Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[Dion]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Smith has already said she won't be dqing any other candidates.

She didn't do that with those lake of fire candidates in 2011. Hopefully history repeats itself and she loses again.

[Reggie Dunlop]

Installing cat litter boxes in all Alberta public schools would be a real boon for our province's clay and wood chip industries.

[MRCboicgy]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

It's a common talking point among the extremist far-right that public schools are encouraging (or at least allowing) students to identify as cats and are providing them with litter boxes to use in the bathrooms. Yes, this is absolutely as dumb as it sounds. No, I'm not making this up; some conservatives genuinely believe this.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/otherkin-policy/

I'm sure it got its start when some smart-assed kid said it happened, and his dumb parents fell for it hook, line, sinker, and then went wild on Facebook.

Next thing you know, it's a key way they push back on anyone who isn't straight, white, Christian.

[Looch City]

Originally Posted by Dion

There is a local candidates forum/question period tomorrow night in High River at the Memorial Centre. If anyone has any questions you'd like me to ask, please feel free to post em here.

Ask the UCP candidate to look you in the eye and tell you that Danielle Smith is a competent leader for this province and the best that the UCP can provide.

[MoneyGuy]

Originally Posted by Reggie Dunlop

Seriously though... who believes the cat litter box in schools thing?

I know someone who says it’s happening in a school in Sherwood Park. His granddaughter told him. I’m not sure she isn’t pranking him.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by timun

The hhhhhwat?

Two Yutes.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

I know someone who says it’s happening in a school in Sherwood Park. His granddaughter told him. I’m not sure she isn’t pranking him.

It’s absolutely not. No parent is going along with this, no school is having janitorial staff deal with that and how does it make even the least bit of sense? It’s just bigoted people trying to push some “slippery slope” kind of argument against LGBTQ people.

[Sol]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucele...h=2c29a7b535f0


More history on litter boxes in schools for those interested. Sad, really.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

I know someone who says it’s happening in a school in Sherwood Park. His granddaughter told him. I’m not sure she isn’t pranking him.

Man… how sure aren’t you?

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Looch City

If UCP win, I vote we (collectively, all of CP) make a hard right pivot. Like super right. Go insane and reap some benefit.

If we go hard enough, we can probably fund the site as part of the War Room budget. Each post nets you $5 Smith bucks.

What is the exchange rate of Smith bucks to Hitler's nickels?

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

I know someone who says it’s happening in a school in Sherwood Park. His granddaughter told him. I’m not sure she isn’t pranking him.

Sorry, anyone who believes this is an f-ing idiot. Zero critical thinking.

[JohnnyB]

All the kids who identify as cats should obviously be sent home. It's not really a standard any school in Alberta could accept. If they did, everyone would start sending their cats in for a good education. It would mess up school budgets, and families with dogs would complain about discrimination. School boards would have to accommodate and the next thing you know it would be parakeets and hamsters added to attendance lists. Most of them wouldn't even have time to graduate or to contribute back into the economy for more than a couple of years. I suppose a case could be made for cockatiels, but for the most part it would just be a waste of tax dollars. Cats belong at home.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by JohnnyB

All the kids who identify as cats should obviously be sent home. It's not really a standard any school in Alberta could accept. If they did, everyone would start sending their cats in for a good education. It would mess up school budgets, and families with dogs would complain about discrimination. School boards would have to accommodate and the next thing you know it would be parakeets and hamsters added to attendance lists. Most of them wouldn't even have time to graduate or to contribute back into the economy for more than a couple of years. I suppose a case could be made for cockatiels, but for the most part it would just be a waste of tax dollars. Cats belong at home.

Speak for yourself. My cat has an MBA and outearns me. Sure it’s a little awkward that she’s the breadwinner but I’ve learned to deal with it. Without equal access to the education system, and specifically litter boxes in the classroom, she’d never have made it this far.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by Dion

There is a local candidates forum/question period tomorrow night in High River at the Memorial Centre. If anyone has any questions you'd like me to ask, please feel free to post em here.

If she shows up, ask Chelsea Petrovic about her connections to Take Back Alberta.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by Torture

If she shows up, ask Chelsea Petrovic about her connections to Take Back Alberta.

Will do.

[Leopold Stotch]

Originally Posted by Sol

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucele...h=2c29a7b535f0


More history on litter boxes in schools for those interested. Sad, really.

This American Life did a piece on it a while back:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/783/transcript

NBC News looked into this. They investigated each one of these claims and tried to find schools where this is actually happening. They reached out to every school rumored to have a litter box-- over 20 places-- and they found one, a whole school district in Colorado. They had kitty litter, but they were not keeping it because kids were identifying as animals. No kids were identifying as animals.
The district, Jefferson County School District, is home to Columbine High School. Schools in the Jefferson district have cat litter in case they have to go into lockdown during a school shooting. The litter is part of their overall plan if there is an active shooter situation. They have litter and buckets so kids have somewhere to pee, somewhere that's not in a bottle, in a closet.
They've kept cat litter on hand for years, along with candy for diabetic students, a map of the school, flashlights, wet wipes, and first aid items. The litter boxes are about school shootings.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Just to muddy the waters even further Counsel for Public Affairs will apparently release another new poll tomorrow which will show NDP +5.

https://twitter.com/Counselpa/status...17156096434186

Honestly, I have no idea. Every time we see another poll I imagine that just one more will finally make this picture look clear, and each new data point just muddies the water further.

But … one possible explanation is that the race remains close and both Janet Brown and Abacus are slight outliers—just in opposite directions. Differences between other pollsters’ numbers could all just be statistical variance within the MOE. In that scenario the race is either tied or maybe the UCP has a slight lead.

Other explanations probably work just as well. Maybe Abacus is wrong, and the UCP is headed for a landslide. . Maybe Janet Brown is wrong, and the NDP is leading by somewhere between 6-10%.

Pick your poison depending on the outcome you’re hoping for I guess.

[Jacks]

Originally Posted by Aarongavey

For Brown to be right it is more like - Counsel Public Affairs, Mainstreet, Abacus, whoever that pollster is that the Western Standard uses, and others have to be wrong. It is possible but I suspect unlikely.

Shocking that nobody has corrected you yet /s
Mainstreet has been pretty much in line with Brown for multiple polls.
Abacus is showing the opposite of Brown and Mainstreet.

No idea who the other 2 pollsters are.

[GGG]

All polls have the same problem. They take a non random sample of people and sprinkle in some magic and call that reflective of electorate.

How they try to get a representative sample of likely voters from all the people that sign up or that they call leads to differences beyond the statistical variance of the poll. So while the polls statical accuracy is +/-3% 19/20 that assumes a random sample of the population. None of these polls are random samples.

Since we know there is sampling error in our polling the best way to counteract that affect is to take all of the differen pills and average. It isn’t which poll is right. They are all wrong in their own way. Polls being the same could reflect that poll is accurate. It would also suggest it has the same error.

The other interesting thing about the Janet Brown poll is that this is an unreleased poll done for some private group which then someone with access to the data released some of the numbers to the media. Now Janet Brown is a high quality pollster so it’s unlikely the questions or methodology was skewed to drive towards a result based on the poll sponser but one might suspect if the result was different the leaker wouldn’t necessarily leak it. Meaning if this poll wasn’t advantageous for certain groups the data wouldn’t have been leaked which makes it skew data. So I would like to see who commissioned the Janet Brown poll and was it intended to make it public no matter what.

[Fuzz]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1658303209625227264


Great thread for Slava, and other "NDP will spend us into oblivion" reluctant voters.