|
THC posted:Shun all real estate agents. A person needs to be self aware in order for shunning to be effective. Same problem we have with CI, basically.
|
#
¿
Nov 3, 2015 01:11
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 23:20 |
|
|
Helsing posted:Giving a major cabinet position to somebody who ran against you would make JT's embrace of Eve Adams look like a brilliant strategic play. You are such a good poster. Want to start a politics blog with me?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 3, 2015 23:17
|
|
|
Helsing posted:That's an extremely generous sentiment and offer. I'm cautious about taking on a project like that right now for personal reasons (I'm really busy right now) and because the last few years have made me more self conscious about keeping my real life and my internet life at arm's length. That having been said, if you have a way for me to get in touch with you then we should talk. Sorry it took so long to respond to this (my own life is pretty busy right now), but I'd definitely like to talk- what's the best way to reach you, since you lack PMs here?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 9, 2015 23:08
|
|
|
Hey, so about that super wonderful RCMP operation in Victoria that nabbed two random idiots that swagger is always defending: http://www.vancouversun.com/touch/story.html?id=11527169
|
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2015 04:32
|
|
|
Helsing posted:Apologies folks, this is gonna be a long post. I necessarily brush over some details here so if anyone is feeling particularly masochistic and wants more walls of text they're free to ask me to elaborate on the points I make here. I've said this before, but you really need a blog, dude. More importantly, Canada needs more people talking like this and less Eric Grenier. Fantastic post.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 26, 2015 20:30
|
|
|
Christy Clark getting national media attention by saying a bunch of vaguely stupid things about Trudeau's senate reform plan is just her laying groundwork for her run at the CPC leadership, hope this helps.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2015 02:22
|
|
|
THC posted:Clark doesn't speak French and is probably too dumb to learn it. That might matter to the four or five remaining red tories, but the average bitter ender Conservative party member is a total loving poltroon, who would gladly flip off Quebec and vote for Canada's Sarah Palin if they thought she was the right combination of "electable" (read: sheltering them from being accused of sexism), and right wing.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2015 06:18
|
|
|
Helsing posted:As I understand it -- and Pinterest Mom can probably either confirm or deny this -- every riding association in the conservative party has an equally strong vote regardless of how many active members it has, meaning a CPC riding with three active members in Montreal gets just as much sway over the next leader as a riding in rural Alberta with 100 active members. As a result there's potential for Quebec based conservatives to exercise a disproportionate impact on the leadership race. It's one of the reasons that Jean Charest could conceivably become the next Conservative leader, if he so desired. That's certainly still a factor, but I bet she thinks she can split the middle between the Alberta and Ontario factions by appealing to them both as a consensus "mainstream appeal" candidate that could soften the party's image. Then it's her versus Charest, which is Barbie vs. Skeletor from an optics perspective. Also please note that I didn't say this was a successful forthcoming campaign; she is, after all, dumb as a sack of hammers, and sloppy to boot. Just that she's positioning her attack run, as it were.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 7, 2015 08:22
|
|
|
THC posted:Yep im happy to keep him around as long as the alternative is NPA shitheads. Suburban motorist rage is the sweetest syrup. COPE are a bunch of incurable fuckwits. I'm seriously considering a quixotic mayoral run next time on a platform of: -Saving millions of dollars by mandating free housing for everyone, and building it on city land that is set to be sold off to developers, and -Creating a public Internet utility that would offer $20 a month FTTN to any resident who wants it. I probably wouldn't win but by God I'd have some fun. 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 12, 2015 01:55
|
|
|
The Goon posted:Two guys I went to school with just became the Chiefs of Staff to two different ministers. drat. Hey bunny, how do I get in on this sweet gig? Step One: give up any concept of a life outside of an 80 hour work week. Step Two: adopt a robotic/moronic Team First mentality that turns everything your team does into the divine mandate of an enlightened age, and everything your opponent does into a horrifying crime that makes them unfit to govern. Step 3: Keep secrets you have no business knowing, that will eat you from the inside every day like a drip, drip, drip eating at your conscience. Do that and you should be golden!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2015 04:12
|
|
|
bunnyofdoom posted:You forgot step 4. Descend into alcoholism Alcoholism, trips to Pigale with coworkers (who you then accidentally hook up with), and late night shameful St. Hubert orders are to be expected.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2015 04:32
|
|
|
bunnyofdoom posted:Well poo poo, I am behind schedule the . Never been to pigale or hooked up with a political coworker I'm not one to tell somebody else how to live their lives, but it's right there across the river. Go, my son.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2015 04:36
|
|
|
I could go into pretty exhaustive detail about the current state of weed regulation in Canada, as it is now a thing I do for a living, if anybody has questions! And yes, it makes me laugh when CI starts frothing about weed.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2015 07:58
|
|
|
What, like there isn't a backlog they could help with?
Somebody fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Sep 9, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2015 08:08
|
|
|
I will have an effort post about weed regularion ready in the next few days. I'm waiting for Some Stuff to hopefully Happen in the coming day before I waste my time writing an outdated thing.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2016 00:35
|
|
|
flakeloaf posted:*sigh* Ask me about my life in the last few days after Dana Larsen mailed a gram of weed to every single Liberal MP. 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2016 00:11
|
|
|
Albino Squirrel posted:I'm actually eagerly awaiting your effortpost from the front lines of legalization. Which presumably generally has more tact than Larsen. OK, I'll try to skirt around the things I still can't talk about yet. I'm going to break this down in order of what level of government did what first. I hope that makes it easier to follow this loving rat's nest of horseshit. Municipal One day the VPD woke up and said, "You know what? gently caress it. I hate arresting people for weed. Let's just... stop doing that." This was driven in part by the fact that the medical marijuana system created enough quasi-legal grey areas that it became very difficult to pin down who was actually committing a crime. After all, if the grow op has an MMR license for at least some of what they produce, are you going to kick down their door and... audit them? The Supremes are still looking at whether or not the Harper-era Health Canada's restrictions on production and sale for MMR patients is legal, so the dispensaries are also in a grey area, especially the ones that have some kind of doctor's note system (which is most of them, with one notably insane chain whose owner appears dead set on leapfrogging Emory and going straight to Gitmo, but that's another matter). So the police are disinterested in arresting for simple possession, and can't really pin down the growers or retailers. So they said "gently caress it" and kicked the ball to pretty much everyone else. So now the City of Vancouver wakes up one morning ~3 years ago and there's a loving weed store on every block. Some of them are sketchy as hell, some of them are just breaking normal zoning laws, it's a shitshow. Eventually Vancouver's council takes some comfort from full legalization in Washington and Colorado, and decides to jump right into the deep end by proposing a business license system for these dispensaries. At the very least, they figure, we can get them to obey normal zoning laws, and set some basic restrictions on advertising, on-site consumption, etc. Except they pass a bylaw that looks like it was written by a four year old. It's full of nonsense, and nobody consulted with: a) the surveying department (who now need to measure the distance between ~200 stores and every school, Neighborhood House, and Community Center near them), or b) the Board of Variance who will hear appeals from every dispensary that got rejected because the City can't measure for gently caress all. Seriously, they hosed up the measurement system, and even tagged some random buildings in Vancouver as Community Centers just to add to the confusion. So now the Board of Variance is hearing like 150 appeals. They normally hear four appeals a day (and that includes every zoning bylaw appeal they normally deal with). Again, shitshow. Oh, and one last weird thing- the City included a clause in their bylaw mandating that all dispensaries join CAMCD, the closest thing we have to something like NORML in the States. Except one of CAMCD's board members has this habit of mailing drugs to sitting MPs... Kind of problematic! (CAMCD is going through massive governance reform and will probably be an excellent business organization in a few months, but it's kind of funny that CoV just picked a random organization out of a hat and forced every cannabusiness to join them.) Other cities have decided that the Vancouver poo poo-show model is the one for them, particularly Toronto, where city council has decided to stick their head in the sand and hum real loud while four billion dispensaries open up at the same time. They are basically waiting until the Feds and/or Wynne Junta come up with some policies, so in the meantime, enjoy your quasi-legal weed, Toronto Goons! This was the stare of things in October 2015, when... Federal Somehow, Trudeau the Younger wins an election, having included full legalization in his platform. So now whatever few fucks the VPD gave about sketchy grow ops or lovely retailers goes right out the window- what's the point of bringing charges against somebody when it takes a geological Age to get before a provincial judge, and in that time you're going to legalize the thing you're charging them with? Pretty demoralizing if you're a cop. So gently caress it, don't bother. Even the RCMP are slowing their roll, compared to a few years ago. Circling back to CAMCD, they are literally the only national organization in the country with any kind of policy experience in this area, and they're woefully understaffed, what with being basically conjured by government fiat only a few months ago. There was no organized national marijuana lobby with a constituency and political capital involved in the Liberal platform promise, so there's a sucking vacuum in terms of industry input, lobbyists, etc. Amount of consultation that has occurred between the Feds and CAMCD to date: square root of gently caress all. That will change shortly (cough cough ahem), but for now everyone is standing around holding their dicks and having wrong opinions ("Oh, weed is about to be made legal, there's no need to lobby anymore  "). I'm literally asking questions about specific points of policy or law that nobody is considering, and that is deeply terrifying to both myself and everyone else in the room who winces when I ask a question.Example: "Sooooo... who regulates whether or not the weed has been washed clean of pesticides correctly?" *everyone poops their pants simultaneously* Provincial The main role of the provinces in this multi-layered poo poo show appears to be "proposing super loving dumb ideas". They are the ones pushing to sell weed in liquor stores, which if you've ever read any study about things like the use of weed as a coping mechanism for recovered alcoholics who need a substitute, or the impact of cannabis on people who have only consumed a little bit of alcohol and would not normally be impaired, but are now CRUNK, you would know that this is such a self-evidently stupid idea that I don't know how it's going around so much. (The Ontario Liberals!) That's the tl;dr version of my forthcoming effortpost, with as much sensitive information as I could scoop out without making it totally uninformative. I can probably answer specific questions on specific topics more easily. Franks Happy Place fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Jan 9, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2016 01:58
|
|
|
Albino Squirrel posted:Gotcha. So basically it's like most new government initiatives where we try to conjure expertise out of thin air, gently caress it up horribly, and figure out a half-assed way of doing things three years in? Fortunately there are about... six? of us who are adult and experienced enough to be kicking and screaming against that outcome. It probably won't help as much as I'd like, but it's so rare to get a chance to work in government policy "greenfield" like this...
|
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2016 02:13
|
|
|
I think it's way too early to blame any of this on the federal Liberals. They aren't the reason the industry are a bunch of disorganized libertarians with no concept of effective organization and advocacy... and it's not their job to fix that, either. If Monsanto/Molson/the provincial liquor store unions run the table because the dispensaries have their thumbs up their collective asses, that's just how government works. You can't defer to stakeholders you never heard from, etc.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2016 03:54
|
|
|
That's exactly what is about to happen, because the goddamned dispensaries are too nearsighted to realize that they have a lot of power if they would only unite and start messaging correctly. It's PROFOUNDLY frustrating from up close, I assure you.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2016 20:02
|
|
|
ChickenWing posted:provincial liquor control boards, probably. Them, Monsanto, big alcohol companies, and the existing large scale corporate "medical" grow ops that have been built in anticipation of legalization... take a loving number.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2016 20:10
|
|
"
|
flakeloaf posted:And probably a tobacco company or three. Wheeeee! I just got word that CAMCD is going to call an emergency meeting and invite every Vancouver dispensary and grow op to join a political coalition, which I may or may not have a big role in. Beyond my desire for paid employment as a weed lobbyist, this is a great first step- they have a LOT of money and could be quite a powerful force if they'd only get their poo poo together long enough to see the existential threat. I will liveblog the meeting on Friday, I promise. 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2016 20:40
|
|
|
ocrumsprug posted:CI straight up calls him a liar when he posts while the rest of us just strongly imply it. I don't think Hals autism allows him to detect the sarcasm. CI used to call Hal the only 'smart' poster in CanPol, before the thread consensus came in that Hal needs to take his meds. It was pretty funny watching him suck up to an entirely unconvincing appeal to authority.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2016 18:46
|
|
|
Furnaceface posted:Nationalize all the telecom infrastructure. Its the only way to be safe.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2016 06:27
|
|
|
bunnyofdoom posted:Apparently This is really dumb because I know for a fact that there have been lots of meetings with both elected and unelected officials on the weed file. I really do think the LPC want to move on this file. I get the impression they see it as an easy win, especially the newly elected MPs. In fact bunny I might PM you in the next few days on that exact matter.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2016 20:56
|
|
|
Helsing posted:Given the dispensaries popping up everywhere I have trouble imagining that weed is going to get much closer to de facto legalization than it is right now. All you need at the moment is a bottle of codeine with your name on it. Yeah but think about the difference between 'de facto' and 'de jure' on this particular matter. The 'de jure' issues are... enormous. There's just so many facets to legalization of any kind, you need to do a LOT of work laying the groundwork. The next few months are going to be about the "good" side of the industry trying to come together and create higher standards for their business practices, and the "bad" side of the industry just doing whatever the gently caress they want until the police put a stop to it. Edit: My brain is fried from doing this stuff for 16 hours a day the last month, but as a more easy-to-understand example, take vape lounges. Any dispensary still running a vape lounge is not just breaking the law selling weed, they are breaking the law by allowing indoor smoking. The former is excusable given the current social and political context; the latter is going to be illegal no matter what, and just reflects badly on everybody in the industry. Franks Happy Place fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Feb 13, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2016 21:04
|
|
|
Chicken posted:I would be interested in an effort post or a link to an article on why the BCNDP is so awful. (CI saying "Jenny Kwan" doesn't count) Rural British Columbians are mostly terrible white trash like the average rural Albertan or Ontarian. They are fat, white, proudly ignorant, fetishize the Hells Angels (every rig pig's first purchase after his lifted F-350 is a loving Harley), hate immigrants and the environment, and are dead easy to bamboozle with even the BC Liberal's level of low-rent politicking. Even the rural BCers who aren't So where would a credible left-of-center political party draw strength from? Our biggest trade unions are full of Honorary Albertans and our left wing elite are neoliberal carpetbagger Ewoks. Like Helsing says, you can't just majik up a broad left wing coalition out of nowhere; it has to actually be based on social institutions of some kind. We have none, because B.C. is the worst, so we get the BCNDP.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 17, 2016 22:49
|
|
|
Hexigrammus posted:I had the same impulse, but Bill van der Zalm was there to point the way. It's always 180 degrees from wherever he's pointing. What about when he's pointing at the suitcase of cash?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 25, 2016 06:26
|
|
|
Helsing posted:It's kinda funny that CI gets so incensed over Jenny Kwan taking a vacation at Disney Land (using money from a charitable cause he doesn't actually support) but is very enthusiastic about the wholesale legalized corruption represented by ISDS or extending insane American intellectual property laws. Are... are you just now working through the realization he isn't a very smart person?  Did you not pick that up from the fact that he was the only one who was taken in by Hal's insane, nonsensical appeals to authority? Nobody with half a clue could be excused for reading a Hal post and thinking "Yes, this person knows what they are talking about!" Please just put Ethnically Han Holden Caulfield on ignore and save us the weekly derails.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2016 00:31
|
|
|
Helsing posted:I think I give CI a pass for the numerous stupid things he says because for some reason I find his constant attacks on Canadians and his nouveau riche posturing kinda funny and its a nice contrast to the serious posting. It's also hard for an insult to have much sting when it's coming from somebody who comes off as severely unhappy and quite possibly having an actual borderline personality disorder. I agree he is a harmless idiot, but please don't waste your glorious effort posts on him. It's like watching Noam Chomsky critique an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives because Guy Fieri's syntax is sloppy, you know?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2016 01:10
|
|
|
Wait, am I the Weed Trotskyist? Because I'm more of a anarchosyndicalist, if we're aiming for accuracy.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2016 01:49
|
|
|
Colby Cosh is mostly a discount bin Mark Steyn, but god drat is he right in this one.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 4, 2016 21:43
|
|
|
Helsing posted:Protesting an event that didn't even take place and dumping piss on someone's head is exactly the kind of empty, self serving street theatre that keeps the left from accomplishing anything. 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2016 22:20
|
|
|
Cultural Imperial posted:I knew it. Eskimo isn't a pejorative He's got us there, guys.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2016 07:02
|
|
|
sliderule posted:The only meaningful difference is Indica vs. Sativa  This is not true.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 10, 2016 17:38
|
|
|
jm20 posted:double post, let me add content Wait are you in the industry? PM me. 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 07:56
|
|
|
jm20 posted:Not in the TREE GAME myself. Don't forget that actual weed (aka flower) is an ever-shrinking subset of the sector. Concentrates (dabs) and edibles are growing the most, and those can have vastly different pricing at the high end, especially the finer resins.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 09:05
|
|
|
Dear Toronto CanPol: I am going to be in town for last minute Weed Politics related business this week; anybody fancy a pint?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2016 18:55
|
|
|
flakeloaf posted:The City of Ottawa has announced that it will open up the ride-sharing market to allow Uber to operate alongside cabbies, as long as riders accept that it's a two-party arrangement that has nothing to do with the city, and drivers accept that they have to pay licensing fees and meet minimum standards. Try as I might, I just can't muster any sympathy for a guy who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an "investment plate" so two other poor schmucks could work long, lovely days to line his pockets. This was an inevitability after the cabbies disgraced themselves with their "airport strike" nonsense last year. Don't gently caress with the capital airport if you want anybody to treat your special interest group seriously, geniuses.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2016 19:27
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 23:20 |
|
|
Hexigrammus posted:All except the ones that aren't: United Nations Gang, Red Scorpions, Independent Soldiers, Bacon Brothers. etc. There are also some mostly-white gentlemen motorcycle enthusiasts who apparently work in the independent pharmaceuticals industry, I have heard!
|
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2016 05:48
|
|