Politics

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Sunday Link-Off: A Slamming Good Time

gigi-hadid-guess15-01Just when you thought it was safe to go outside again, there was snow in Northern Ontario over the weekend. I guess we were spoiled by above zero weather. And I suppose there’s this WrestleMania thing happening in a week that’s a big part of this Sunday’s linkdump. I suppose that’s worth mentioning and covering on top of the usual stuff.

Anyway, it’s Sunday so it’s time for the links. Let’s kick things off with Gigi Hadid. I can finally understand why she was a frontrunner for this year’s SI Swimsuit cover.

How will possible Republican Presidential hopeful and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker help the state’s budget problems? Not paying back the state’s debt. (Washington Post)

Just to make things worse for the Republicans, it turns out that Obamacare isn’t too back for the creation of new jobs. (Bloomberg)

SXSW is ongoing right now. What is SXSW? No one’s really sure anymore. (Fusion)

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Wednesday Link-Off: Election Blues

lights-junos15-01I’m a little disappointed I don’t have enough time in the morning to prep the links at the last minute. I’d love to have some links about the Israeli election included in the post but that was still a dead heat last I heard. I suppose that’s what I have the Sunday links for.

Anyway, if it’s Wednesday, it’s time for the links. Let’s kick things off with Lights.

I don’t know (or care) what this Hilary Clinton email scandal is but it’s gotten her presidential aspirations off to a rocky start with two years of campaigning still to go. (Rolling Stone)

Political parties often put a lot of time and effort into finding the right candidate. For the Democrats, if they put that much effort in getting people out to vote, they’d never lose. (Al Jazeera America)

This time of year brings up plenty of questions about why college “student-athletes” don’t get paid but they aren’t the only cogs in a multi-million dollar machine going unpaid. Canada is going through the same thing in junior hockey. (Vice Sports)

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Sunday Link-Off: Not Safe for Work

rosie-huntington-whiteley-esquireuk15-03After taking last Wednesday off to spend my time writing the Formula One season previews, it’s time for my editions of the link-off to resume normal service. While the title might say NSFW, there aren’t any NSFW links. There are some people with some NSFW professions being talked about but wouldn’t reading about that be the fun part of your day.

Anyway, let’s end the preamble and start the links. Let’s kick things off with Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.

If there’s a Ponzi scheme that shakes Canada and no one in Canada was shaken, did it really shake the country? (New York Times Magazine)

The 47 Republican Senators sent a letter to the leadership of Iran that effectively tried to threaten Iran out of signing the long-awaited nuclear agreement with America. Many pundits suggest this is close to treason. (Bloomberg)

And the “Iranian hardliners” sent a letter back. (Slate)

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Sunday Link-Off: The News and the Fools Who Follow It

jessica-alba-braun15-01We’re about to kick off a busy few weeks here at Lowdown HQ. This week is Formula One 2015 preview week. Tuesday’s rules change post is written. Wednesday’s drivers and teams preview is in progress. The predictions and power rankings posts will be fairly straight-forward. However, Monday’s news update hasn’t been started yet. Hopefully I get all that done quickly so I can move onto the next week’s Hottest Canadian bracket. There’s lots of work to be done around the blog over the next couple of weeks.

Anyway, it’s Sunday which means that it’s time for us to do the links. After a couple straight linkdumps with Alison Brie (not that there’s anything wrong with that), let’s kick things off with Jessica Alba.

About one in six Canadians think they’re better off now than this time last year. One-third of Canadians think they’re worse off. Sounds like Harper’s Canada is working out well for all of us. (Press Progress)

A scandal is brewing in Britain but won’t get the coverage over here that it should get. An investigation has turned up what is being called a “VIP pedophile ring” in the British government under Thatcher. (The Daily Beast)

Republican Washington State Senator Jim Honeyford says that poor and “coloured” people are more likely to commit crimes. And this is a party that thinks they’re fit to lead a whole country. (The Stranger)

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Wednesday Link-Off: In Like a Lion

alison-brie-gqmexico15-04So the old saying goes that if March comes in like a lion, it goes out like a lamb. Well, last evening, I snowblowed about eight inches of snow. I don’t know how much fell overnight or how much I shoveled out of the end of the driveway this morning because I’m writing this Tuesday night. So I’m hoping the old adage holds true because I’ve had enough of winter at this point.

Anyway, it’s Wednesday which means that it’s time for us to do the links. Let’s kick things off with Alison Brie from her GQ Mexico shoot.

For the second time, Fox News has apologized for Bill O’Reilly has apologized for lying about what he witnessed as a reporter. He’s still on air though. (The Guardian)

The daughter of the BTK serial killer is the focus of a long article about her coming to terms with finding out her father was a murderer. (The Wichita Eagle)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a speech to a joint session of the US Congress yesterday. Israel is likely to be a hot topic in the upcoming Presidential election. So that’s why Rand Paul is backtracking on wanting to cut foreign aid to Israel. (BuzzFeed)

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Sunday Link-Off: 14 Seconds of Links

Okay, this isn’t a 14-second post but who knows? Maybe you’ll just skip to the end where we have the whole damn Ronda Rousey / Cat Zingano fight to watch in a GIF. I missed the fight and was worrying about catching a video this morning but I didn’t expect it to be that easy to watch the fight. Joe Rogan’s first post-fight question to Cat was longer than the damn fight.

Anyway, it’s time for the links. It’s only appropriate to start this post with Ronda Rousey.

Until this week, you may not have known that Prince Edward Island was looking into launching online gambling. Then the plan went so wrong that Robyn Doolittle is doing a report on it. (The Globe and Mail)

Bill O’Reilly has gotten off comparatively lightly for lying when compared to others. Maybe that’s because it seems to be a force of habit. (Daily Dot)

Prime Minister Harper said that a Muslim woman should have been forced to remove her niqab when taking the Canadian citizenship oath. Not everyone is happy with that remark. (CBC News)

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Wednesday Link-Off: Lies, Damned Lies and the News Media

amy-adams-jennifer-aniston-vfoscars15-01Just when you though that Brian Williams was the only member in the media in the middle of a scandal, I happened across a bunch of stories about news media scandals. Welcome my friends to the show that never ends. And there’s a whole bunch of legitimately interesting stories if that’s more your speed.

Anyway, it’s time for us to do the links. Because the Oscars were this weekend, let’s kickoff with something special. Here’s Amy Adams and Jennifer Aniston.

The right often complains about the war on Christmas or the war on religion but they ignore their war on science. For some reason, science is under attack from people who should know better. (National Geographic)

“Among African-American men aged fifteen to forty-four, 88.7 percent of gun deaths are homicides; among white American men aged thirty-five to sixty-four, 89.2 percent of gun deaths are suicides.: (Harper’s Magazine)

Naturally, Bill O’Reilly went to town on Brian Williams for his lying scandal. Little did he know that he was about to get caught up in a scandal of his own. (Mother Jones)

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Sunday Link-Off: It’s the Law

candice-swanepoel-maxim15-03I kind of wanted to title today’s linkdump with a bit of a Judge Dredd reference but this title fit best. I’ve finally caught up on my back issues of Judge Dredd. Now it’s to catch up on Justice League and Superman. I don’t even have that big a file at my local comic book shop and I’m always behind. Some people order in like five times the number of comics I do. How can they pull that off?

Anyway, it’s Sunday which means that it’s time for the links. Something like nine months after being named Maxim’s hottest woman of 2014, we finally have Candice Swanepoel’s Hot 100 shoot. It’s too bad that there’s only one photo that’s remotely SFW.

When the chief economist for America’s biggest conservative think tank can’t come up with an actual fact to back up his claims that the Affordable Care Act has been a failure, isn’t it time to give up that fight? Then again, lying to electorate seems to work so why the hell not. (Daily Intelligencer)

A former CSIS officer says that the Harper government’s new anti-terror bill will completely backfire. (National Post)

Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein went from petty criminal to shooter in a short period of time. What happened to him to cause that change? (Time)

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Wednesday Link-Off: Lies, Damned Lies and Isn’t There Anything Else to Talk About?

I know I’ve mentioned how some weeks are easier to find weeks than others. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to have links about new stories. As much as I’m sure Brian Williams interests most of you, there has to be other things in the world that are worth writing about. I swear the media finds one bit of clickbait to latch onto and it doesn’t let go.

Anyway, it’s time for the links. Since she’s on the cover of the SI Swimsuit Issue, here’s Hannah Davis.

Quiz time: Would you rather spend $1 billion on the Iraq War or on infrastructure? Independent Senator Bernie Sanders is trying to push through an infrastructure bill that would almost equal spending on the Iraq War. (The Hill)

Brian Williams is being whipped from pillar to post after it came out that he lied about being shot down in Iraq. The story’s traction might come more from the public spectacle than the principle of the matter. (Bloomberg)

The spectacle doesn’t change the fact that NBC news is in complete disarray at the moment. (The Daily Beast)

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Sunday Link-Off: Lies, Damned Lies and Brian Williams

emily-ratajkowski-hm15-05I bet nobody was expecting to wake up to a set of links about some unlikely to win the White House Republican nomination hopefuls, some exposes on sports media and the implosion of Brian Williams career. Sometimes, you get a really bad week for links. Sometimes, you get this week.

And it’s a good thing that I didn’t do an SI Swimsuit cover odds post this year because I would have been wrong. Hannah Davis was #5 on my list. Who was #1? Emily Ratajkowski.

Why are people anti-vaccine? Vox asked an anti-vax activist why he thinks vaccines are terrible. (Vox)

The news has become the news. NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams has admitted to lying about an alleged helicopter attack in Iraq. (The Hill)

It’s not just the Iraq story that’s falling apart from the Williams lie. His whole career is now being gone through with a fine-toothed comb. (TKTK)

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