader of a major nation saying something like this was frankly nauseating.  To see it re-posted and applauded by people I know and care about was even more so.

When I saw the post I only had my phone with me, so I just replied from there and made a note to check it out later.  Well, later is here and here’s what I learned.  It’s a fraud.

It was originally attributed to then Prime Minister Howard back in 2005 based on some much more generic comments made by one of his cabinet ministers.  Over the years, it has mutated and been expanded to include material from an article written by a retired U.S. airforce pilot for a newspaper in Georgia.  Absolutely none of it has anything to do with current Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard or her government.

What is fascinating about this to me is the context in which I encountered it.  The people who posted and endorsed this stance are themselves the descendants of immigrants.  Those immigrants certainly didn’t learn the language or respect the culture, or religious beliefs of the people who were already here.  In point of fact, our ancestors murdered them in wholesale lots, deliberately destroyed their culture and beliefs and forced them to learn the language of the immigrants.

So what is the difference between the immigrants of today and those of yesterday?  In both cases, they dream/dreamed of building a better life for themselves, their families and descendants.  Each considers/considered their way of life to be one worth maintaining.  They want/wanted the freedom to be who they are, live how they want to live, speak their own language and worship as they see fit.  Oh yes, that sounds evil to me too.

The whole point to this post is to underline the need to actually think things through.  Instead of just accepting what we read or see as being the gospel truth, we need to be willing to look a little deeper.  We need to see if someone isn’t just playing us and feeding off our dissatisfaction to push their own agenda.  We need to be just a little more critical in our thinking and step outside of our comfort zone.  It’s important to listen to people we don’t agree with to help us understand why we think the way we do.

Uncritical thinking is dangerous.  That’s the kind of thinking that leads to wars, genocide, prejudice and hate crimes of every sort.  That’s not how I choose to live and I hope it’s not how the rest of society chooses to live.  The greatest threat to our freedoms and our way of life is, “The Uncritical Thinker”.

Cheers, Winston

The NCC Rolls Over, The Occupation Rolls On

On By WinstonIn Global Issues, Occupy Movement, Personal Responsibility, Politics, Pop Culture, Society, Values2 Comments

Here in Ottawa, the National Capitol Commission (NCC) issued an eviction notice to the Occupy My Last Nerve crowd in Confederation Park.  The official midnight deadline passed and the Occupiers are still Occupied Occupying a park they have no right to camp in.  Kudos to the NCC for being spineless bureaucrats worried about offending a couple of dozen campers while ignoring the rights of every other person in the city.

We all have the right to use and enjoy Confederation Park.  My tax dollars help pay for that park, and I don’t enjoy having it full of tents and the twerps who put them there.  Seriously, these people have got to have reality explained to them.  The longer this idiocy drags on, the more annoying they become.  As witness this gem from Paul Boudreau the group’s spokesperson.

“We decided that we would politically resist eviction.  What that means is the NCC’s eviction notice is wrong and we don’t consent to it.”

Really?  You don’t consent to the eviction order?  Really?  Go to jail.  Go directly to jail.  Do not pass go.  Do not collect two hundred dollars.  Who exactly do you think you are?  This isn’t Libya, or Egypt or Syria.  You aren’t protesting a repressive and unjust regime that refuses to let you choose your government.  Hell, they’ve allowed you to camp in a public park for two months.  That’s pretty much the opposite of repressive.

An un-named protester shared this bit of genius. “I’m graduate of the University of Ottawa and I lost my job and I’m about to lose my apartment.  The system is wrong and we have to get it fixed.”

Really?  A university graduate?  Really?  If the best plan you’ve got in the face of unemployment and imminent homelessness is to camp in a park, you should ask for you money back from U Ottawa.  It’s pretty obvious they didn’t teach you anything useful.  Just out of curiosity, was the system wrong before you lost you job or only after?  It’s a fair question.

Speaking of fair questions, here are a couple more.  Are you politically active?  Not camping wise, but actually campaigning for these dearly held values of yours.  That’s how you we fix systems in this country by actually working at it.  Not whining and hoping someone will fix it for us.

Now this second question is the tricky one.  Have you considered going out and getting a job?  I realize that with your grand education and all it’s a bit beneath your dignity but you might give it some thought.  I lost my job because of greedy, stupid people at our U.S. parent.  If anyone should be out there camping and protesting the system, it’s me.  The difference is, I’m a grown up.  I don’t believe the Fairness Fairy is going to come along and evenly divide all the money in the country.   That’s why I went out and got another part time job where I’m scrambling to get every hour I can to help pay my mortgage and hydro and keep a roof over my daughter’s head and keep her in college.

Everywhere I go, I see help wanted signs.  Is there some reason you can’t take one of those jobs instead of joining the walking waste of skin which is the occupy movement?  I’ll grant they don’t pay as well as your chosen field, but I bet they pay better than the Occupy Idiocy people do.  I’m getting that if you did get an actual job, you might have better things to with your free time than camp in a public park and say stupid things to the press.

As for the other half of this debacle, the NCC needs to get it’s act together and deal with this now.  I realize that in our media centric society you have to be very careful not to be perceived as trampling their democratic rights.  The short version is, they should never have been allowed to set up tents in the first place.  Sure they have a right to freedom of speech and peaceful protest.  I’m all for those things so let them have at it.  What they don’t have a right to do is build a tent camp on public property.  I understand that sometimes the squeaky wheel get the oil, but I think this one just needs to be removed.  Their squeak is really getting on my nerve.

Cheers, Winston

Occupational Demands

On By WinstonIn Media, Personal Responsibility, Politics, Pop Culture, Society, ValuesLeave a comment

Usually, I try not to write about the same thing two days in a row. This isn’t my fault though. If the Occupy the Media people would just shut up, I could move on peacefully. Instead, they are talking about maybe issuing demands.

Really? Demands? Who do they think they are? What right do they have to make demands on anyone let alone everyone.

I know they claim to be the ninety-nine percent, but even they can’t be stupid enough to actually believe that. Or can they? Well, it seems they can. Wait, maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe stupid isn’t the right word. Maybe delusional would fit better…. Nope. Stupid it is.

It’s ridiculous, but it started me thinking. Why would this tiny little group of people think the rest of the world should listen to their demands? The answer of course is the world we live in. My theory goes something like this:

We live in a brand driven society. Elections aren’t about platforms, they’re about personality and name recognition. Advertisements substitute product information for celebrities, flashy visuals and are often unrelated to the product being advertised. Celebrities use their fame and name recognition to try and shape public policy as though singing or acting has given some insight denied to us mere mortals.

Combine this with reality media which imply that everyone is secretly a celebrity or a potential business success or otherwise just one video away from fame and it all makes sense. If being a media brand is all it takes, then of course they think their demands should be acted on. The media has taken to referring to them as Occupiers. As soon as they started capitalizing that word, it became a brand and gave them the same social credibility as other pop media brands. Brands such as Bono (0%), Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie (0.03%), or Michael Moore (-300%).

It’s that assumed credibility that creates the delusion of grandeur to which they have succumbed. The media refers to them as the 99% and it reinforces their idea that they really represent all these other people. The fact is they don’t. I’ll tell you why they don’t.

The real ninety-nine percent didn’t vote for them. In our society, we vote for people to represent us. I didn’t vote for them, and neither did anyone else. They need to stop saying they represent us, and the media needs to stop reinforcing that misinformation. Which is funny because the Occupado folks love talking about corporate or government misinformation, but are not so strident when the error is in their favor.

The good news in all of this is the probable timeline. The campers are so fragmented that after two months, they still haven’t decided if they have demands. If they do have demands, they haven’t been able to decide what they are. If they figure out what the demands are, they aren’t sure if they should go public with them. At the current rate and with their “organizational structure” their grandkids may actually produce a working draft for consideration by future generations.

In the meantime, thousands are expected to flood Wall Street to celebrate the two month anniversary of the movement. The plan is to obstruct and delay workers on their way at those evil banks and such. Just out of curiosity, how does their right to free assembly trump these people’s right to go to work and support their families? But that’s not the way Occupied mind works. The unOccupied mind is a much simpler creature. Occupiers are good and therefore whatever they do must be right. Banks and those who work for them are bad keeping them from doing what they do is good.

For my money, the police and civic authorities have a responsibility to ensure the workers can get to work unhindered. The only surprise would involve them siding with the public instead of the alleged protesters. I think it would be cool if the bankers showed up for work carrying signs saying, ” The Pandering Stops Here!”.

They should be allowed to protest too.

Cheers, Winston

Unhappy Campers

On By WinstonIn Personal, Personal Responsibility, Politics, Pop Culture, SocietyLeave a comment

It seems some jokes have a shelf life. Apparently, people are done laughing at the Occupy (Camp) Wherever movement. Now, like “Train-wreck” Charlie’s one man show, it’s time to get them off the stage.

The protesters have proven their irrelevance. Two months into their protest, the only people who care about their pet issues are them. Sadly, after listening to the same tired lines for too long, they aren’t even really funny anymore.

Such media coverage as they have garnered has been more about their novelty value than their message. Of course that could have something to do with their own lack of focus. Really, there’s only so much air time in “Too few people control too much money.”.

Nobody cares. More accurately, people do care. The problem is that the protesters are just pointing at problems everyone already knows about. We don’t need a bunch of whiny, bored urban campers to tell us about them.

If they really want to make a difference, maybe they could volunteer in their communities. Right now all they’re doing is annoying people and creating a mess. That mess by the way, is going to be cleaned up with the tax dollars of the real ninety-nine percent.

The whole Occupy crowd has always struck me as being a symptom of society’s distress rather than it’s cure. Here is an analogy to demonstrate:

A parent takes their child with them while running errands. The child doesn’t want to go, but the parent promises them a treat. This goes on for a while. Finally one say the parent says “No. Not today,”.

The child now has a problem and an easily identifiable villain. Being generally over-indulged has given the child a hyper-developed sense of entitlement. As a result, the child sits on the floor in the store, screams, refuses to move and annoys everyone around in an effort to force the parent to give them what they want.

Unlike various urban bureaucrats, most parents don’t leave the child there for two months. However tempting it may be.

There has been failure on both sides in this fiasco. The second order failures involved city officials allowing the installation of tent encampments in the first place. That was just plain stupid as it did nothing but feed into the protester’s sense of entitlement. Oh it also annoyed people, damaged parks and left taxpayers to foot the bill for cleaning and repairs. Way to pander you spineless bureaucrats.

The truly epic, first order failure must be awarded to the protesters themselves. The idea of alleged grown ups thinking that camping and rallying would end human greed is mind boggling. It’s magical thinking.

I’m old enough to remember Harmonic Convergence (the rest of you should look it up). The short version involved getting a specific percentage of the world’s population to create a certain tone at a certain time. This was going to change the Earth’s vibration at an atomic level and so return us to a state of universal harmony.

That had a better chance of success than marching around saying greed is bad and then sitting in a park waiting for people to stop being greedy. Really. It’s like me writing my blog and waiting for those protesters to stop being spoiled children. The main difference being, I don’t expect my fantasy to come true.

The Occupy movement has once more proven the adage “If you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”. So far, they haven’t offered any practicable solutions that I’ve heard of. On the other hand, with the ever increasing cost of policing, cleanup, detention processing, eventual trials, appeals etc, they are definitely part of the problem.

Just like the public meltdown of the Sheen Machine, they aren’t funny anymore. They’re just pathetic. It’s time to get off the stage and go home.

Cheers, Winston

Just A Quick Note… And Major General Peter Fuller Gets The Boot

On By WinstonIn Global Issues, Politics, SocietyLeave a comment

Working on catching up on my NaNoWriMo project so not a lot of time for the blog tonight.  Serious backlog of writing to take care of.  The timing is however quite excellent.  I had not idea what to write about tonight.

Of course, this is also true of the novel I’m supposed to be writing.  This whole idea of randomly deciding to write a novel in a month may not be my most well thought out plan ever.  Still, if I don’t try, I’m guaranteed not to do it.  Of course, deciding to go ahead with it only slightly increases the odds.

So now it’s time to get back to it.  But first, the news.Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller is being yanked from Afghanistan for making some wildly inappropriate, entertaining and true comments.  Fuller said something terrible about Hamid Karzai.  According to the general, who was the deputy commander of training for Afghan security forces, the Afgan President is a little erratic.  Why would he say such a thing?  Probably it has a little something to do with the Prez saying Afghanistan would side with Pakistan in a war against the U.S.

You know the same Afghanistan the U.S. just spent billions of dollars saving from the Taliban.  Yep their puppet just bit the hand that put him on the throne.  And the nasty general called him on it.  Bad General Fuller.  So says the State Department.

These are  people who should have pyramids beside them and crocodile insurance.  Yep, they spend that much time in “de-nial”.  When the president of your client state says he would help another country go to war with you it may be a sign.  Pretending it isn’t is…. what’s the term?  Oh yeah.  Delusional.

The evil general also mentioned that contrary to expectations among some Afghan leadership, U.S. pockets are not bottomless.  In his words “They think the streets are paved with gold and everyone lives in Hollywood.

So basically, a man who put his life on the line to bring freedom to the Afghans  is being punished for telling the truth.  That is what we commoners refer to as irony.  Mostly because we’re too polite to call it utter stupidity.  If they really want to punish someone, how about replacing the ungrateful wretch who just offered to go to war with them.  They’ve replaced one Afghan leader, why not go two for two?

That seems like common sense to me.  That’s why it isn’t going to happen.  There’s one thing we all know about government, military and the situation in Afghanistan in particular; common sense isn’t.

Cheers, Winston

NaNoWriMo Day 2 And An F-35 Update

On By WinstonIn Canadian Military, Personal, Politics, TechnologyLeave a comment

Greetings from the land of poor but quick writing.  One of the key pieces of advice for this process is don’t edit as you write.  Just get the words down on the page and worry about everything else later.  That’s why I specify poor writing.  turns out it’s not too hard to write badly.

Writing quickly on the other hand is apparently another matter all together.  To achieve the stated goal of fifty thousand words by November thirtieth, I need to write one thousand, six hundred and sixty-seven words every day.  To put that in perspective, an average post here on Brain Bits is between two hundred and five hundred words.

So far, I’ve gotten just over two thousand words.  That leaves me with around thirteen hundred to write before bed.  Now all I have to do is figure out what the heck they’re going to be.

Of course, the more I write here, the less I’m writing there.  But there was one more thing just before I get back to it.  It’s a quick follow up to the post I wrote the other day about our pending F-35 purchase.

Michael Gilmore the top Pentagon weapons tester has put out a memo saying that training flights should be delayed for at least ten months.  The memo sites a variety of potentially fatal issues including an untested ejection system, a faulty generator, and incomplete flight manuals.

Mr. Gilmore expects it to take about ten months to get everything up to snuff to resume testing.  The U.S. Army and Air Force disagree with him, as does manufacturer Lockheed Martin.  Of course they do.  That’s why we have third party, civilian consultants.  No vested interest equals a better chance of honesty.

Yup.  That deal keeps looking better and better every time I hear more about it.

Cheers, Winston

Will Cheap Tablets Drive The Next Internet Revolution?

On By WinstonIn Global Issues, Politics, Society, TechnologyLeave a comment

In a recent article in Macleans, Jesse Brown was talking about the new Aakash tablet which is being made in India.  It’s not here yet, but it’s likely coming soon.

The first thing to know about it, is that it’s a bottom end tablet.  The processor is slow.  The networking is substandard and there’s no multi-touch.  But they sell for about $50 so who cares.  Those are the facts.  From there, it’s off to imagination land.

According to Mr. Brown, an influx of cheap tablets will get a billion more people on the internet.  I’m just curious who’s going to pay those billion monthly bills.  The fact is, hardware is the cheapest part of the online experience.  Access fees are the biggest financial disincentive to more widespread embrace of the net.

I doubt that cheap tablets are going to be the great democratizing force foreseen in this article.  Hardware is a one shot expenditure.  You buy your device and it’s yours.  Access fees recur every month.  Depending on what level of access you want, a couple of months fees will run you more than the cost of these new tablets.  Until we find a way to bring down ISP charges, widespread access remains a pipedream.

The true value of these types of products lies with people like me.  It’s not going to be my primary device, but if it was that cheap, I’d consider one for certain applications.  It would piggyback on my existing internet plan, and that’s the key here.  It would be an auxillary device.  If they’d been around when my daughter was younger, she would’ve had one.  Instead of a netbook which cost several times as much.

Of course, it ignores the larger issue.  We complain about the lack of manufacturing jobs but then get excited about how cheaply they build tablets in India.  We want $50 tablets, but we want $20 an hour to build them.  That’s the bigger issue.  The government needs to find a way to create incentives for that type of manufacturing in Canada.  We need to create entry level industries that can employ less skilled workers.  The resulting products may not be the bleeding edge, but they will be more affordable.

That’s what will lead more Canadians online.  Not affordable hardware, but real jobs that allow them to pay those monthly fees.  Without those jobs, and others like them, there will be less people online, not more.  That’s the real secret to the democratization of the internet.

Cheers, Winston

Keep The Beaver, Ditch The Senate

On By WinstonIn Politics, Society, Values1 Comment

Conservative Canadian Senator Nicole Eaton has launched a campaign to replace the beaver as the symbol of Canada.  What you may wonder did she want to replace it with?  The “majestic and splendid polar bear”.  According to the allegedly honorable member, “The polar bear is the largest terrestrial carnivore… holding reign over the arctic for thousands of years.”

Ms. Eaton refers to the beaver as a “dentally defective rat” and a “toothy tyrant” who wreaks havoc on it’s environment.  It’s a “nineteenth century has been.” as opposed to the polar bear described as a “twenty-first century hero”.  But let’s take a closer look at the contenders.

Beavers are smart, monogamous, industrious herbivores found in every province.  Polar bears are strong, resourceful and good looking.  It’s a pretty simple question.  Do we want Canada represented by an idealized action figure, or something a bit more universal?  Beavers are hard working but unassuming.  You rarely see them, but you see their handiwork everywhere.  They undertake massive engineering projects.  Not for glory or posterity, but simply to provide for their families.  What is more utterly Canadian than that?

If Senator Eaton really wants to get rid of an outdated symbol of the nineteenth century, she could start with the senate.  When the rest of the world is clamoring to elect their governments, isn’t it time to get rid of these unelected tax drains.  If they really have nothing better to do than victimize and badmouth beavers, it’s time to rethink what the Senate says about Canada.  It seems to say we have a one hell of a lot of money to waste on people who don’t really seem to contribute all that much in return.

We’ve been talking about Senate reform for ages.  Maybe we just need to get our priorities straight.  Lets’s keep the beaver and ditch the senate.

Cheers, Winston

Good Thing The Conservatives Hate Spending Our Tax Dollars

On By WinstonIn Canadian Military, Politics, Society, ValuesLeave a comment

So yesterday I wrote about the Conservatives plan to spend billions on new F-35 fighter aircraft.  Here’s a quick follow up.

The tab for 65 F-35 fighters will ring in around nine billion dollars.  But wait, it gets better.  When you purchase a bunch of shiny new aircraft, you need parts and service on them.  This is called a service contract.  If you’ve bought anything from Best Buy, you know what that is.  Now think about this.  If the geek of the week at Best Buy says “Sign here for the service contract, and I’ll tell you later how much it will be.”  Would you still take the service contract?  I suspect not.

Not so for Mr. Harper’s Conservative government.  They signed off on the F-35 purchase without getting an actual dollar figure for the accompanying support.  That apparently won’t be available until production is under way.  If that seems a tad peculiar, that’s the sort of thing to expect when you agree to single source your new aircraft.  That’s right folks.  We can only purchase our new jets from Lockheed Martin, and only they can service them.

But, there is some good news from our leaderless fears.  They’re also going to upgrade our navy.  To the tune of thirty-three billion dollars.  The good news, that money is scheduled to remain in Canada.  Twenty-five billion goes to contracts in Halifax, the other eight billion goes to Vancouver.  Which is exactly what I wanted for the aircraft update.  The project is expected to generate around fifteen thousand jobs.  Which kind of makes my point about the kind of jobs that would be created by building our own jets.  But for reasons best known to themselves, the Conservatives decided that it would be bad to create too many jobs all at once.

Now, they’re talking about maybe buying us some nuclear submarines. The used non-nuclear subs that we bought from Britain were a total bust from the get-go.  We’ve spent more rebuilding them than we paid for them, and they still aren’t actually sea-worthy.  So the only obvious solution is to buy some used nuclear subs.  The estimated price tag for all this plutoinum powered goodness?  How about three billion a pop.  If we replace our four leaky, crappy existing subs with spiffy new used subs it’ll ring in at around twelve million.  Cheap at half the price.  Yes?  Probably.

Here’s the fun part and the punchline to my headline.  During our recent federal election, the Conservatives were at great pains to tell Canadians how much money the Liberals would spend if elected.  The Conservatives would be our fiscal saviours.  Or maybe not.

F-35s=9 billion + unspecified multi-billion support contract.  New ships=33 billion.  Nuclear subs=12 billion.  Total 63 billion + unspecified multi-billion dollar support contract.

Good thing we didn’t elect those free spending Liberals eh?

Cheers, Winston