I don't want someone to treat government like a business at all.
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Kevin O'Leary launches unofficial PM bid against Justin Trudeau
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I don't want someone to treat government like a business at all.
MrCunningham
Member
matthewwhatever
Member
No, he's not a good businessman, nor is he a good venture capitalist, nor is he a philanthropist. He's just a guy who acts like a jerk on TV. He's not qualified to run a corner store, let alone the country.
Yeah he'd basically run up the debt/create a deficit. Then just wash his hands clean after his term and find some scapegoat.
MrCunningham
Member
Where did this man make his fortune from, exactly? I am only asking, because be must have made some good investments in order to get the wealth that he has now.
Not that I am disagreeing that he is a jerk, of course he is. He certainly has done his fair share of stupid shit as well... and a lot of it was even televised.
But whatever he is doing, he certainly did find a way to make a lot of money doing it. To me that shows some signs that he is a little more than qualified to run a corner store.
excelsiorlef
Member
He literally thinks poverty is great because then they'll all be motivated to be millionaires. That makes him blatantly terrible as a candidate to run a country, running a country should be about protecting the poor, he'd celebrate their poverty.
Theyve been heading that way since long before Robocop. This would just be taking it to Verhoeven levels of ridiculous in reality.
Buba Big Guns
Banned
O'Leary is straight up money over anything and everything. That doesn't exactly apply positively when you're running a country full of people living in a big global community. Look at his stance on climate change for example. That should completely disqualify him from any consideration.
He does not see the human side of things, even if in the long run it'll be a huge net benefit.
He does not see the human side of things, even if in the long run it'll be a huge net benefit.
MrCunningham
Member
Yeah, that is a very Trump thing to say, and a terrible sentiment overall. But then again Trudeau is wasting a lot of money on stupid things as well, he doesn't seem to have the best interests in the Canadian people either.
True.
Buba Big Guns
Banned
Not sure I follow. Trudeau's liberals have been in power for only a year now... Where exactly is this huge waste of money?
<Citation needed>
gutter_trash
Banned
I agree that Trudeau must do less foreign trips and less events. I and agree that he needs to spend more time in the House of Commons.
I'm a Liberal voter but I can see how him taking too many foreign trips can piss off frugal people
matthewwhatever
Member
Seriously? Someone gave you the links just a few posts ago. Here's one of them again, since apparently you're engaging in selective reading: Kevin O'Leary isn't a billionaire, he just plays one on TV
If he ran a corner store, he'd let the pipes leak and the foundation crumble, then he'd put a gaudy storefront on it and try to sell it to some sucker.
What are you talking about specifically, especially the "Not having Canadians best interests" part
O'Leary started a dotcom, inflated it's value into the billions, and then sold it to the suckers at Mattel, but he didn't make a fortune on the deal because he spent all of his stock while inflating the company. The biggest win for him was that Mattel gave him a job. When his dotcom imploded from being a poorly-built fraud, he tucked his tail between his legs and ran.
Needing a new job, he appeared on TV as a fake TV "billionaire", using the story that he "sold his company for billions". He was paid to appear on CBC and claim that greed is good and that all anyone needs is bootstraps. He appeared on CBC's Dragon's Den (and it's American version, Shark Tank) and he generates ratings by acting like an asshole, but he rarely invests in anything on that show, and when he does he frequently pulls out after the cameras turn off, because he's not rich. He doesn't have much money to invest. He has his reality TV show paycheck and that's it. Shark Tank is literally the best paying job he has ever had.
There was an investment banker who thought he had a system where he could get more money out of the stock market than anyone else, and it did, until his system imploded and cost everyone their life savings and his name became mud on Wall Street and he was blacklisted. O'Leary met this man and they realized that they could solve each other's problems. This guy burned his own name. O'Leary is a name and nothing else. So "O'Leary Financial" was born. It's a ticking time bomb waiting to destroy everyone's life savings again, but now O'Leary can say that he sold his company for billions and that he's a shrewd businessman who runs O'Leary Financial and manages people's money for them.
I think it's doubtful that he actually thinks that, because I have some shred of faith in humanity. O'Leary is an actor pretending to be a billionaire, who got noticed and got ahead by saying shocking asshole things that a stereotypical billionaire might say. It's not clear what he really believes. Although he might start drinking his own kool aid.
He's running for Prime Minister because it's absolutely the best thing he could do right now for his brand as a fake billionaire.
His coworkers on Dragon's Den would disagree, as would many of his investees (he offered a couple of them [read: Dragon's Den competitors] a credit line at a higher rate than the banks instead of actual capital for their ventures):
Arlene Dickinson said:
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
capitalCORN
Member
Nothing like killing a dying tree to plant a diseased seed.
Maybe, maybe not, impossible to tell. What I do know is the direction we are headed in, isn't working.
excelsiorlef
Member
...
There's no yes but in response to billions in poverty is great and exciting news... fucking hell
killer rin
Member
Turns out it's wasn't the businesses we had to be worried about, it's the people wanting to treat the government like a business
If there is one silver lining, if he made it to an actual election, all it would take is CBC playing this video for him to burn 3/4's of Eastern Canada and BC Votes
excelsiorlef
Member
This is the same nonsense that people threw at Trump. Look at how fake that turned out to be... oh wait not fake at all.
He's horrible and we need to treat him like he's horrible.
capitalCORN
Member
Ontario is still holding rather well still. Weak dollar means manufacturing's rebounding, future tech is growing, and construction is 24/7. Numbers still hold on the favourable side of 2015. There's still money coming in.
killer rin
Member
Well, at least until the Wynne Liberals get the boot in 2019 in favour of the equally insane PC's and the tap dies up faster than a pool of water on Venus.
capitalCORN
Member
Not sure about Brown, but the 905 still have ways to go to get the taste of Harper's balls from their mouth methinks.
Manufacturing will never rebound with the cost of electricity. Why would I set up a plant in Ontario, when I could go to another province and pay 1/3rd the rate?
Not to mention a broken real estate market, impending natural gas price spike. I know how to fix it, let's force all new builds to heat with electricity. Good luck with a $900 hydro bill. It's really the electrical system that is completely screwed in Ontario.
capitalCORN
Member
It's back to a foothold though. Do you have stats on growing manufacturing trends anywhere in Canada? Most seem to still reflect Ontario in the lead.
killer rin
Member
I take it you aren't from Ontario? The only thing that the 905 likes about the Liberals right now is that they have finally been getting money to improve and put in place transit transit systems and fix up some aging infrastructure.
On the other hand, the Deficit, Provincial Debt and Energy Prices resemble that meme about the mentally deficient stick person drawing a chart. The Employment Rate is all sorts of messed up, Housing Prices outright killed themselves and most of the citizenry is in massive amounts of personal debt because of the previous reasons in addition to the wake from Harper's policies.
Basically, at the moment public opinion is that Wynne is literally worse than Hitler and her approval ratings are on track to somehow defy the laws of mathematics to reach negatives in a couple months.
capitalCORN
Member
I AM from Ontario, but the multicultural middle aren't going to dabble in conservatism in the near future, considering the con job Harper enacted last election. Last time I checked on the Ontario conservatives was Hudak, and he sure wasn't making ground. I know Winne isn't popular, but is Brown some miracle worker?
I believe O'Leary is very committed to his character (although he's not a qualified actor, he's not a qualified anything). When people like Amanada Lang and Arlene Dickinson call him on his bullshit, he doubles down on it and pretends these are the things he really believes. I think Lang and Dickinson have been key to shaping his character.
And his co-workers know that he's a fraud/doesn't have any real money, but they put up with him because he's good for ratings.
Trump and O'Leary are two entirely different cases there. Trump has decades of letting it all hang out because power corrupts and nobody can do a damn thing to stop him, and he has proven himself to be a deeply horrible person (often on videotape even), and yet his loyal followers are willing to call him innocent against all evidence, and/or conveniently ignore anything that doesn't impact them personally (whatever happens to other people is fine). Also, his words really cannot be trusted because he flip-flops on a whim and doesn't care that the value of his word is meaningless.
O'Leary is a fraud. He's a nobody who became a somebody (and not a particularly rich somebody) by pretending to be a moustache-twirling villain in the vein of Michael Douglas' character from the movie "Wall Street", and is likely in large part based on Donald Trump himself. I don't think we can believe anything that O"leary has said, for good or for bad, because I don't think anyone knows who Kevin O'Leary actually is. He's more phony than a forged Romulan data crystal.
Just because O'Leary is an unpredictable fraud, that doesn't make him not horribly dangerous.
You Are Viewtiful
Member
Ontarians (and actually, all provinces in general) are good at separating federal and provincial politics. For example, Ontario went Conservative in the May 2011 federal election, but went for a Liberal minority in October 2011 provincial election just 5 months later.
Hudak was extremely unlikable. Most people haven't heard of Brown yet.
killer rin
Member
The reason Hudak lost was because he showed himself to be completely incapable of logic on the campaign trail. He released a platform which did not add up at all, made claims that he was going to fire 100,000 people and magically create 1 Million Jobs and then went off and pissed off the Religious Conservatives by saying "attacking" Catholic Schools by making it a part of his promise to provide religious schools for other religions. 2014 was his election to win, all he had to do was shut up and watch as Wynne backed herself into a corner.
But no, Brown at least seems semi-intelligent in that he is exercising some level of control over his party and he isn't falling into the traps Wynne has been placing. On the down side, he is constantly changing his opinion just to gain votes so nobody knows how he would actually govern, he personally is against Abortion and has taken both parts of the Sex Ed in schools debate (although leans towards getting rid of it). Not to mention his entire party is even more religious extremist than ever before. But the big thing in his favour is that nobody knows about him
And the PC's are currently winning in public opinion because several By Elections have occurred recently with the Liberal Incumbent being kicked out for a PC Candidate
User Name Here
Member
Wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Wonderful wins.
Mike Works
Member
Think of all the videos and quotes that were supposed to bury Donald Trump.
hydragonwarrior
Member
What will scare me is if he tries the "Make Canada Great Again!" slogan.
It's unfortunately catchy but hopefully people smarten up and realize whose toting it... Or not.
It's unfortunately catchy but hopefully people smarten up and realize whose toting it... Or not.
Perfect Blue
Banned
It's a good thing Canada isn't the US then.
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