Just saw a Steve Boots video summarizing all the parties’ positions.

Though amusingly, the Cons don’t have anything even now. You can just feel the contempt they have for democracy as a whole when they throw a snap election, but then hardly participate while breaking election rules.

From what I have heard, none of the parties aside from the Greens even have a platform. Even their websites are pretty bare this late into the election.

A sign of a good leader is to know when to step off the stage. Singh continues to show us that he is not that.

The NDP stands zero chance of winning. The best they can do is official opposition, and even that is asking for a miracle. Frankly speaking, they should be asking themselves what’s the best realistic position the party can manage this election, and that’s to whittle away votes from the Cons.

As long as the Conservatives have a strong voter base, the only thing the NDP can do is canabolize liberal votes, which is a lose-lose proposition when the liberals don’t even have a majority. Even in the best case of this scenario, they’re just splitting the votes and handing the Conservatives the win.

Instead of trying to nab a small number of easy votes, go they need to go for the harder but far bigger votes. Convince Canadians that voting for the Cons goes directly against their own interests.

I’ll sign.

Though I do think that something like a petition having the power to actually revoke a person’s citizenship is draconian, and should never actually happen in Canada, I do support the sentiment.

It’s quite hard to call them anti-terrorists when they let Hamas control their open-air prison. And I mean, how isn’t firing rockets at your neighbours’ population centres anything but terrorism?

No, actually this is the benefit of collective bargaining. When you have a single entity that represents millions of customers, you can say “we’ll take this, but only if you drop the price by half and not raise it for ten years” versus an insurance company that is not only incentivized to take a cut, but often only represents thousands, with the biggest that represents hundreds of thousands being able to point at the little guys and say “we’re still cheaper than them” even if they still charge a hundred dollars a month for insulin.

This is one of the advantages of public healthcare, and why it’s so important we preserve it. Hell, it benefits those that go to private hospitals as well, as everybody benefits from the lower drug prices, not just those who go to public hospitals. Well, except those that sell the drugs, but that’s why so many conservative leaders try to cut public healthcare, because they’re in bed with somebody in the distribution chain, and even if they’re not, they’re easy to bait into taking such measures.

While I’m not a fan of the fact that so much of Palestine is pro-terrorism, going as far as arresting someone for protesting for the lives of a population in an abuse of authority. Suppressing dissenting opinions in itself is a direct attack on the freedom of expression.

Take anything a leader says seriously, and at full value. They represent a group, even if that group would rather they not do so, as they hold power to bring what they say at least a little closer to reality (or burn their constituency trying). Just because they say “oh, I’m just joking BTW” afterwards, doesn’t mean that they weren’t serious at the time and intended to do their best to make it reality before receiving backlash or something.

Anything Trump says should be treated as if he has already signed an executive order to make it happen. If he won’t take responsibility for his own words, he should be made to by others, because words, even the most absurd and casually said ones, carry the power of office, and reveals at least a part of the leader’s actual intent.

It is in not taking such words seriously that so many tragedies have happened over the course of history. These days, rhetoric is sounding eerily close to those said back in the 1930s, and I don’t mean only those from one southern madman. Many of our own leaders spend all their time and effort deflecting and blaming others for their own failings.

Fail to learn from history, and you fail to prevent its repetition.