Weeping and Gnashing

FIREWALL

2008-12-03T12:51:00.001-07:00

ImPalin

2008-09-04T14:15:00.001-06:00

Wow!
Governor Sarah Palin poked so many holes in Barrack Obama last night, he's gonna have to spell his name with a whole lotta extra o's.

Ooooouchbama!

Obubble

2008-08-29T07:11:00.003-06:00

It's amazing that a little hot air can make so much out of so little.

Let's hope it bursts before November.
Bad things happen in the aftermath of a bubble burst.
I'd rather see it happen to the Dems instead of the world.

2008-03-13T12:43:00.002-06:00

True Grit

True Grits

On an unrelated note...

2007-04-12T08:52:00.000-06:00

Someone please teach Dion how to make a fist.

Dion too sophisticated for moi...

2007-04-12T07:07:00.000-06:00

Wednesday
Thursday

He has left me confused.

One day Quebecers have voted for the ADQ as a protest and there is no rise in right-wing sentiment in Quebec and Harper cannot count on a carryover from the ADQ.

The next day, the Bloc is irrelevant because the debate in Quebec is now right-wing vs. left wing and Quebecers are too tired and sophisticated for protest voting.

I guess he's right. The ROC is too unsophisticated to understand Quebec politics.
Or maybe HE is the one who doesn't understand Quebec politics.

Sci-Fi Dentistry

2007-04-10T14:14:00.000-06:00

No drill. No freezing.
I have one. Being installed as I type.

Happy Dance!!!

Who let the Diog out?

2007-04-03T07:20:00.000-06:00

The Liberals say that they don't want an election and that the Conservatives are trying to force one. Are they lying or just plain stupid?
Did that have to be an 'or' question?

I think the Liberals are weak and by trying to prove the opposite they are making a big mistake.

The Liberals are like a little yappy dog. The kind that thinks it is a big dog. The kind that go after big dogs when you take them on a walk and the only thing that keeps them from becoming big-dog-kibble is a leash and the firm grip of its walker. Well, it's become quite obvious that the leash of reason has slipped off the collar of the Liberal Party. Let the barking commence...

Diog:
Bark Bark Yip Bark
(I must be top dog as soon as possible. See that flag pole. I pee on it and it is mine!)

Woof Yip Yap
(I see you Big Dog! All your bones are belong to me. Stop sniffing around in my garbage! My GARBAGE!!!)

Bark Yip Arwooooo Yip
(Don't ignore me. I will tear out your neo-dog throat. I will feast on your ideological liver. If you don't believe me I will reintroduce Kyoto to the dog house!)

Yip Yip Yippity Yap
(See I am a big dog! I am the biggest dog! Watch me chase this Accord all the way to Kelowna! You are a bully the way you just keep ignoring me!!!

Arf Arf Le Woof Grrrr Rowrfff
(I defecate on your papers! How do you like that Clean Air? My aroma is seductive you must get to know me!

Harper Dog:
Chomp!
Chomp!

Diog:
Woooooooofff
This is so unfair...

Monday Morning Musing

2007-04-02T08:00:00.000-06:00

If your competition, opponent or enemy is kicking your ass it doesn't make them a bully.
It means they are better.

If they play by the same rules as you it doesn't mean they are being unfair.

What would the opposition like to do to make things fair? Propose a spending cap on the next election? Propose an end to fund-raising and have all official parties (and unofficial ones like the Greens) receive identical government funding? Eliminate words like 'accountable' and 'effective' and 'leader' from the public debate?

Not allow the media to report or comment on politics? Oh wait, the Liberals would never go for that one.

The Future of the NDP under Open Federalism

2007-03-27T15:21:00.000-06:00

Jack.
Jack Squat.

If you look at what the Feds will vacate to respect the BNA fed/prov jurisidictions, the pet projects and raison de' etre for the NDP clearly define it as a Provincial party.

PQ fading.
BQ next.
NDP after that.

Harper will get his two-party Federal system at the end of this all if it all plays out and he has enough time.

Forget the Election Call...

2007-03-27T12:10:00.000-06:00

Have an altar call.

Ever been to a big tent revival meeting? I haven't but I've been to a Billy Graham Crusade once. At the end of every rally they give an altar call. A chance to leave your old life behind, step down the aisle and enter the Kingdom.

If this was a crusade and Harper was Billy Graham (no relation to Bill Graham) I'd be looking at the BQ and saying...

"The serpent named Trudeau that offered us the apple of Centralist Utopia has bruised our heel but today we have crushed it's head. The thorn in your flesh has been removed and the Eden that was Confederation has been reopened for you. If any of you believes in a strong Quebec and in autonomy and family and seniors and in moving ahead instead of spinning like a top; come on down!
If you want to be part of the solution for Quebec and for Canada; come on down!
The Bloc is here to look after the best interests of Quebec and you need to Come on Down!"

He'd have his majority in 30 minutes and no election would need to be called.

CTV's Slavish Devotion to Harp-erasure

2007-03-26T06:51:00.000-06:00

A few days ago I was pretty miffed at the CTV.
On March 22, Harper gave a speech in Montreal at Americana 2007, an International Technology Trade Show and Conference. I went to the CTV website to see if I could find video as I always rely on the Prime Minister's own words when it comes to the environment since the coverage is typically so bad whenever Harper speaks on the topic. I found the story and it's linked video but was surprised to find the video is a dead link. It was the day of the speech and it remains so to this day.

Harperasure? It wouldn't be the first time that CTV missed an important speech by the PM. I let it go but it bothered me.

On Saturday, my wife and I went to see 'Amazing Grace' and it was a wonderful movie. I was awestruck by the film and was pleased to see they did not downplay the religious convictions that drove many of the people involved in ending slavery.

So I was pleased the next day to find that it was the 200th anniversary and that Harper had released this statement.

"On March 25, 1807, King George III proclaimed into law the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the culmination of a decades long campaign by courageous abolitionists, led by the great parliamentarian William Wilberforce. With this the full might of the British Empire was directed to ending the barbaric practice of the African slave trade, that saw millions uprooted from their homes and families, transported in deplorable and often deadly conditions, then sold into a life of bondage in the Americas.

On this day we should also recall the important role that Canadians played in the struggle against slavery, most notably the leadership of Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe who persuaded the Legislature of Upper Canada to adopt the first meaningful restrictions on slavery within the British Empire in 1793; and those who made Canada the North Star of the Underground Railroad for thousands of escaped slaves.

While we must always be vigilant in combating the vestiges of racial discrimination, Canadians can take great pride that we have built a society of hope and equality of opportunity. Let us dedicate ourselves to continuing this work by combating contemporary forms of slavery, such as human trafficking.”

It made me proud of the PM, proud of Wilberforce and the abolitionists and proud of Canada.

So I was happy to see that the 200th anniversary of the event made the CTV and clicked to read the story.
I was surprised by the fact that the statement of the government was this little dud by Jason Kenney and not the wonderful release from the PM.

"First, it is an opportunity to reflect on the evil of slavery in all its forms, past and present.
Secondly, it highlights the tradition that we have inherited as legislators in Canada, a successor state of the British Commonwealth and its unique tradition of freedom, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law."

Kenney's comment is all right but it isn't the same as the first quote.

Harperasure?
There does seem to be a disturbing pattern of giving Harper short-shrift of air-time whenever he does something statesmanlike but a large amount of time if he ever takes a shot at the opposition. I guess the PM's statement on the abolition of the slave trade doesn't fit the 'Harper is an unstatesmanlike bully' agenda of the Liberals and the CTV.

The kicker. At the end of the abolition article is this little gem, after comments from the GG and Britain's Tony Blair and Ghanese jazz legends and British clerics and... ~~Harper~~...

The Liberal Party of Canada also marked the anniversary today.

"The Transatlantic Slave Trade was a barbaric and appalling chapter in the history of the world. Racism, forced detention and labour resulted in the dehumanization of millions of Africans," said Liberal Leader Stephane Dion in a news release.
On behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada, our Parliamentary caucus, and all Canadians I wish to recognize and honour the millions of people of African descent who suffered under slavery and all subsequent generations who have born the brunt of its legacy."

Election Day Pool

2007-03-24T17:25:00.000-06:00

I have June 4th in my pool at work.
I thought I'd throw it open on my blog as well. Pick a day, any day as long as it's a Monday.

The importance of being disingenuous

2007-03-18T09:47:00.000-06:00

May vs. Baird from March 16
May vs. MacKay from March 18

Someone will perhaps refresh my memory on the other ridings that May has considered running in. It is interesting to consider that she will only run where she knows she will lose. If polling suggests that she could beat MacKay, she will likely square off against Harper in Calgary.

Elizabeth May is in this race to lose.

1) Holding a seat in the HoC will make it difficult for her to do the real work of the Green party, which is to raise money... er awareness. Besides, it's frightfully boring to be doing all that non-Green stuff like be in opposition. You might even be forced to ask a question in QP and we all know what will happen to her there.

2) Holding a seat in the HoC will make it difficult to rail for Proportional Representation which is the only way the Greens are ever going to get a seat in the HoC anyways. PR isn't coming anytime soon so between fund-raising, May will be able to point to a lack of PR as a need to raise more money.

3) Running against MacKay as well as her ongoing saga to find a place to run is excellent media exposure and will result in more votes for the Greens across the country which will translate into more money for the Greens.

4) Running against MacKay has certain advantages that running against Baird does not have. MacKay is better looking and a much bigger star than Baird so it'll lend some rock star atmosphere that she won't get from running against Baird. It'll be a much bigger show if anyone can trick our man MacKay into saying anything remotely sexist during the campaign but he won't do that, will he?

None of this will equal seats for the Greens but Elizabeth May is now a unique sort of creature. She is a professional loser fund-raiser politician. Until she actually decides to run in a riding where she has a shot, we can only presume to hold her up as an example how our money-for-vote system can be abused in this country.

Green meant Money in our language long before it meant Environment and it's nice to see May understand that Green means Green, every shade of it. Including Envy and Nausea.

Dion gets a free ride so far on his announcement

2007-03-16T12:02:00.000-06:00

Dion announces a Liberal plan to bring in a carbon tax on industry and the news seems to be lacking something.

Whenever Harper announces something green, we instantly have video of outraged greenolutionaries saying 'It's not enough!'.

So when Dion comes out with something that will harm the economy with no clear proof other than consenus nonscience, where is industry saying 'This is too much!'.

It's not like I really care (other than being angry at Dion getting a free pass from CTV)... it's not like he's going to be in power in 2008 to see his hard cap occur. So it's more empty Kyoto-like posturing from the expert on Kyoto posturing.

I have a hard cap for Dion...

I am excited at the prospect of a warmer Canada

2007-03-15T18:42:00.000-06:00

If we are truly entering another global warm phase then I am truly excited.
Maybe I will be able to grow grapes in my Edmonton back yard by the time I am 70 and can keep myself pleasantly and slightly inebriated till I die at 120.

I'll sit outside on a warm February night and watch my holovision where I can watch Leonardo DeCaprio on Biography complain how investing in Al Gore's Carbon Bubble cost him his entire fortune. "If I knew when I was younger that CO2 was bullshit, I coulda drove a Ferrari instead of that frickin' stupid SmartCar and I'd still be king of the world".

Penguins will finally not have to walk 70 miles in the cold to survive as their natural historic breeding area will finally be close to their food source again and polar bears will get fat and lazy due the abundance of food everywhere. Warmer weather will mean less heating oil and longer cycling seasons and Edmonton can finally get those cute buses where you can hook your bicycle on the front. I will be able to walk to the store in the early Spring and late Fall and a lot of disease and hunger in the world will be a thing of the past.

David Suzuki's clone will be trying to atone for his progenitor by building power generation plants in Africa so the poor of the world can finally have electricity and some of the other perks in living in the 21st century.

Global Warming. Bring it on because I'm getting impatient.

What to make of this?

2007-03-13T11:08:00.000-06:00

Pat Martin speaks in a very short article in the National Post.

It's so short I will post it here in it's entirety to save you, the dear reader, from having to link over.

NDP needs significant electoral gains if it wants to shed fringe-player status, MP Martin says
CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, March 13, 2007
NDP MP Pat Martin says his party must make significant gains in the next federal election or be forced to admit it may never be anything more than a fringe player and end its 46-year existence. Despite a recent rise in fortunes for the NDP, the Winnipeg MP admitted his party has led a tenuous existence, allowing bold policies -- such as calling for free first degrees for college and university students -- to be hidden behind timid language. "So, the result has been to bore people into some kind of a stupor where nobody has any idea what we stand for anymore." A poor electoral result could leave the NDP with few options, Mr. Martin said, including, in the case of a minority government, a merger or coalition with the Liberals.

Now... is this line
A poor electoral result could leave the NDP with few options, Mr. Martin said, including, in the case of a minority government, a merger or coalition with the Liberals...

1) a warning to Stephen Harper not to force an election because CPC < NDP+LPC = coalition government?
2) a legitimate drive to begin to unite the left?
3) a call to battle for the NDP against the LPC who are invading their turf?

Dion in the Wilderness

2007-03-08T10:38:00.000-07:00

17 days...
It's not quite the 40 days that Christ spent in the wilderness, and it isn't the 40 days that Moses spent on Sinai or the 40 days that it rained for Noah; but 17 days is all the break our hard working parliamentarians get so Dion will just have to go at it double speed and a half.

Some have dubbed it the Magical Mystery Tour, some have dubbed it Where's Flipper and Bourque has linked to the National Post under the headline Where's Waldo.

I'll tell you where Waldo ain't. He ain't on TV giving analysis at the Briar. He ain't in Toronto giving a billion dollars to transit and he ain't in Edmonton giving an announcement on carbon sequestration. He definitely ain't going to be on Corner Gas on monday.

But I think I know what he's up to. After 17 days in the wilderness look for all sorts of stories about how he wandered this great land listening to the grass roots and how in touch he is with us all and vice versa.

We'll hear how he listened to the grass roots and has a plan to turn stones into loaves of bread to feed to the poor children and how he plans to throw himself off the mountain of unfavourable polls and let the electorate catch him and bring him to 24 Sussex. Indeed he's listened to the grass roots and all the world will bow down to Canada as the great world leader it is... oh wait... I've heard this story before and I'm not so sure if it's the grass roots Dion is listening to in his 17 days in the wilderness.

I think it's probably Chretien...

The Triple Dog Dare Budget

2007-03-01T18:42:00.000-07:00

There is something so tempting about a pole in wintertime, pardon the homonym.

It may provide some complication for the Tories come budget time if they were planning to have the Liberals defeat the budget. Thank goodness they have two weeks to make it even more right-wing ideological. They'll need to work hard to turn an 'I-Dare-You Budget' into a 'I-Triple-Dog-Dare-You Budget'.

I'd stick my tongue out at Dion while I type this but I'm a little nervous after getting a chance to look at one of my favourite pictures again. Poor Flick.

UPPERDATE:
Angus Reid's new poll has the Cons at 40% overall and at 42% in Ontario. Is there such a thing as a "Quadruple-Dog-Dare"?

March 19th Predictions:
1) The rumoured significant tax cuts for the working poor and the corporate tax cuts for the manufacturing sector will make Layton's head explode like a robot in a sci-fi movie that discovers a conflict in it's programming.
Will Smiling Jack show himself to be for the welfare of the poor or pro-welfare for the poor? Will he cut off his union nose to spite his anti-corporate face?

2) Fiscal balance and finally ending Trudeaupia should bring an automatic rejection from the Liberals except they'll lose Quebec. Dion will pull out his favourite catch phrase and the only thing he can almost say properly in English thanks to practice: "Right Wing Ideology". And Harper will own the centre in this country.

3) The BQ will all go to DQ and order BBQ and ponder their IQ PDQ.

4) Garth Turner will demand a recount because a 6000+ vote loss is pretty darn close and surely some of those voters thought he was still a Conservative.

5) Alberta will say "You didn't cancel the Gun Registry like you promised!!! WTF!" and elect 28 Liberals (Hey, I have to wrong on at least one prediction).

UTMOST UPPERDATE:
L. Ian McDonald with an excellent analysis on why the budget will pass.

Goons answer the Bell

2007-02-28T06:49:00.000-07:00

Mike Duffy - stop calling politics "inside baseball". It isn't accurate.
Baseball is missing an essential element that we see in politics -
baseball doesn't have a goon.

You know, a goon. Someone whose job it is to pummel opposing teams who touch the star. You get in the way of the star, he gets in your way.

You touch the star, he touches your face.

Two huge stories about the subversion of democracy in this country surfaced last week; the first in the Vancouver Sun and the second in the National Post.
They involve the Liberal Leadership Convention and blocks of ethnic delegates who went from Gerard Kennedy to Stephane Dion and allowed Dion to come up the middle and win the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Stephane isn't exactly the star that the team thought it was getting but that hasn't stopped the goons at the CBC, the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and CTV from doing their jobs. Heck, they've even had to dig in and chip in a few goals.

And when the news broke about Delegategate and the Liberal Party star was getting bumped in the corner, the gloves had to come off. For days we are treated to Liberal friendly press, from Harper is mean, to minutes of Goodale writhing on the ice from another seemingly vicious elbow from the RCMP leaking the playbook to reporters. We are subjected to stories of the Tory team breaking into the Hockey Hall of Fame to attempt to injure the Lester B. Pearson Prize. We start to hear the words controversial applied to an excellent moderate piece of legislation designed to help keep us safe.

It's a good things the refs are watching or the goons would be running interference unchecked. Who are the refs? The public is and hopefully when the next election comes around we don't just stick the Liberals in the penalty box again. This time we need to throw them out of the game.

And the goons? Well, let's just say I can't do anything at the moment about the CBC and I can't cancel a non-existent subscription to the Toronto Star.
But I do know who owns CTV and I'll be boycotting Bell even though they have the cutest spokesbeavers.

"Sideshow Iggy"

2007-02-28T06:38:00.000-07:00

Ignatieff said while he sympathized with terror victims, their appearance during the debate over whether to renew the powers is "just a sideshow."

"The issue here is not whether we have or have not met with victims of 9/11. Every member of our caucus feels the grief and horror that those victims went through."

After the vote, Basnicki, on behalf of the Canadian Coalition Against Terror, said she was "very, very disappointed" in the outcome, and angered by Ignatieff's comment.

"Sideshow? I was a victim of terrorism. My husband was murdered.

"I don't like to be a victim of politics."

Courtesy of the Toronto Star

HMCS Moonbat has a new Captain...

2007-02-27T21:52:00.000-07:00

...and the ship is listing hard to port.

Stephane Dion has taken the Liberals to the hard-left and, in spite of the glee I get in saying that after all the hard-right neo-con talk I hear in the national media, I get a bigger charge out of knowing he's scuttling that garbage scow of a bilge barge.

In spite of Delegategate where it appears Dion sacrificed Canadian security to secure the Liberal leadership, in the ATA vote today almost all the rats decided to stay on board.

It's time for any rational Canadian to grab a life preserver and head for Stephen Harbor.

Sunset Boulevard

2007-02-23T16:41:00.000-07:00

Is Mr. Dion really ready for his closeup?

Let's look at the two provisions that he is fighting tooth and nail not to be renewed. They are "preventive arrests" and "investigative hearings". It is so important to our rights as Canadians to not have them renewed that he is ready to end the careers of MPs by not renewing their nomination papers. This is in spite of the Liberal dominated Senate Committee that asks that the provisions be renewed, over the objections of sitting veteran MPs like Irwin Cotler and ignoring the advice of party luminaries like John Manley and Anne McLellan.

We never hear him mention the evils of "investigative hearings" when he objects to the provisions on the basis of Charter Rights. In fact, the very mention of this as a possible motive has brought howls of "Shame Shame!!" in the House. Nope. It has everything to do with curtailing the power of the State and protecting our Charter Rights. In no way, shape, or form should a Canadian or non-Canadian be held for 72 hours without charge if they are under suspicion for possible terrorist activities.

The Supreme Court of Canada seems to think that the 72 hour preventative arrest is not a violation of the Charter. They don't even think that holding a suspected terrorist indefinitely is a violation of the Charter as long as they have access to the reasons why they are being held so they can properly defend themselves. It's only Stephane Dion who is leading the charge away from a well-crafted bit of Liberal legislation that has been SCC-approved and occured while he was in Cabinet.

Well Stephane Dion, are you aware that any police officer in this country can arrest and hold anyone without charge for 24 hours if they suspect they are involved with or are about to commit a crime. They only need to be sure in their own mind, get approval from their superior and have the case brought to a Justice of the Peace within the 24 hour period.

So... if 72 hours to hold a possible terrorist without charge is a violation of the rights and freedoms of humankind, why is being held for 24 hours for a non-terrorist reason okay. I suppose the extra 2 days of inconvenience is too great a burden for someone to bear. Especially if they aren't allowed a shower.

Until I hear a valid argument why 24 hours for my local cop in a domestic dispute is okay but 72 hours for a suspected terrorist is not I'll have to be a little suspect about the real reasons Dion wants the provisions to travel down Sunset Boulevard.

It couldn't be because of the second provision concerning "investigative hearings", could it?

Liberal-controlled Senate will be used to decide election date

2007-02-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

In a gesture of fairness, the new Kyoto Bill will not be fast-tracked through the Senate.
Translated, that simply means, the Bill will languish in the Upper Chamber until the Tories dip in the polls whereupon it will be fast-tracked to trigger a non-confidence vote.

From the Globe & Mail

While the large Liberal majority in the Senate led many on the Hill to expect the bill would then be passed quickly into law, the Liberal Leader in the Senate told The Globe and Mail that her party won't fast-track the bill.

"We won't skip any steps," Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette said. Liberal senators have been under fire the past year for taking several months to pass key Conservative initiatives such as the government's ethics bill. They appear to be aware they would face further attacks if they then fast-tracked a bill from the Liberal Party.

Although it nice to hear an admission that the Liberals have the power to impede, delay and stall the Conservatives; and it is comforting to hear a Liberal promise not to abuse power; it is bothersome to know the Senate will be used as an election trigger for Dion's itchy finger.

Tipping over the Fiscal Imbalance

2006-12-19T09:36:00.000-07:00

Or as I am starting to think of it... Hoodoo Economics.
Who wants to solve the Fiscal Imbalance aka Getting-the-Feds-out-of-Provincial-Jurisdictions?

Alberta... have Province still smarting from the NEP
Ontario... have Province becoming a have-not Province
British Columbia... becoming a have-Province especially with the recent TILMA with Alberta

and

Quebec... the biggest recipient of transfer payments but oh so enamoured with the carrot of going it alone

So is Quebec Separation dead by default now?
Scenario One. Quebec is happy with the deal and becomes more tightly integrated with Canada. Separation is dead.
Scenario Two. Quebec 'wakes up' and sees that they will be worse off if they solve the Fiscal Imbalance (wrt being fiscally responsible for their own out-of-control socialist spending). They see that separating from Canda is even a worse deal as clear demonstration of their dependence on Canada is incontrovertible.

Am I just simplistic in seeing even seriously discussing the Fiscal Imbalance and getting the Feds out the equation is a death-blow to Quebec Separation regardless of the outcome? Has Harper come close to ending this deadlock/deathspin with the Bloc?

Quote of the Day

2006-12-15T08:32:00.000-07:00

Goes to John Ibbitson of the Globe & Mail.

"One of the delights of opposition is that one can condemn a government's policy as inadequate, while proposing seemingly sensible solutions without having to take into account their costs: real and opportunity. Witness the Bloc on Afghanistan, the Liberals on Kyoto, the NDP on just about anything."

Dion and the PPG strike historic accord

2006-12-14T10:38:00.000-07:00

Film at Eleven

FF to Bob Fife at 1:45 of the Q&A.
Personally, if I was the PPG, I would have held out for dinner and a movie.

I'm stuck!

2006-12-13T12:43:00.000-07:00

There's a certain danger about getting excited about mid-winter polls... especially one that's taken on a frosty Monday morning after a Liberal leadership extravanganza.

All I want for Christmas is my DPP

2006-12-13T07:49:00.000-07:00

Now that the Federal Accountability Act has become law, I look forward to seeing someone given some teeth and a mandate to prosecute people who think it's okay to steal our money.
The Director of Public Prosecutions will be that person.

So kudos to Stephen Harper for the FAA and for sticking to the action plan to implement it and make it work for us.

Pick someone mean.

UPPERDATE:
All I wanted for Christmas was a DPP and instead I get an elected Senate!!! Wow!
Take that Stephane "I'm a democratic deficit who won't let riding associations choose men" Dion. The same week you are subverting democracy in the name of political correctness and affirmative action, Harper is giving the Senate to the people!
He may not be Reform but he sure is reformative.

Dion's Marsh(m)all(ow) Plan

2006-12-12T08:12:00.000-07:00

It used to be that Dion was portrayed as a rat in the cartoons in Quebec.
I think they should find a way to draw him as a fish, what with all the flip-flopping he's been doing lately as he tries to make himself more 'winnable'.

The latest quote I have is from a CP story that ties into the Bloc motion to bring down the CPC over Afghanistan.

As for the Tories, Dion said they have only themselves to blame if they appear fragile.

"This government is vulnerable - thanks to its very right-wing policies, which are very far from what Canadians want," Dion said.

"I know this government can fall."

In case you're not sure that means Dion would vote with the Bloc on this issue to bring the Tories down, look at this Ottawa Citizen story.

Yesterday, Mr. Dion said he is reluctant to provoke a second winter election in as many years, but he would consider voting against the government over the Afghan mission.

Mr. Dion voted against the two-year extension of the Afghanistan mission earlier this year and has accused Mr. Harper of blackmailing Parliament by forcing the vote on short notice.

"It's not the same mission at all now," Mr. Dion said yesterday. "Mr. Harper requested a two-year extension without a clear mandate, without commitment from the other nations, without commitment from the government of Afghanistan, without knowing what we will do exactly."

Instead Dion believes he will be able to solve Afghanistan if elected by implementing a Marshall Plan tailor made for Afghanistan. Sounds eerily similar to Duceppe's call for more 'Reconstruction' and less 'Combat'. Nevermind that Combat and Security are necessary to allow our Reconstruction to happen safely in the first place and stand any chance at all at not being blown to shit in the second place.

The same Ottawa Citizen story I referenced earlier is titled
'Get real' about terror, Dion told
British minister blasts Afghan withdrawal plan, says NATO needs to see it through
and is a worthy read for anyone who wants to see what the mission is all about and how our allies are reacting to Dion being out of touch with reality.

I'll end this flop (as in cow...) of a stupid position by Dion with part of this flip (as in bird...) of a letter (thanks Cherniak) that he wrote condemning Harper of playing crass politics with the Afghan mission in the House while Dion was Foreign Affairs Critic. Maybe Dion should act a little more Prime Ministerial since that is what he aspires to be.

Behave like a Prime Minister, Mr. Harper!
By Stephane Dion

I have always been a strong supporter of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan and Kandahar, and of those who have gone there to fulfill it -- Canada’s Armed Forces. And yet, I had to vote against Stephen Harper’s motion to extend the mission. I had to do it to defend Parliament, an institution that belongs to the Canadian people.

Extending such a dangerous mission by two years is a serious decision, one that must not be taken lightly.

He goes on to condemn Harper for playing politics with our soldiers and our mission, although it is Dion playing them now, and ends it as follows...

Despite Mr. Harper’s pronouncements, our party is united. The truth is that the Prime Minister has attempted to take Parliament hostage.

Prime Minister Harper and his government chose to stoop to the lowest form possible of partisan politicking in their handling of this important mission to Afghanistan. Canadians deserve better. Canadians expect their Prime Minister to behave like a statesman. I am more determined than ever to offer Canadians true leadership.

So, in other words, according to Dion, the Liberals stood united in their support for the mission and the two year extension; Dion and others only voted against it because of the way Harper introduced it in order to protect the Parliament. But now Dion trys to paint it like he voted against the mission because he wasn't in favour of the extension. Look at Dion's last paragraph and apply it now to Dion and how he is thinking of getting in bed with the Bloc to get an election. Canadians do indeed deserve better than your flip-flopping.

Marshmallow.

Napoleon Dionamite Stands Up for Women!!!

2006-12-11T14:04:00.000-07:00

Will boost the number of women running!

And if it makes him more winnable, he will change his name and campaign as Stephanie.

UPPERDATE:
h/t Dust My Broom

If Napoleon wants to subvert democracy and piss off his riding associations, let him. Nothing says 'STFU Stephane!' like thousands of Liberal volunteers not showing up to help GOTV in the next election.

Dirt Watch

2006-12-11T12:30:00.000-07:00

Spring Election?
Maybe... maybe not.
If there is to be an election in the spring, we'll have the privelege of watching the dirt that the CPC has been digging up slowly and steadily make the news.
I remember how excited I was when the CPC took power; the thought of misdeeds and mismanagement being exposed. Instead I was treated to positive daily progress of the CPC doing good things. Perhaps, though, it is time to expect to see the dirt.

If so, here is my Dirt Watch. I'll post links to whatever misdeeds come to light starting with today's news.
Note: The wonderful world of Arar and the Governor General report on Royal Lepage Relocation Services and Ron Stewart's 'troubles' are not in this pile. I guess I should have started the collection sooner.

AG sicced on Liberal Environment programs
“On the trust of Canadians, the previous government spent and spent liberally but delivered precious little in return. In fact, the sole outcomes were soaring greenhouse gases … and a divisive, politicized debate.”

55% of Fisheries $250 Million Contracts Improperly Tendered
"...no justification in in the file to explain the lack of competition."

Broken rules and Incompetence in Kanesatake
"The current minister of public safety, Stockwell Day, is studying the audit and will decide in January whether to refer the case to the RCMP for a criminal investigation."

Liberals give More Lawyers our Money
"The lawyer who negotiated a settlement for aboriginal residential school students was paid more than $2.5 million for the work, according to documents obtained by CBC News."

More dirt to come over the next weeks and months... probably gonna make a pretty big pile before spring.

Proof that Dion is really a French Citizen at heart

2006-12-08T07:59:00.000-07:00

His willingness to immediately, utterly and boldly surrender.

We're Nazis?

2006-12-08T07:53:00.000-07:00

The Accusation

The rebuttal:
Anti-Semitism
Anti-Free Speech

Dion's Kyoto Accomplishments

2006-12-04T12:55:00.000-07:00

Since his stint as Environment Minister and work on Climate Change, I thought it would be nice to list Dion's accomplishments with Kyoto.

To date:
1) Stephane has taught Kyoto to sit
2) Kyoto is 99% house trained
3) Kyoto barks furiously everytime Stephen Harper or Rona Ambrose are on the television.

2 Minutes for (Media) Interference

2006-12-04T07:02:00.000-07:00

In the aftermath of the Ted Morton loss on the weekend I have decided not to tear up my Alberta PC membership and join the Alberta Alliance; although I admit it is a temptation.
I have, however, decided to tear something else up: my subscription to the Edmonton Journal and my last of my naivete that the media can be balanced and fair has hit the shredder.

It was a perfect storm this weekend with the Alberta and the Liberal races going on at the same time.
It was hard enough watching the media fawn over the Liberals and their convention, now we get to see them fawn over Stephane Dion as they desperately start campaigning for him.
But it was especially hard to watch the frantic frenetic hatchet job they performed on Ted Morton in the week following the first ballot in Alberta. It was difficult to see Morton's name without an accompanying 'hard right', 'so-con', 'anti-gay' or 'American' label to go along with it.
Near the end, they may as well have titled every second article or news report with the headline "2-Minute Tory Voting Guide for Dummies".

Especially offensive is this question from the televised leadership debate on Global.
Mia Sosiak asks

“Mr. Morton, you’re perceived as a far-right candidate. You’re opposed to same-sex marriage and you are endorsed by some religious groups,
including Concerned Christians Canada. As leader, will you push your personal principles down the throats of Albertans or will you compromise your own beliefs to reach out to those with more moderate views? Which is it?”

In one wonderfully well-crafted question she performs what the rest of media used pages and pages of ink to do.
1) She calls him a far-right candidate
2) She paints him as anti-gay
3) She links him to the so-cons and the evangelicals (but not to the anti-SSM element of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada because it's okay to be anti-religious for Christians only and who wants to look racist while asking a question?)
4) Then she asks an extremely loaded question with graphic throat-ramming language and gives two 'wife-beater' questions in one.
5) Then she asks which 'wife-beater' option is the correct one.

Well, Ted's headache of last week is going to become Ed's headache soon.
In the Globe and Mail today, it begins in the last paragraph.

"Mr. Stelmach, a deeply religious man who sings in his church's choir, stayed out of the public spotlight yesterday to spend time with his family."

Just as the campaign to elect the Liberals in Canada began before the last of the confetti hit the floor in Montreal; the campaign to elect the Liberals in Alberta has gotten underway.

If Ted, a Catholic who goes to church three times a year, was too religous for Albertans, what hope does Ed have.

Rick Bell needs a new job

2006-11-29T20:30:00.000-07:00

If you have the stomach for it, read this acidic piece of crap.

The man should be embarrassed.

Dig the hole a little deeper

2006-11-29T08:08:00.000-07:00

Bottom.
That's what you supposedly have to hit before you make a change and hopefully bottom comes before dead.
But what if bottom never comes?
Or what if bottom comes but instead of hitting with a thud, and saying 'Oh my God! I need to make a change.', some helpful soul comes along and moves the bottom.

Maybe that is what people in the know call enabling? I don't know. I do know that sometimes I wish we could move the bottom up for a change and let people hit it before they are irretrievably ruined. Maybe that's what people in the know call tough love.

Is it possible that the public health system we have created is an enabler?
There certainly does not seem to be any incentive to make proper lifestyle choices. Someone gets sick and we just dig the hole a little deeper for them. People eat the wrong foods and don't get exercise and drink to much and smoke and they never get to see the bill...
until they have to pay the ferryman.

The debate on health care should be more than just how we pay and how much. It should be about health as well. And our current public system is likely failing us in that respect too.

I'm Supportin' Morton

2006-11-28T10:02:00.000-07:00

For the longest time I've thought the maple leaf on our flag should be replaced with a spinning wheel.

And not the good kind of spinning wheel; not one that actually works and produces something as useful as yarn, with which to weave the fabric of our nation.
I'm talking about the kind of spinning wheel belonging to a car with it's axle buried in the mud.

This country just spins and spins and doesn't go anywhere. And the driver just sits there flinging mud at us and buries the car deeper every passing year. Spin and Mud-Slinging. And Stasis.

I happen to think the car should be driving somewhere and every day since the election I hope a little more that Harper will take the car out the ditch and we can start driving again; no matter who takes the wheel after him. In Septmeber at the Calgary Congress I got a glimpse of what this country could be, a rebalanced and renewed confederation with empowered and responsible provinces and a focused federal government that respected it's partners. The provinces came together for their common good and to be stronger for it. The provinces did not come together for the good of Ottawa and a select province or two.

What do we have as a result of the current bastardized confederation? A country ready to fracture that resents the top-down intrusion of Ottawa where it does not belong; Quebec Separatism, Western Alienation and Welfare Provinces. A country where the GTA has more influence on the provinces than the provincial legislatures.

I never thought I'd say this as an Albertan but Ottawa needs our help. Prime Minister Harper needs provincial allies if Alberta is ever going to be allowed to grow up in Canada. He needs Mr. Morton in Alberta to strenghten all regions of Canada.
It's time for provinces to grow up and become accountable and get this country moving. It's time to end the dysfunction.

So as much as I like Ted Morton for being smart, honest, commited conservative and a strong leader who'll put Alberta first, I also know we need him for Canada's sake too.
He understands that the Canada of the Future needs the Alberta of Tomorrow, not the Alberta of Yesterday.

Taking one for the team

2006-10-13T08:47:00.000-06:00

Nice job Mr. Harper!
In one sly and canny 'mis-step', you have put Bob Rae's campaign back on the rails after the Super Sunday hit. You can't tell me you forgot that the man's family is Jewish?
We all know who you want in that job after December and all it took to give Rae a big boost was to let him throw a few punches at you.

Who better to 'Stop Stephen Harper!' than Rae who has just shown that he can go for your throat better than anyone out there?

Now if you and the rest of your Conservatives can only think of more ways for Bob Rae to keep looking so good. Till December...

A Tale of Two Cows

2006-10-04T13:42:00.000-06:00

I found the following on the net today and I have zero idea where it came from. If anyone can tell me, I'll be happy to give credit where it's due. The Canadian and Dutch ones are my poor attempts at adding to the list...

DEMOCRATIC

You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbra Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICAN

You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

SOCIALIST

You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST

You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE

You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE

You have two cows.
Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the
other, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised
when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating
you have downsized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.

CANADIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
The government sets up a Royal Commission to determine which of the cows you need to send to learn French. After a price tag of a billion dollars, most of which has gone to advertising firms, it is discovered that the two cows originated in Saskatchewan before they moved away to find work.
They are given jobs in the public service and dry up.

DUTCH CORPORATION

You have two cows.
The government gives your cows all the free grass they want but the cows smoke it instead of eat it. They sneak out at night and eat the neighbors tulips.
No one understands why the milk tastes funny but the alternative is to buy German so people drink it anyways.

FRENCH CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and
produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give
excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

TALIBAN CORPORATION

You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts.
You get a $40 million grant from the US government to find alternatives to
milk production but use the money to buy weapons.

IRAQI CORPORATION

You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send audio tapes of their mooing.

POLISH CORPORATION

You have two bulls.
Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

BELGIAN CORPORATION

You have one cow.
The cow is schizophrenic.
Sometimes the cow thinks he's French, other times he's Flemish.
The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow.
The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk.
The cow asks permission to be cut in half.
The cow dies happy.

FLORIDA CORPORATION

You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who actually like the brown one best accidentally vote
for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you think is
the best-looking cow.

CALIFORNIA CORPORATION

You have millions of cows.
They make real California cheese.
Only five speak English.
Most are illegal.
Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.

If you build it, they will come...

2006-10-04T08:12:00.000-06:00

It seemed like a good idea at the time.
or
How to build a better Crack-House for under $925,000

2.2 Trillion Dollar Boondoggle

2006-10-03T10:55:00.000-06:00

It's hard for me to think in the trillions. A trillion is a thousand billion... heck it's still hard for me to think in terms of billions.

$2,200,000,000,000.00

In fact I've just triple-checked the zeroes and I still am not sure I've got them all.

At the Calgary Congress, there was a section on Saturday called 'Killing with Kindness' and how equalization is harming the economies of the recipient Provinces. Peter Holle from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and Dr. Brian Lee Crowley from the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies gave strong presentations about the effect of equalization on their respective provincial economies.

The number 2.2 Trillion came up as the answer to the following question...

How much money would you have if you took the money given to the Atlantic Provinces and invested it in the TSE?

Wow!

The odd thing is, the original framers of equalization saw the plan go off the rails almost immediately. It was intended to be delivered to the people as a tax cut or tax relief... you know, given to people as a stimulus to productivity. Tax cuts have a tendency to produce results that way.
Instead, it was diverted to the governments which, surprisingly, had the effect of bloating the size of government. And created welfare traps from which the recipient regions are finding it impossible to win free from.

One of the learned grey ones at the Congress, walked up to the microphone and announced that it would have been better to throw all that money straight into the Atlantic.
To which Dr. Crowley replied, "At least we would know what killed all the cod!"

How 'Super' was Sunday?

2006-10-02T15:37:00.000-06:00

Question.

If Michael Ignatieff was in the field with John Manley and Frank McKenna, would he be even looked at as a serious contender? Instead of being talked about like it was his race to lose?

This crop of second stringers is going to have an interesting 2 months ahead of them.
First off, the anti-Iggy crowd is going to make Ignatieff un-electable on the national stage even if they don't stop his leadership bid. Anyone who is expecting the Liberal Party to heal itself in the next two months is dreaming in technicolor.

The only candidate in the crowd that is electable is going to eaten by his own in the next little while. What is left of Ignatieff before December is going to unpalatable for public consumption. And the Liberals will have done it for the Conservatives.

Iggy would have been better off coming in third over the weekend.

Dooooooooooooooooooom.

How Stephen Harper will save the Charter

2006-10-02T09:18:00.000-06:00

I just returned from a wonderful weekend at the Calgary Congress.
The Friday evening speaker was L. Ian MacDonald, journalist and publisher of Policy Options magazine. As an aside, I suggest you go the site and read a most excellent interview with former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed.

Ian talked at length about a lot of good things, and I also refer you to Stephen Taylor for more on MacDonald's speech, including, hopefully soon, the complete text.

It was mentioned in the speech that the Charter and the original BNA are our two consitutional traditions and they are 'two mints in one'. The Charter, with the Not-Withstanding Clause, is one of these mints. Over the course of the weekend I got to see the level that the Charter bothered the grass-roots- not that it exists, but how it so overbalances the equation. I also got to see it defended. In fact, I saw the Charter staunchly defended by every speaker at the Congress.

I bet that surprises a lot of left-wingers who may be reading this. At least one or two of the 5 hits a day on this site.

One of the points in Ian's speech was that the NWC needs to be invoked and soon. It has always been there but if someone doesn't use it soon, it'll never be used and the Charter side of the mint will be forever unbalanced by BNA tradition.

So will Stephen Harper find a reason to use the NWC in the near future? It is advisable that he does if only to save the Charter from itself. It is already doing things unchecked that the original writers never intended. The use of the NWC, which Paul Martin was ready to abolish (the bastard!), is intended to be the balance to a very powerful piece of legislation.

Other thoughts from the Calgary Congress and why 'I'm Supportin' Morton' to come over the next few days.

Things that make you go 'Hmmmmmm'

2006-09-28T15:28:00.000-06:00

Last week Richard Branson was pledging billions of dollars to fight global warming.

This week, he's showing off his new spaceship which he plans to rocket the wealthy into outer-space for extra-terrestrial thrill-seeking.

Maybe burning tons and tons of rocket fuel for fun and profit and doing your part for global warming doesn't invoke cognitive dissonance for Mr. Branson... but it does make me go 'hmmmmmm'.

Liberals choose new site for Convention

2006-09-25T12:36:00.000-06:00

Never, ever let Joe Volpe into the driver's compartment of anything...

Back...

2006-09-19T10:22:00.000-06:00

Back in the saddle.
And wow... talk about rusty. Forgot my password even and had to ask Blogger to let me choose a new one. I shudder to think how I'll remember to do any of the HTML I so painfully managed to teach myself.

Anyways, the summer was marvellous and my self-imposed exile was good, except for the loss of all my mad leet haxxor skillz. I managed to gain about 10 pounds, which have to go ASAP; did some holiday time; and got alot of yard stuff done.

But now it's fall, the kids are back in school, evaluations for hockey and ringette are finished and the eldest is now up to three instruments (four if you count voice). I guess it's only fitting that I log in and do the occassional blogging. I likely won't be keeping the semi-torrid pace that I did (at least it seemed that way to me) but I will be sharing my thoughts on certain topics.

First off is the Calgary Congress. I'm signed up for this conference at the end of the month and I'll be sure to blog my experiences there, live if I can ever get access to a computer.

Tories To Fix Next Election!

2006-05-30T06:59:00.000-06:00

Sorry, just couldn't resist the urge to play Globe and Mail and come out with a cheaply spun headline.

It's like staring at the Mona Lisa. You can't decide if she's more Louie Anderson than Pamela Anderson but you always gotta wonder what she's smiling about.
And Harper seems to have a secretive Mona Lisa smile on this one.

At face value, it seems like an election promise/policy platform that he'd rather forget existed. After all, haven't we been told since the election handed Harper a minority, that he was singularly focused on getting a majority? It's what we've come to expect from our previous Natural Governing Party.
If Harper forgot to wash his hands after going to the bathroom, the media would be there telling us it's because he's so focused on a majority he is forgetting simple things like hygiene. Along with the hidden agenda of giving Bill Graham e. Coli.

I mused earlier this month that Mr. Harper would be claiming a lot of upcoming votes would be demonstrating a dysfunctional House. That he would purposely be goading the opposition into being obstructive and partisan so he could go to the polls in spite of his fixed election platform.

To be honest, I think fixed elections is a marvelous idea. It levels the playing field and takes a bit of politics out of an election call. Presently, it is an aggravating stumbling block that seems destined to perpetuate the minority till the opposition decide the Tories are vulnerable at the polls.

If the opposition has the ability to 'call' an election anytime they see fit in a minority situation, will a minority government be given the ability to do the same under certain conditions? Will there be an out?

I am guessing that an obstructive and partisan House will not be enough of an excuse for a minority government to go to the polls under the new legislation.

But I am also guessing that a obstructive and partisan Upper House would.

The Senate will cooperate passing legislation that comes from the Harper government. If it filibusters or is unduly obstructive, Mr. Harper will have a clear reason to go to the polls.

First he outplays the Liberals, then he outwits the Press, now he'll outsmart the patronage ridden Liberal Senate. Governing like the majority he should have had.

But don't ask me. I'm still looking at this damn Mona Lisa...

Speed Buggy

2006-05-25T13:33:00.000-06:00

It's obviously a ploy to get Joe Volpe to dye his hair red and get thrown in the slammer before the Leadership Convention.

Link

Standing Up

2006-05-24T20:47:00.000-06:00

I applaud Stephen Harper for Standing Up for me.

Why me? Because, as a rational compassionate conservative it infuriates and depresses me to see the shoddy way that conservatism is treated by the national media.

So by standing up for himself against the press gallery, he is standing up for me and for all conservative minded people in Canada.

I grew up thinking the press was a sort of BS filter for the masses.
Over the years I became convinced that they'd rather pile it on rather than filter it out.
Now they can fling it from a distance.

An idea for the PPG

2006-05-24T08:56:00.000-06:00

Most of us have heard about the latest in the Press Wars saga.
For those of us who didn't hear about the Great Media Walkout of 2006 please click here but hold your nose first.

It all seems to boil down to one objection, the infamous PMO List that is supposed to subvert democracy and end the public's ability to hear the news from the point of view of the PPG, because their questions are sacrosanct and oh-so-probing.

But the parliamentary press gallery is concerned that Harper wants to freeze out any journalists or news organizations that he dislikes and so has refused to submit names to the list.

"We can't accept that the Prime Minister's Office would decide who gets to ask questions," said Yves Malo, a TVA reporter and president of the press gallery. "Does that mean that when there's a crisis they'll only call upon journalists they expect softball questions from?"

So what should they do? If they can't guarantee their right to shout out such hardball questions like "How many rootbeers have you had today?", "Do you love Canada", or "Are you a bigot?".
They can continue with Plan A and continue their 'strike'. It's not like there isn't a lot of people that can pick up the slack and do a better job.

Or they can 'surrender'. Just let the PMO have a nice controlled news conference where you can line up to ask some variation of "Are you a Bush Baby?" where everyone can hear you and are waiting for your question with bated breath.

That way, when Stephen Harper stops doing what he's been doing every press conference since the election, which is exhausting the list the majority of the time and giving thoughtful substantive answers to questions, then you can point to it as a betrayal of access.

Heck, even get yourself blacklisted!
That way you can market yourself as 'the one Stephen Harper is afraid to let ask questions'. It'll be better for your career than boycotting press conferences.

And you won't have to embarrass yourself with your inane little softball questions.

The folly of letting up

2006-05-24T07:29:00.000-06:00

Sat down with my nine-year-old on the big comfy couch last night and we watched us an Oiler game.

It was a hard fought game, as close to old time hockey as you can get with the 'New NHL'. The Oilers managed to convert a big mistake by a goalie whose head just wasn't quite in the game, and take it to the third period. 1-0 lead after two.

In the third period, in a little more than a 2 minute span, the Oilers took a commanding 4-0 lead. My stress levels were bottoming out and I was a smiling guy.

I looked at my son and said 'It's so nice to have a big lead for a change instead of squeaking them out to the end of the game'. Unfortunately, the whole Oiler team was looking at each other and saying the exact same damn thing.

They let up.

Before you could blink it seemed the Ducks had made it 4-3. The game had turned on a dime because the Oilers thought they had won, they thought they had the Ducks on the ropes and the game in the bag.
The Oilers managed to squeak out another narrow 5-4 victory. And they were darn lucky they did.

Dear Stephen Harper,
I'm so happy that you have polls putting you at 43%, majority territory.
You fought a great two first periods and have scored a flurry of goals in the third.
Don't let up. Don't let them back in the game.

Dear Blogging Tories,
You may think that the game is won. The Liberals are disgraced and disorganized. The NDP are as big a bunch of fuzzy thinking hypocrites as they've ever been.
But there are those out there that aren't much interested in the truth, that still spin things for their own self interest, namely the PPG and the environmental lobby.
Don't let up.

Let's not fall for the folly of letting up.

Onions have layers, Ogres have layers, Harper has layers

2006-05-18T10:43:00.000-06:00

Last post for me till Tuesday. I'll try and make it a good one.

I have kids so you'll have to forgive me the Shrek reference. For anyone who doesn't get Shrek, the line is from a scene where Shrek the Ogre is trying to explain to a Talking Donkey that ogres are complex.

Well Stephen Harper is complex. Or else I'm not and I'm misreading everything.

I'll try and share my thoughts on what I see as behind the scenes stuff surrounding the Afghan mission extension.

Mandate
I suspect we'll hear this word come up in the context of 'seek a mandate' a lot in the next while.
Stephen Harper wants a majority. Conservative voters want him to have a majority. Everyone else? Probably not but that doesn't make wanting a majority a bad thing.

Preston Manning calls this the 'tragedy of the immediate'. Big long term ideas get ignored when people expend all their energy trying to do things that get them elected. It crippled the LPC and it'll cripple the CPC.
Senate Reform, Fiscal Balance, Re-Federation, Tax Reform, and a myriad of other things as simple as dismantling the Gun Registry. He really needs that majority.

The fact that Harper can even think about majority with a political game-board that includes the BQ is in itself astounding. But that popularity, power and political capital is what dooms to him a minority.
What is the major stumbling block to a Harper majority if it's not the ever-present stumbling-Bloc? It's simply getting us to the polls.

This minority government will not fall as long as Harper is where he is at in the polls. No opposition party will trigger an election.
And Harper can't call one.

Why not you say? Fixed 4-year elections as a major party platform, that's why.
The Cons have to make the Opposition make the Cons call an election and we saw opening salvo number one last night during the Afghanistan mission extension debate.

"What we would do is proceed cautiously for a year. If we have to go further beyond that, we would seek a mandate from the Canadian people." - Stephen Harper

MPs vote against a mission extension and Harper goes to the polls in Spring 2007, right on schedule.

You want supporting evidence. Look a few days ago when the Libs and Dips humiliated themselves, the PM and most especially Gwyn Morgan. Stephen Harper announced he was pulling out of the process saying some things will have to be kept for a majority.

A lot of Mandate Mines will be laid in the next while and one of these days the Opposition is going to step on one. And when they do, Stephen Harper will take us to the polls with clear evidence that the Opposition is forcing us there, the lack of a non-confidence motion notwithstanding.

Vote Raiding
This musing will thankfully take less time.
What do you want to bet, that the Cons gained a lot of votes from the Liberal side of the floor last night if Ignatieff loses the leadership race?
As well, the Cons gained a ton of votes from the Bloc (again).

Ducks next

2006-05-17T21:19:00.000-06:00

Sober day, sober debate

2006-05-17T14:36:00.000-06:00

Firstly, sincere condolences today to the family of Capt. Nichola Goddard and thanks and respect to the fallen. You deserved to live a long life and to be able to see the fruits of your labours.

Thanks Riley at Riley's Political Rant for mobilizing both sides of the blogosphere today in an attempt to end the partisanship and gamesmanship involved in the House over Afghanistan.

Everyone knows the job is not going to be done in a year. Committing now to a 2 year extension is showing support for a valuable mission and will hopefully mean our troops don't have to wonder if we're behind them. Our soldiers deserve the dignity and respect we will afford them by recognizing the dangerous and long-term job they have ahead of them and an end to second-guessing for the forseeable future.

Reality Check Squared

2006-05-17T07:43:00.000-06:00

Well, the big day has come and gone. The Auditor General has once again walked into the kitchen and turned on the lights, sending the Liberal Party scurrying for the dark corners called rationalization and denial.
What were they doing in Canada's kitchen? Cooking. Books.

There was thankfully a responsible media reaction. But not everywhere.
When Sheila Fraser turned on the lights, CBC went scurrying too, this time to the darker corners of apologism and spin. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you CBC's Indepth Reality Check.

'Weeping and Gnashing' sent our two expert sleuths, Bo Weevil and Cookie Racha to do a reality check on the Reality Check, just to show you what our dear 'progressive' CBC-addicted masses got for information on the gun registry. Sort of a Reality Check squared.

Let's turn on the kitchen light and have a look.

Minimizing and Hiding Serious Liberal Wrong-doing

"I don't want to sneer at a wayward $60 million in federal expenditures. But if that's all Auditor General Sheila Fraser found in this latest look into Liberal gun registry misspending, then there is a lot less here than meets the eye.

Don't get me wrong. Fraser is a redoubtable custodian of the public purse. Her explosive 2002 report into gun registry overruns tore the guts out of the Liberals as competent fiscal managers, probably kept former justice minister Alan Rock out of the current Liberal leadership race, and lit a fire under anti-gun control Conservative candidates, particularly in rural Canada.

But if Fraser has only found $60 million in unreported program expenses in a recent two-year period, then that is hardly worth all the kill-the-expensive-gun-registry hype that has been building steadily in Conservative circles for at least a week now, in anticipation of the auditor general's report."
Ahem! Reality Check.
At this point in time, are we really surprised and concerned about cost overruns? The Vancouver Olympics are, what, $100 million over budget already or somesuch number. Cost overruns are one thing and we can get into a debate about $60 million vs. $998 million another time if you really want to talk about cost overruns.

Let's talk instead about breaking the Federal Administration Act, which sounds like a law to me; let's talk about willfully misleading Parliament and subverting their democratic responsibility of overseeing the public purse; let's talk about contracts that mysteriously grew past the non-bid dollar level shortly after being awarded. Let's talk about that because that's what Sheila Fraser was talking about.
And oddly, none of this good stuff is even mentioned in this alternate reality check.

Except if you count this line of course.

"Presumably, though she doesn't quite say this, it was because they didn't want to go over the spending limit that had only just been set by Parliament for the Canada Firearms Centre."

If you want a good Reality Check on this topic, click the link and see what Andrew Coyne has to say in the National Post today.

Divide and Conquer

"In the end, of course, the gun-control debate is not really about money. It is and has always been a moral and class division over issues like the right to bear arms and the right not to have urban Canadians tell the rest of the country how to act."

Ahem. Catch the subtle Anti-Americanism of 'right to bear arms'. Catch the obvious urban-rural split myth that is perpetuated by those who only believe Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are real cities.
If you want to scrap a totally useless waste of Liberal-vote buying malfeasance, well then that makes you a pro-American hick. All 54% of us.

Hope floats, but so does crap

"If there is a public policy element to this battle, it is about whether $100 million a year is too much to license and register the vast majority of guns in this country in the hope that they can reduce at least somewhat spousal killings, teen suicides, accidental shootings in the home and police caught unaware when they are summoned to a 911 call."

I want stats, not hope. Where are the stats? I thought this was a Reality Check, not a Fantasy Check.

Ahhhh! Facts

1. "What we do know, from Statistics Canada and the Canadian Firearms Centre, is:

Police query the firearms registry about 6,500 times a day on average and seem to regard it as a basic tool of their trade."

Nope! Not a fact. MSM GR BS.
Check out this National Post editorial.

"The same organizations insisted the registry is vital because police access its records 5,000 times each day. Again, Ms. Fraser's report is silent on this claim. But it is known from the work of gun registry researchers that most of these "hits" are either made automatically -- such as when an officer searches a suspect's criminal record and a police computer, unbeknownst to the officer, also checks the firearms computers -- or are made when police are registering additional guns for owners already in the system. The daily use figures, therefore, are meaningless."

2. "Since 1991, the number of homicides, suicides and domestic violence cases involving firearms are all down considerably.
Firearm deaths in Canada, the uptick last year in Toronto and Vancouver notwithstanding, were 792 in 2003, down from 1,444 in 1991."

Whoa. Is this author aware that 80% of gun deaths (between 1979 and 2002) were suicides. And that guns account for only 18% of suicides. Has the suicide rate fallen since the gun registry came into effect?
Besides if 80% of gun deaths are suicides, doesn't the recent uptick in gun deaths in Toronto and Vancouver actually mean a heck of lot more, since their numbers in reality compare with less than 20% of gun deaths, not the full amount.
For a good dose of actual reality on why a drop in gun deaths has nothing to do with the gun registry, click here.

3. "In the almost six years ended in March 2006, at least 17,226 gun licences have been refused or revoked for reasons including a history of violence, mental illness, unsafe use and drug offences."

And... this never happened before the registry? Ahem, FAC (Firearm Acquisition Certificate). Because before the registry, we were just handing them out to everyone. In Crackerjack boxes, too.

Ignore the Liberals for a moment and let's focus on Harper
Because he's the scary partisan that will do anything for a majority, right?

"Amnesty?

Forget the arguments. This is a political war and fully engaged.

The Harper Conservatives promised their supporters during the election they would kill the costly federal gun registry and, given the rise in rhetoric in recent days, the only question may be how they will do it."

Nevermind the fact that it's the Conservatives listening to people with facts, brains, a sense of justice, common sense, and who are justifiably angry.
Nope, it's just the Conservatives trying to keep votes, because there is no other justification in a Liberal World mindset to keep a promise other than buying/keeping votes.

Wait for it... wait for it...

"If they try to take it on through the front door, and introduce legislation to change the law and reach of the gun registry, they will likely be defeated: all three opposition parties are strongly in favour of a registry and it is particularly popular in Quebec. (The shocking mass murder of 14 women at Montreal's l'École Polytechnique in 1989 was what started the ball moving.)"

You knew that had to come up somewhere. But did the Gun Registry change anything? For a billion dollars. It put $500,000 in Wendy Cukier's pocket, we know that.

Huge political outcry

"But an "amnesty" like this would surely spark a huge political outcry: It would be seen as directly thwarting the law of the land. It would destroy the value of the registry for police purposes; they wouldn't have an updated report when responding to a call."

Hmmm, the Liberals under two separate Prime Ministers 'thwarting the law of the land' doesn't seem to have bothered you too much.

Ummm, mathematics isn't some kind of cool new fad

"It would also mean foregoing roughly $120 million in licensing revenue over the next several years as two million hunters line up to renew their five-year licences."

Yup, we should spend $100 million a year so we can generate $40-$60 million in fees.

Poll Vaunting- Special CBC Olympic exclusive

"Canadians, of course, in their own crabbed crofters way, aren't very helpful: 54 per cent feel the current registry should be scrapped and blame the Liberals for the well-publicized cost overruns, while 67 per cent want a cheaper, more effective registry put in its place, according to a recent Ipsos-Reid poll."

First, he misquotes the Poll. Second, the followup question was extremely soft. We all like marshmallows too.

But who cares, this is our national public broadcaster that we fund with our taxes. We don't need them to be fair and accurate. Reality Check seems to mean telling 'progressives' what they want to hear. It's Reality Therapy.

Lights out.

MSM GR BS

2006-05-15T09:46:00.000-06:00

Translation: Main Stream Media Gun Registry Bull Shit

Look at this headline.

Canadians don't want gun registry scrapped: poll

It's a story about the new Ipsos-Reid poll

Now look at the Ipsos-Reid poll results.

Notice the difference.
54% percent want it scrapped. A number that is almost hidden in the NP article. Blink and you'll miss it.

I'd like to know why that was so buried in the NP story.
And I'd like to see the question that 67% of Canadians answered 'yes' to.

Look at this quote from the NP article.

''There's nothing ambiguous about this,'' said John Wright, senior vice-president at Ipsos Reid.

''The concept of a gun registry has taken root across the country. There's a majority, 67 per cent, that's not a small majority, who believe that Stephen Harper shouldn't be doing away with all gun registries.''

I'm not sure that you can rule out ambiguity so quickly.
Notice that Wright is talking about all registeries. So is the handgun registry included in this question?

Were people asked
'Should police know if someone has a gun?'
'Should Stephen Harper eliminate all the gun registries including the handgun registry?'

Or did they ask the majority that said it should be scrapped
'Should Stephen Harper start another registry?'

This is simply gross misleading of the public on the part of the MSM machine prior to the AG's report tomorrow. False public support for a huge Liberal boondoggle.

UPDATE:
Actual Ipsos-Reid Press Release

But while most feel the current gun registry program should be scrapped, there is strong majority support among Canadians (67%), particularly in Ontario (71%) and Quebec (76%), toward the current government maintaining "some sort of system that makes gun owners across the country register their fire-arms".

Some sort of system... register their fire-arms.
Very soft question on a very unclear subject.

He should have played for the Senators

2006-05-14T07:54:00.000-06:00

This just in! A team of intrepid 'Weeping and Gnashing' sleuths has discovered part of Ken Dryden's Liberal Leadership speech.
Found on a crayon-scrawled napkin outside the office of two of his speechwriters, Hy Pothetical and May Dupp, it includes Shakespearian references to the recently killed 'Liberal Socialized Daycare' plan, LSD for short.

Don't we just put the 'gator' in investigator!
And now, the contents of his upcoming speech.

Ladies and Gentleman, Madames et Masseurs!
Commies all est vous? Je suisse tres bain.

Friends, Fans, Citywomen, lend me your dears;
I come to bury DayCare, not to praise it.
The evil that Grits do live after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with DayCare. The ignoble brute
Hath told you DayCare was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath DayCare answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Harper and the rest -
Stephen Harper will eat all our babies,
He is a big fat brute 'Eat two brute, eh!'

We're thinking this napkin is legit. Bad French, academic and pretentious.
And all those words and not a point to be made.

They got me Ma!

2006-05-14T01:43:00.000-06:00

I always thought she was the one that kept us out of trouble.
At least that's how it goes in television, books and the movies, whether fiction or non-fiction. She's the one that teaches us right from wrong, the one who hung a whoopin' on us if we ever strayed from the straight and narrow.

And if we ever screwed up, she was never to blame. The weeping con that tells his mother 'It's not your fault ma!' as he's led away; the gangster laying on the street holding his tommy gun, his last words 'Tell my mama I done her wrong' escaping his lips.
If we ever done wrong, it was our failing not hers.

All those cultural touchstones, those tributes to mama, the sacred thought that it is only the love of our mothers that stands between us and the proverbial gas chamber- all under fire by those damn 'progressives'.
They got my ma! Replaced her with 'mom the incompetent and impotent', someone to simply blame when the cell doors slam shut.

Damn beer and popcorn. If only she had stuck with dirty gin.

Instead of trying to support mom, to make her job easier and give her what's needed to keep junior off the street, we undermine her. Heck, nevermind undermine, let's go one step further and supplant her.

So the next generation can watch a movie where the weeping penatant, as he's led down the last mile to meet his maker, can cry out
'It's not your fault Early Childhood Educator #33217. I done ya wrong!'

Oh! And Happy Mother's Day!
I love ya ma and thanks for keeping me out of the slammer.

Come to Calgary

2006-05-12T11:30:00.000-06:00

It's time to put up or shut up and actually get involved with Re-Federation.

I'll be at the Calgary Congress late September. I just sent my registration on-line.

Kick the Liberals as they're down

2006-05-11T11:17:00.000-06:00

So screams an innacurate, misrepresentative and sensational headline from super sleuth ~~Nancy Drew~~Elizabeth Thompson.

See all the kerfuffle it raised over at Stephen Taylor's place.
Thank goodness for her someone left the door open, if only to save her the trouble of finding someone with a spare parabolic microphone handy or having to suffer the ultimate indignity of having to ask a waiter for a water glass that she could hold against the door.
Frank Luntz's actual words from the ~~article~~ ~~investigative journalism~~ ~~expose~~ opportunistic hatchet job were as follows

"I want you to do something for me because I know you might be able to make this happen," Mr. Luntz told more than 200 members of the Civitas Society gathered in a Kanata hotel yesterday. "Your Liberal government was corrupt. It was disgusting. The way they wasted your hard-earned tax dollars was a disgrace.

"I want you to leave here committed to insisting that the Conservative government hold that previous Liberal government accountable, that you do oversight, that you do investigation, that you continue doing it for the next year so that every Canadian knows and will never forget and will never allow another government to steal more from them."

We're assuming that was the 'kick the Liberals as they're down' part of the speech at it worst.
If he had said something more inflammatory or inappropriate than that, I'm sure it would have been quoted IN FULL CAPITALS.

I happen to like Ann Coulter's stronger ideas on the topic of going for the throat better. In her latest piece she wishes the Republicans would act like men and get nasty on the Democrats.

"For a political party that grasps the concept of victory against foreign enemies, Republicans can't seem to grasp that concept when it comes to domestic enemies. Instead of taking a page from Sun-tzu's "Art of War," when it comes to fighting liberals, American conservatives prefer the Jimmy Carter unconditional surrender strategy.

Patriotic Americans don't have to become dangerous psychotics like liberals, but they could at least act like men."

I hope the Conservatives were listening to Mr. Luntz at Civitas the other night and I hope they read Ann Coulter.

Especially when it relates to this topic.
Only serve the papers to the winner of the LPC Convention winner in December as he walks on stage to give his victory speech.

Don't 'kick the Liberals as they are down', kick them when they think they're about to get back on top.

Sorry

2006-05-10T12:54:00.000-06:00

Sorry.
No attempt from me anything witty or coherent today.
Not that I usually come across witty or coherent anyways.

I'm just in a real pissy mood.

I hate hearing the word 'progressive' when it really means 'socialist'.
I hate hearing any comment that is a thinly disguised anti-Americanism.
I hate the fact that Mr. Harper can do nothing without being accused of seeking a majority (as if he was a Liberal and interested in power for it's own sake) and ignoring the fact that he has a real vision and agenda for change that he is managing to pull off with a minority.
I hate the fact that a good MP can be destroyed for calling a Supreme Court Justice an activist when it is easy to find enough information that she's called herself the same, just in less-abrasive terms.
I hate the fact that it's my tax dollars that pay the scum that were involved.

I'm usually not a hater.

Sorry.

Project KARE Arrest

2006-05-09T16:08:00.000-06:00

Cpl. Wayne Oakes of the RCMP is announcing live in Edmonton right now that a female victim was found in a home in Fort Saskatchewan. A 38 yr old man was arrested May 8, yesterday morning.

A 36 yr old sex trade worker from Edmonton was the victim.
RCMP are asking that people that have had dealings with the suspect, Thomas George Svekla of High Level, are asked to contact police. It is possible that this suspect might have something to do with the many disappearances although RCMP stress this is one person charged in one death.

Has the Edmonton area found it's serial killer? I will update as I am able to.
Initial CHED Report

UPDATE May 10:
Reports this morning are that the suspect had the body for a few days and transported her from High Level. More here.

UPDATE May 11:
New information about Svekla this morning on radio CHED. He has been a person of interest to the task force since he discovered the body of a missing prostitute in the Sherwood Park area. He reported a body in the woods to police after allegedly taking a prostitute to the woods for sexual relations where she tripped on the body and ran away. I can see why they would be suspicious of that story.

Manning Musings

2006-05-09T10:41:00.000-06:00

There is quiet anticipation this week for an announcement from Preston Manning regarding his future in Alberta politics.

Whether Manning will throw his hat in the ring for Ralph's job, or not, is the question most frequently asked.
It will amount to a near-hostile takeover of the Alberta PCs, a group not completely noted for it's conservativism. It could be done but what would Preston have to work with when it was over?

Manning would be inheriting a party that has been in power for 35 years and probably has more skeletons in its closet than the Munster's, the Wierdly's and the Addam's families combined. Just ask Lyle Oberg. He knows where they are apparently.
Preston would be inheriting a party with a lot of MPs that would just as happily defect to Kevin Taft's Liberals rather than stay on with Mr. Manning.

Could he take a burdensome old behemoth with a baggage train that stretches the length of the QE2 Highway, renew it and take it forward? Would it win a provincial election even with Manning's popularity and his big ideas on the environment in the face of many Albertan's desires to oust the PCs. Is it time that Albertans will find their inner-Quebecer and turn politics on a dime?

There are some that say he should start a new party. But at 63, the same age as the departing Ralph, would Manning be battle ready and able to form a government in time? There is a ~~third~~another way he could become Premier.

Merging the right of center parties in Alberta has been floating around as an idea for awhile now. Paul Hinman has even offered the top job of the Alberta Alliance to Manning before. Could it be time to make the offer again?

One of the main hitches to the merger plan is the reluctance of the Socreds to consign the once proud party name of Social Credit to the dust bowl of history.

No problem, Premier Preston Manning of the Social Credit Party of Alberta.

UPDATE:
Klein is encouraging Manning to run. CBC

UPPERDATE:
Klein to join right wing think tank the Fraser Instiute. Linky
Maybe the Fraser Institute knows something the rest of us don't. Ralph has never been accused as being right wing or a thinker, God bless the man.

Decision by Manning this week?

2006-05-08T13:33:00.000-06:00

This Calgary Herald article from last Tuesday had this little tidbit...

No decision is likely until the middle of next week at the earliest, Fryers said, as Manning will be in Ottawa for business until that time.

Well, the middle of 'next week' is fast approaching. Will we hear one way or the other if Mr. Manning's hat will be in Alberta's ring?

We know from the article that 80% of CPC MPs have indicated their willingness to help out. That'll help the infrastructure concerns and I really don't think he'll have any trouble fund-raising.

Create Demand for Consumer-Driven HealthCare

2006-05-08T08:05:00.000-06:00

If the Alberta Government ever gets serious about implementing a private component to Health Care I have an idea for them.

Create demand.

And I don’t mean create demand by telling us doom and gloom stories about the impending demise of the public system. I don’t mean create demand by under-funding the public system and off-loading services to private insurance. You’ll never be able to convince us or cajole us into seeing that a consumer focused system is best for us.

We’ll need to convince you. So create demand.

Start by taking all the services that Albertans view as health care; chiropractic, dental, vision, prescription drugs, acupuncture, midwifery, etc., and create a Schedule A of essential basic services from these health care items.

Make these Schedule A adjunct health care items payable with before tax dollars. This will make the purchasing of individual private health plans affordable, as opposed to making economic sense only through employers or individual incorporation.

When individuals can purchase health insurance with before tax dollars without the interference of employers you will see a myriad of innovative and personally-tailored products develop to fill this market. The consumer will be free to choose providers and plans that they want and costs will come down and quality will go up.

When people can compare the value they get from private adjunct health care for their extra-medical needs and the public health care system that provides their medical needs, there will be a clamoring to privatize medicine as well.

It will be the public that demands it.

The Power of Five

2006-05-07T08:45:00.000-06:00

Here's a neat little party trick you can use with any Liberal.

Hold up your right hand, mind you, it has to be your right hand.
Talk about the five priorities and every time you list one off tuck it into your palm, saving your thumb for last.

When you finish listing them off, punch the Liberal in the nose.

Just like Harper.

No, you go!

2006-05-06T15:45:00.000-06:00

First off; a disclaimer. To all my fellow Blogging Tories, I have my tongue firmly planted in my cheek.
If you are fighting the good fight in the Center of the Universe, I salute you.

And now on to the rant...

If you listen to the brain trust that comprise the Liberal Party strategistsia, Stephen Harper’s flirtation with Quebec and Open Federalism is the apocalypse for Canada.
After all, when fiscal rebalancing fails and comes crashing down around Mssr.s Harper and Charest, the separatists will have won and Quebec will leave Canada. And what the hell, Alberta will probably go with them.

The Liberals know it will fail. They have it on good authority, cough… Dalton McGuinty..., that it will.

But why should Quebec and Alberta, such bons amis and bosom chums, be the ones to leave Canada? After all Quebec and The West, as Ontario used to be known as before expansion robbed of them of that moniker, were the impetus behind Confederation. And now it is Quebec and the spirit of The West that is trying to save it, in spite of the scoundrels in Queens Park predicting our demise.

But why let the imminent departure of Alberta and Quebec cut British Columbia and Atlantic Canada off from Ontario in this apocalyptic future Canada? They just might want to come along.

I say if there is to be separation from Canada, let it be the GTA. After all, who is it that opposes Open Federalism? It is the Liberals, that’s who. The Liberal Party of ~~Canada~~Toronto, Dalton McGuinty of the ~~Ontario~~Toronto Legislature and David Miller of the actual city of Toronto. It seems only fair to let them go, the Distinct Just Society that they are; and less disruptive.

Declaring the GTA to be the Great and Powerful City State of Toronto would go a long way to solving the dilemma facing Liberals everywhere. After all, 8 of 10 declared candidates for the LPC are from Toronto anyways, Toronto is the only remaining enclave of non dope-smoking Liberal voters left anywhere in the country, and it would finally solve the problem of only being able to watch the Leafs on Hockey Night in Canada; but we get to keep Don Cherry.

Minimal disruption to the rest of Canada, for those of us that 'get it' and wouldn't think of sending a Liberal to Ottawa ever since the Carleton County Gaol became a hostel. Just think! If Toronto separated the Trans Canada Highway could be left uninterrupted and we'd lower the number of lawyers per capita to a level most of the world would envy.

Maybe we could convince Hamilton to go with them (so the Argos would have someone to play) and Prince Edward Island could make a fortune selling them both Kyoto credits. Beats selling potatos and them Islanders could burn everything related to Anne of Green Gables and never feel a pinch.

12-Gauging Support

2006-05-06T10:33:00.000-06:00

Why Scott Reid?
And why now?

It isn't enough to have Scott Reid crawl out from under his post-election rock, we also have to deal with two appearances by Paul Martin, both on topics that resonate strongly with progressive voters; childcare and anti-americanism.

Scott Reid has been careful about his choice of topics as well, giving messages of hope for the next election by showing his newfound grasp of 'the power of five', talking about the budget on Mike Duffy as if it were the death knell of Quebec in Canada (follow link to video: 'Party strategists discuss the budget'), and, of course, anti-americanism.

So why are we hearing from these guys? Now? On such safe topics?

Two words: Gun Registry

In roughly ten days, Sheila Fraser will be delivering her report on the billions that disappeared into the gun registry.
Paul Martin is trying to get some good press before the release by attacking the Cons on issues that mean something to Liberal core support and to play off the Harper media war by letting the press know he has their backs (hopefully for some, you know, quid pro quo).
Scott Reid is getting ready for war, still desparately loyal to his old boss, and will be Martin's chief apologist when the gun registry recoil knocks the ex-PM right off his feet.

UPDATE: Just cruised by SDA (best wishes to Kate BTW ingetting her comments back on line) and found this link to the Guite trial. Think of it as a sneak preview for the spring blockbuster.

UPPERDATE: Bonus video!

Imbalancing Act

2006-05-05T07:45:00.000-06:00

I am not a Constitutional Expert or a Quebec Expert but I can see real potential for the issue of the fiscal imbalance to finally

a) get Quebec's signature on the Constitution
b) create a Canada where regional differences become our great strength
c) where small efficient governments are rewarded and services are delivered properly by the level of government that is closest to the problem

Adam Radwanski has a good article on some of the tax implications that Open Federalism may have.
I'm sure over the course of the next year we will see a lot of debate on the reason for and the purpose of a Federal Government. I for one will welcome the debate.
We've already had a hint in the first 100 days of what a Federal can achieve if it 'sticks to it's knitting'.

Mr. Harper does have a vision. Now that the budget is out and the fiscal imbalance blueprint has been released, Dalton McGuinty can finally be let in on it.

UPDATE:
An extremely good read on the topic is today's Chantal Hebert column.
As always, you can count on her to be balanced in her assessment.

"Since the federal discussion paper on the fiscal balance came out on budget day, its content has been inflated by both the fears and the hopes of those who have read it.

But stripped of all that, the paper projects the image of a government more interested in federal-provincial discipline than in a massive federal disengagement."

It has seriously inflated my hopes. She is correct on that one.

Mr. Duceppe Goes to Ottawa

2006-05-04T20:36:00.000-06:00

"I came, I saw, I concurred"

At least that's what we thought he said.

No Oxygen, Only Arrogance

2006-05-04T07:30:00.000-06:00

At a potential Lib Leadership deal in Edmonton recently, Carolyn Bennet expounded on oxygen. It's great stuff, yada yada, the body doesn't work without it, it comes from plants and it is, surprisingly, in short supply.

"There is no oxygen at the summit of an organization"

Yes, the rarified air at the top of the Liberal Party is in fact rare. And me thinks old Carolyn has been spending a bit too much time up there.
What other explanation is there for her latest foray into the childcare debate.

"It's a good job they are putting more money for prisons in the budget, because we're going to need them if we don't get this early childhood right."

See the actual clip at Proud to be a Canadian

But she's even defended her statement by moderating it to say she really only meant poor children. So it's not really an attack on parents, it's an attack on the parenting abilities of the poor.
If you ever get the 'early learning' you wish for Carol, make sure you keep them poor kids away from their parents for proportionally long enough periods of time.
Please, please, please get them kids away for enough 'early learning' or you might only do half the job and just make smarter criminals. Them kids will steal their parents 'beer and popcorn' money and invest it in grow ops or crystal meth labs. Or buy guns.

No Oxygen.

Speaking of beer and popcorn and oxygen, and you'd be surprised how many conversations veer off this direction, Mr. Beer and Popcorn himself has been seen crawling out from whatever rock has been his home since he 'advised' the Liberal Party into it's present predicament; first on Duffy and now in the Toronto Star.
I'm sure he wrote this article at high altitude.
With the depressurization light flashing.

"Yet, mysteriously, the practical challenge of re-election has been treated with a disdain usually reserved for chatty strangers on airplanes."

Yep, on an airplane. Chatty. High above the oxygenless summit.
His main plan for restoring Liberal electoral hopes...
Lie about Harper to Quebecers.

No Oxygen. But toxic levels of arrogance.

Budget Night in Canada- 2006 Playoffs

2006-05-03T08:16:00.000-06:00

As I type this I am promising myself that I will not rant.
I promise to speak on the good things about the budget and not go off on a tear about the petty political parlour-gaming, partisan politicking, lamoid lying lickspittling and outright disinterest in the interest of Canadians that is being demonstrated by two of the opposition parties over this budget.

Oops.

So… maybe I’ll do a little ranting.
Or rather I’ll pretend this is the Stanley Cup playoffs and go round by round following the Harperville Hornets as they quest to pass the budget.

Round One
The Harperville Hornets did well in the first round of the budget showdown. They played against the Mainstream Medias and won the series in 4 straight games.
Their secret? They built a stone wall in front of the net and just stood around letting the other team shoot. Each game won by a 1-0 score as someone on the Medias invariably would let a hard out-of-control slapper go and the rebound would inexplicably end up in their own net; usually when the Medias goalie was looking for instructions from the coach of the Liberalton Lyins, er… Lions.

Round Two
Round two was fought in earnest by Liberalton Lions but in the end it wasn’t much of a contest. Truth be told, the Lions should not have even made the playoffs but the fact that they played most of their games in Toronto and Vancouver this year really helped out their record. Not to mention their star player Paul Martin (pronounced Poll MAR-tehn for those of you who follow the ‘Guy Hebert Hockey Player Pronunciation Guide’) quit just after the Christmas break and was replaced by Bill ‘Wafer’ Graham. And the blockbuster trade of David Emerson for future commiserations did not really work out in their advantage.
The Harperville Hornets won all four games by the score of 13-0 which is strangely ironic as it highlighted 13 years of the Lions doing nothing for their fans. The last game saw the Lions adopt a new strategy of simply icing the puck every time the Hornets took a shot on net. "It’s an effective opposition" they cried as frustrated Hornets and fans from the stands mercilessly beat them with sticks made of softwood lumber at the end of game 4.

Round Three
The Laytown Dippers, led by the Big Dipper himself, trumpeted themselves as the last great hope to defeat the Harperville Hornets when in reality the offered to throw all the games in exchange for the Hornets dropping their plans to cut the costs of corporate rink board advertising. When that was declined they offered to throw the series if all exhibition games in Afghanistan were cancelled for the next season and the YWCA got some funding for hockey schools (you can never start them young enough!).
The series went to seven games, although it is suspected that the Hornets threw 3 of the games just to make the Liberalton Lions look bad.
Trivia buffs are sure to remember that all the games were played in Harperville since global warming had unfortunately melted all the ice in Laytown.

Round 4
The next round was against the QueBloc Referendumbs.
The series was won by default as QueBloc decided to play ‘The Trap’ and deferred the ‘real’ games for about a year.

Quick Budget Thoughts

2006-05-02T20:17:00.000-06:00

Not much to say about this Post-Election/Pre-Election Budget other than whoo-hoo.
Promises were made, Promises were kept.

To all you complainers...
1) Aboriginal Funding. About $1 Billion. Sounds eerily similar to $5 Billion over five years AND the Cons are spending it on priority areas. I bet next year there'll be another $1 Billion to be spent on the next set of priorities... and so on... you get the picture.

2) Income Tax to 15.5%. Liberals and MSM types who like to cherry-pick numbers can kiss my blue butt. Add this to the work credit and the GST cut and who really cares about the number on the tax form. It's the number in my bank account that counts.

3) Childcare. People are getting money now. Spaces will come. Existing spaces will not disappear if they are attractive to people shopping with their own money. The Conservatives won the election. Get over it and provide a good space for a good price.

4) Anyone who thinks the cuts aren't deep enough. Piss off and grab a brain. Modest, moderate and IRREVERSIBLE reductions in your taxes are nothing to sneeze at. Elect more Conservatives and I'm sure you'll get more of the same. And a healthier economy as a bonus.

5) Corporate Tax Cut Haters. See Number 4. You're probably the same people who said nothing is being done for workers in the manufacturing industries.

6) Dalton McGuinty. Also see Number 4. You knew, as did all of us who can read, that the fiscal imbalance is being addressed next budget after consultations with all the levels of government. Even Gilles Duceppe gets that and his english isn't as good as yours. So saying the Cons missed an opportunity this budget is just you trying to pee in the pool.

7) Students. University is expensive. Pick something useful to learn and work hard. Like the real world. This is coming from a guy with 9 years of University under his belt, married to someone with a Management diploma and a Nursing degree. You don't have it so bad. You got some real nice things today whether or not you choose to believe it, especially on the student loan side.

8) Kyoto. Hehe. Snicker. Chuckles. I can pass a law for zero dollars that makes companies behave themselves. And I bet the Cons can do it too. And real change for the environment will happen. And none of my friends will get rich as a result. And besides, climate change is a bunch of hot air.

My concerns...
1) Military. I wish it was more. Hopefully we see some more action here or a better explanation how the Arctic sovereignty stuff is going to be accomplished with the funds allocated.

2) Gas. I wish the Cons could have figured out a way to end the 'tax on a tax' thing. Even if it didn't save us any money, or at least capped the tax to what we'd pay on $1/L gas. Unless they really think it's going to come down.

3) Booze. Micro-breweries and small wineries getting a tax break! Oy! My liver!!

Oilers Win!

2006-05-02T07:06:00.000-06:00

I can't contain my glee this morning over the Oiler's impressive series win over the first place Detroit Red Wings.
Besides that, I look like a genius for calling the Oilers in six; something that happens less often than a Oiler's series win.

I should be trumpeting an upcoming Battle of Alberta for the next round but Calgary let the province down last night and they are making me nervous that I'll be singing 'Do you know the way to San Jose?' on Wednesday.

Best of luck to Craig MacT and Co. for Round #2.

Budget Day Photo Essay

2006-05-01T17:33:00.000-06:00

Now that Budget Day is here, what do these images and the
Liberal Party have in common?

That about sums it up.

Groping and Flailing for Something Bad to Say

2006-04-28T15:30:00.000-06:00

In financial circles they like to say that a stock or a company has a 'story'. I don't get much of what financial experts say, but I sort of understand the idea of a stock's 'story'.
Too bad I can't put it into practice. I no longer pick stocks as I always end up with the same 'story' -
"Stock looks good, MolarMauler buys Stock,
Stock goes into the Turbo Toilet 2000, End of Story"

I can follow a story though. I've been following the Softwood Lumber Story as told by Roma Luciw of the Grope and Flail. Namely the story of Tembec.

April26

Roma told an interesting tale on Wednesday under the fairly neutral headline of
Forestry stocks post gains on news of softwood offer

In it we hear of several stocks
"On the Toronto Stock Exchange, International Forest Products Ltd. rose 6 per cent to $7.80, Tembec Inc. rose 14 per cent to $1.83, Canfor Corp. stock jumped 5 per cent to $14.60, West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. climbed 1½ per cent to $42.86, and Domtar Inc. added 2 per cent to $7.83. In New York, Pope & Talbot Inc. stock rallied 22 per cent to $7.05 (U.S.)."

So Tembec rose 14%. Not bad and that puts the share price before the rumours hit at about $1.60. It actually did better than reported at press time and closed at $2.10.

April 27

Fast forward to Thursday and we get the newest news from Roma under the extremely neutral headline
Canada, U.S. reach softwood lumber deal

We get an update on the stocks and such choice quotes from Richard Kelertas, an analyst at Dundee Securities Corp.

"The deal is awful. It basically marginalizes the Canadian industry over the next seven years,"

"Even if the Americans make some modifications to this, it is still a trap for the Canadians. The trap is that there is no language to exit, so they will be trapped in this bad deal for seven years."

""The danger here is that you set a very dangerous precedent by saying that NAFTA is no good and can be argued by the Americans that it is unconstitutional."

"just to get a nice photo-op" with U.S. President George Bush.

"George Bush apparently told Canadian and U.S. officials that if a deal is not done by midnight Thursday, the NAFTA appeal deadline, they don't want to spend any more time on this," he said. "We are talking about the lifeblood of thousands of communities across Canada."

and indirect quotes attributed to Richard like

'The Thursday midnight deadline has been artificially created by the Bush administration, who are trying create a sense of urgency in order for Mr. Harper's government to accept a "shitty" deal, Mr. Kelertas said.

If an agreement similar to the one on the table does go through, he added, shareholders of Canadian forestry and paper companies could sue the Canadian federal government for financially crippling them.'

I guess Richard Kelertas is one of the few that really don't like the deal. Any thoughts why? But enough about that, let's get to Tembec!

"Shares of Canadian lumber companies dropped Thursday ahead of Mr. Harper's news, as a slew of analysts derided the tentative deal."

"Shares of Canadian forestry companies dropped in Toronto on Thursday, with International Forest Products Ltd. shares dropping 3.7 per cent to $7.80, Tembec Inc. shedding 9.52 per cent to $1.90, Canfor Corp. stock shedding 2.6 per cent to $14.36, and West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. losing 1.27 per cent to $42.70."

Oh poor Tembec. It got hammered! A whole 9.52% loss to $0.30 more than it was trading the day before. A drop from the $2.10 it managed to reach but still 18.8% higher than it was when it started.

April 28

Let's go to Friday and Roma's latest report under the now less than stellar headline
Analysts lukewarm on softwood deal

Tembec?
Shares of Vancouver-based Canfor Corp., Canada's largest lumber producer, rose 34 cents or 2.37 per cent to $14.70 in Toronto, while Montreal-based forest products company Tembec Inc. shares surged as much as 19 per cent in early action, before retreating to trade 5 cents or 2.63 per cent higher at $1.95."

A first-timer looking at these numbers would be so unimpressed. Tembec only 2.63% higher. What a disappointment. After all that hard work by Mr. Harper and company.

Too bad Tembec is levelling out at 22% higher than it was on Wednesday when rumors of an announcement were rumbling. Must be rough on those who thought to buy stock in lumber companies when Mr. Emerson crossed the floor.

I may not be able to read a stock's story but I know I won't be reading anymore of Roma Luciw's stories. And if Richard Kelertas hears about any other "shitty" deals Harper is going to make, I wanna know and that's a stock I'll buy.

Deal or No Deal?

2006-04-28T08:25:00.000-06:00

Mr. Harper, you only have a few cases left. One still has the 5 billion dollars in export duties in it BUT one still has 1 cent! Our negotiator is sending the call down now...

He's offering an end to this long-running and industry-crippling dispute; relief for thousands of Canadian families whose livelihoods has been in jeopardy and whose lives have been on hold; and a secure trade arrangement for 7 years that improves upon the status quo and... 4 billion dollars. Please please please make up your mind. The last contestant on this show dithered and dithered and walked away with nothing.

Mr. Harper... DEAL or NO DEAL!?

Tongue-in-cheek? Check
Non-partisan-neurons disabled? Check
Lib-bait-set? Check

3...2...1... RANT

Dear Bill Graham,
Thank you for being such a hugely moronic clown. It was very entertaining to watch you in the House talking before starting your brain. I'm sure it was a very huge surprise to have the PM walk in to your little show whilst you were asking about the possible softwood deal and saying how the provinces hated it.

It must have have been disconcerting to say the least, to have Mr. Harper saunter in and interrupt your harangue with the news that a framework agreement was complete and the three major players provincially were onside with it.

So we understand completely your chagrin and don't blame you for standing up and claiming the deal as yours and cursing the dastardly NDP for interrupting the Liberal Reign of Error. Canadians will remember their misdeeds, you cry.

We enjoyed seeing you standing there with your mouth hung open mid-rant when your fridge-light finally came on; when you finally recalled Liberal Opposition Rule #1 - Everything that Harper Does is Fundamentally Wrong.

From moaning over all your hard work stolen by the new guy, to directly criticizing the bill as the worst thing for Canada since Maple Syrup was found to cause cavity in beavers. Liberal hypocrisy, spin and double-talk at a speed only a hummingbird could keep up with.

If it's such a bad deal, why did the provinces jump on board so fast. This issue has been on the back burner for so long, their pots have nearly melted. I'm sure if it was such a horrible deal, they could have let it simmer along some more. Remember that we're talking three provincial Liberal governments, one of whom has no love for Mr. Harper. Not to mention one of your own negotiators on previous failed attempts at a deal said bravo to the agreement. Maybe it's the billion dollars we gave to the US whilst Harper was kissing Uncle Sam's backside that is vexing you so?

So what is so bad, Mr. Graham, about leaving a billion dollars on the table? Maybe you can call it a 'Billion Dollar Boondoggle' and have better luck with the slogan than the Tories did. Maybe you can tell us where 2 billion (or more) went with the gun registry? Maybe you can compare it to the nearly half a billion dollars you paid in penalties to cancel the helicopter deal, way back when a billion dollars meant a helluva lot more than it does today.

I'm sure the Liberals would have done better Mr. Graham. I'm sure you would have dug in your heels got that extra billion. Yeah right. But at what cost to the stakeholders in this deal?

You would have got that extra billion dollars alright. Eventually.
Right after you figured out a way to give it to your friends.

Update
Rant is officially off and I have some interesting tidbits for y'all.

First up, pale posted at SDA this fun little CTV NewsNet story from November. After you get through all the Martin-is-a-tough-guy-Americans-are-bad stuff you get the little bombshell that

Ottawa is insisting that the United States return at least $3.5 billion Cdn of some $5 billion in duties collected from Canadian lumber companies.

Wow, good on Mr. Harper for getting at least a little more than that.

Second up, if Geoffery Simpson says the Tories done good, maybe they actually did great.
As well, the markets certainly have a little bit to say about the whole deal as well; nothing says great job like a friday morning 17%+ increase in your stock prices to set up your mood for a nice April weekend. And I bet there was no insider trading involved.

Third, in a brand new Globe story, the Tories give some more details about the agreement.
My favourite parts...

"However, about a $1-billion in U.S. collected duties remains south of the border despite Ottawa's victory in legal battles under the North American free-trade agreement that would have refunded all levies." Terry Weber

“Over six years, they did not act and in 80 days, this Prime Minister acted in the best interests of Canada and will deliver back to the pockets of Canadians $4-billion U.S. dollars plus interest that the Liberals sent to the United States and didn't get back for Canadians.” Jason Kenney talking about the 5 billion.

“It was a political deal, a deal at any price, and the Americans got a signing bonus of up to $1.5-billion, swiped directly from Canadians." Ralph Goodale

Nice math Ralph, great to see a former finance minister so good with numbers.

Just the Facts

2006-04-26T07:32:00.000-06:00

"It doesn't take that much effort to lower a flag": Jane Taber

Correct, it takes a bit more effort to do the right thing in the face of Liberal hypocrisy and open hostility from the media.

I am posting a compilation of the facts regarding the flag dust-up.
I'll add to it whenever I find info or am given info by readers.

Return to original Peace Tower policy is a Liberal policy
CPC Rebuttal
(h/t to Ural from comments at Small Dead Animals)

Official Half-Staff Web-Site
Here is a listing of all the half-staffings at the Peace Tower for the previous years. The last Afghanistan mission-realted half-staffing appears to be Glyn Berry on January 15, during the election.
You have to go back to January 2004 to find the last half-staffing for a soldier, not counting Smokey Smith or Remembrance Day. (Update: actually Oct 2004 for Chris Saunders)
(h/t again to Ural)

When is a ban not a ban?
Stephen Taylor in his post 'Shame on The Star' has more on a 'ban' that translates in the real world to 'ensuring respectful distance'. True, they are not allowed on-site, which effectively keeps the media from interfering with the ceremony; but it does not seem to hamper the ability to get powerful images from the repatriation ceremony.
Not to mention, the media still has access to the loading of the coffins onto the planes in Afghanistan and to whatever funeral the family allows them to attend.
(h/t to dcinyow)

The Last Straw

2006-04-25T16:58:00.000-06:00

I don't know about all of you, but this latest thing over the flags and the repatriation ceremonies has me finished with CTV NewsNet and the CTV National News.

I watched Craig Oliver and Lloyd Robertson as I was getting ready for bed last night and it's been bothering me ever since.
For those of you who haven't been on the web today, head over to Kate's and Stephen's for all you need to read on the subject.

I am probably like the rest of you, it affects me physically when I hear one of our troops is hurt or killed. But the thought of a soldier's death becoming a weapon against the mission that same soldier gave their life for makes me angry beyond control. If I gave my life endeavoring to do good in this world, why should my death be used to make my death meaningless. I would like to think my death made the world a better place, not to act as an excuse to leave the job undone.

Ugh! As I am typing I am listening to 630 CHED and I hear that CTV has found a vantage point to film the caskets coming off the planes. If this is true, then I hope a firestorm of outrage finally vaporizes the piss in this little pissing match the media and Harper are in. Disgraceful. Makes my decision to quit watching them 20/20 in hindsight.

Sober Second Thought

2006-04-25T08:04:00.000-06:00

I have an upper chamber I like to call my conscience. It is (usually) pretty highly developed, and is probably the part of my brain that I use the most.
A few posts over the last few days have really kicked it into overdrive.

So thanks to Chucker, DBT, Candace and Kate for giving me food for thought.

Expect me to
a) post when I have something to say
b) be a little more responsible when I do

Sing a Song of Kings-Hants

2006-04-23T17:45:00.000-06:00

Sing a song of King-Hants
And little Scottie Bri
Four and twenty BlackBerries
Baked in a pie

When the pie was opened
Jail-birds began to sing
You've cost yourself your only chance
To ever be a King

Just a shout out to congratulate Scott Brison for having the blackberries to announce he's running for the leadership of the LPC.

He's got the attitude; just ask a past campaign worker who Scottie told to 'Kiss my ass' in a crowded coffee shop.
He's got the communication skills, having shown himself to be able to bald-face lie to reporters over a little old thing like the RCMP calling him for a chat.
He can speak four languages: English, Blackberry, Lie-beral and... well three, because we hear he needs some work in French.
Not to mention, he knows the CPC well and is an old hat when it comes to running a leadership campaign.
And a real cute accent that lets everyone know he's rarely spent time in Toronto and has been nowhere near Harvard.

Sadly for the Liberals, he's probably the best of a bad lot.

You like me...!

2006-04-23T12:07:00.000-06:00

This site made Blue Blogging Soapbox's BT Site of the Week.

I shouldn't feel this darn happy :D
But I do, so Thanks!

If you're a first-timer who has wandered over to check things out, er... enjoy. You were told to expect to be bored so I feel no guilt.

The Rocket

2006-04-22T17:50:00.000-06:00

I took my 9 yr old to see 'The Rocket' and we were both spellbound.
I've always been a Habs fan since I was a kid, although it was Cournoyer and Co. for me. Richard was a little before my time.
My son became a Habs fan today, although he still roots for the Sens and the Oilers (and whoever plays against the Flames) first.
He also learned a little more about Quebec than I ever learned at 9.

I heartily recommend this movie to any Canadian, not just hockey fans.

ROFLMAO

2006-04-21T22:46:00.000-06:00

Saw this for the first time today and nearly peed.

King Stephen

2006-04-21T20:56:00.001-06:00

Add this photo to the list of 'Heil' photos, 'Nazi Salute' photos and 'Burning Peace Tower' photos.

No wonder he doesn't let photographers within 100 ft of him if he can help it.
Special thanks to a drive-by troll at ChuckerCanuck's place.

Hey Hosehead, Did you step on a Duck?

2006-04-21T16:02:00.000-06:00

Coo roo coo coo, coo coo coo coo...
Hi I'm Bob MacKenzie and this is my brother Doug.
Welcome to the Great White North

How's it going, eh?

I just finished watching Duffy Live. It's a regrettably bad habit of mine.
At the end of the show, Sheila Copps, Jane Taber and Lawrence Martin were there. I hate watching Lawrence Martin standing in the on deck circle waiting for his segment. He looks like a man with a real flatulence problem who is trying very hard not to offend his co-star du jour.

They managed to get the usual bafflegab out of the way and found their way to discussing Mulroney's dinner. It was actually comical sitting there watching Sheila while the others went on about how the Tories were tripping over themselves to fete Mulroney. But that's another story, just like the fact it's impossible to find any reference to the dinner on the CTV website anymore.

Lawrence Martin then goes on a spree talking about how Mulroney was chiding Harper and trying to push him to going green, as if Harper has no plan to help the environment.
Newsflash Lawrence, Harper is on record as saying he has plans in mind for the environment, effective policy coming to reduce all emissions and not just CO2. I'm sure Mulroney knows that as well, as Harper mentioned it again while introducing Mr. Mulroney.

Then Fartin' Martin goes on to say that Mulroney is giving Harper a vision for the Great White North, and boy is that Harper ever lucky to have Mr. Mulroney goad and prod him so.
I guess all that stuff that Harper said during the election about Arctic Sovreignty and icebreakers and northern outposts was all just buzzing. I suppose the historic meeting of the three military teams at the far north was just some guys getting some ice for the Tory post-Throne Speech party. I guess dressing down the U.S. Ambassador over the North was nothing. Or renaming the Northwest Passage with the still singularly ugly and unromantic name Canadian Internal Waters.

Yup, that Harper boy has no vision for the Great White North and no intentions until after the dinner to do anything positive for the environment. It's a good thing Mr. Mulroney was there to set the boy straight and invent policy for him on the fly.

Maybe we can get him to think up a catchy slogan like "From Sea to Sea to Sea" while he's at it... Too late.

Pfffffftttttt! Oops, was that you Lawrence?

More 'Tell me Why?'

2006-04-20T08:10:00.000-06:00

And no it isn't the 'Tell me Why?' where I ask why would an intelligent man like David Emerson go to a former staffer, who is now a staffer for Bill Graham, and tell him all of this? Because to ask 'why?', you'd actually have to ask 'did?' first. Maybe Les should have asked that before he wrote that column.

The 'Why?' I want to ask is why is Stephen Harper splitting the crime package up into fragments instead of presenting it in an omnibus bill?

It has to be more than 'Screwing over the Liberals' as Emerson maybe might have could have said.

Is it
a) to make sure that the package as a whole doesn't get bogged down in a huge boondoggle of complaints that it goes to far and is too sweeping to pass?
b) is it because that each bill on it's own is reasonable and defensible and each strikes a cord with voters and Canadians will applaud each one?
c) is it to keep those pesky Liberal senators a little too busy to afford kazoo-time?
d) is it because when you have only 5 priorities it's nice to show that 5, although a nice simple and small number, is generally more complex and a lot more work than it would first seem. If 3 is shown to be 3a) 3b) all the way to 3m) or 3v), it makes the 5 priorities seem to be what they actually are, a huge and sweeping change in the direction this country is taking.
e) is it to actually get the opposition to focus instead of standing up and getting hysterical over everything without saying anything?

Hmmm, I already have a multitude of reasons.
But I don't get Mike Duffy's idea that it's to embarrass the Liberals. And I don't get the NDP's assertion that it's to poison the atmosphere of the House and make everything brinkmanship.
Maybe it'll be nice to see productive debate on all aspects of a tough set of initiatives.

Tell me why?

2006-04-18T15:52:00.000-06:00

I know that Stephen Harper talked at a daycare in Burnaby today but why does CTV show a picture of an Emerson protestor in a story on childcare?

A Not-to-be-named Comic

2006-04-16T10:04:00.000-06:00

Stuff you, and everyone who makes you and your new movie front page news today.

No links.

Pretty Good Friday

2006-04-14T07:09:00.000-06:00

I have the day off today. It should be a corker.

My church is having a Tenebrae service today and I'm excited as we've never done it before. It's the first one we've done and the first one I'll have ever attended. The Alliance church isn't usually big on tradition. I guess we're part of the overall march back to a more sober religious experience.

After that, today is the day the training wheels come off my 5 yr old's bike. She's the third and last of my kids I've thrown out of the nest and it should go very well.
She's been the fastest to pick up most things, including skiing solo. She tries hard because she's determined to 'catch up' to her brother and sister who have 3 and 6 years on her.

A few things political are on my mind this morning, courtesy of a lazy sweep through Bourque and NealeNews. I'm up way too early for a day off. But coffee with a hint of cinnamon and a lazy tour of the news is fair compensation for not sleeping in.

First on my mind; the NDP don't seem as worried about losing Bob Rae as they were when losing their Buzz harshed their mellow. If I were them I'd be in a panic, because I have an idea that the real story doesn't involve net losses for the Liberals.

A Rae-led LPC would lose twice as many people as they gained and that has the NDP saying 'No problem', 'Relax' and 'Hurray' (or would it be 'HurRae'?). It may be wiser to look at reality rather than looking at the overall net Liberal loss.
Sure the LPC would be weaker but if they gain voters would they come from the CPC or the NDP? I say the NDP.
If the Liberals lose voters would they be heading for the CPC or the NDP? I say the CPC.

I know I'm over simpliflying things but if I was the NDP I'd be worried. For ever 10 voters they'd lose to the LPC, the LPC would lose 20 to the CPC is how I see it shaking out.
NDP down 10, LPC down 10, CPC up 20.

But then, maybe I'm as bad at math as Olivia Chow.

But now that millions of viewers look at Evangleine Lilly half naked and sweaty every week on TV, she's okay with it.

I hate it when people complain they're pretty.

The funniest thing about this story is that the Canada Science and Technology Museum will be leaving Dalton McGuinty's riding. Snipe!

Firewall or Fireweed is the question Stephen Harper is trying to extinguish without getting burned. Seems he's caught between two old friends who have very different ideas about Alberta.
Preston Manning talks a bit about his Fireweed project and Harper's Firewall letter in his interview with Macleans.

Is it just me or is Macleans becoming a little more readable as of late?

And... my Oiler-induced ulcer gets to last a few extra weeks. Good job guys and play hard against Detroit.

Well, that's it for me. I have to find some black clothes to wear to Tenebrae.

I don't have the stomach for it

2006-04-12T08:31:00.000-06:00

Well, another contender for the Liberal Leadership drops out today, and the excuses keep getting better.

At least the early drop outs had excuses we could all relate to. Good and honest excuses.

Brian Tobin was enjoying the filthy lucre of private life.
John Manley told Mike Duffy "I know the commitment involved..." "And if successful, the prize at the end of the day is a lot of hard work."
Frank McKenna didn't want to return to politics... "having escaped the trap, I wouldn't go back for the cheese."
Allan Rock liked his UN job too much.

But eventually the Liberal Party did find people who wanted to run, 16 or 17 of them in fact. But second thoughts are often the wisest of thoughts and some are starting to take themselves out of the race.

The excuses are getting a little more exotic now.

Belinda Stronach took herself out of the running last week because she had too many ideas and a Leadership race wasn't the way to showcase them. As well, the rules were perhaps a tad too 'complex'.

And now today, John Godfrey has taken himself out of the race because he has to take a test. Or a few tests. Something vague about his health although he tells us not to worry because it isn't serious. Maybe it's hard to queue-jump or fly to the US for your tests and run in a leadership race at the same time. Or maybe he's opted to use the Public Health System, in which case the urgent tests he requires may be scheduled during the week of the race at the end of the year.

Maybe his heart isn't in it. Maybe his spleen won't stand for being vented. Nose allergic to grindstones? Shoulder adverse to wheels?
We don't know, he just won't tell us.
His brain must be okay, after all he just dropped out of the race to lead the Liberal Party so that's proof enough it's working.
Maybe it's his stomach? Maybe he doesn't have the stomach for it.

I think I'll try and predict the excuses the rest of the upcoming dropouts will use.

Carolyn Bennett - Cerebral Hypoxia
Apparently, according to Carolyn, there isn't a lot of oxygen at the summit of an organization. And poor Ms. Bennett has been hanging around the summit a lot lately. It's beginning to take it's toll.

Symptoms of mild cerebral hypoxia include inattentiveness, poor judgment, memory loss, and a decrease in motor coordination.

By the looks of it, she may have been suffering it for quite some time. But it works pretty well as an excuse in any event.
I just hope that after she recovers she doesn't try to champion a National Hyperbaric Oxygen Program.

Scott Brison - Has to go on Vacation
Well, the RCMP will be finishing their Income Trust Investigation soon and hopefully Scotty will have earned himself a little vacation time at the Crowbar Resort and Suites, a lovely timeshare chain that may be expanding under Conservative rule.
I hear they make a mean Blackberry pie.

Ashley MacIssac - No buyers for his paintings

Ken Dryden - Read the desk sign wrong
Thought the sign on the PM desk read 'The puck stops here'. Didn't seem like the job would be as much fun if it was the buck.

UPDATEd excuses
Joe Volpe - Disney is casting for 'Jungle Book 3'
Figures he has a pretty good shot at the role of Vulture #3. And the only place he's going to get $300 pizza for the next long while will be at the wrap-up party when filming is over. (h/t Joanne(tb) )

Michael Ignatieff - Geographic Dysplasia
Like any really great head-in-the-cloud-absent-minded-professor can tell you it's easy to misread a map. You see, Iggy has always known, intellectually, that the 49th parallel is the border between Canada and the US. You can understand that practically this created a disconnect when he learned that his Toronto riding was actually located about the 43rd parallel. He actually figured he was still in the States when he made his run for Parliament and heading north to Ottawa finally made him go 'Duh!'.
Hey Iggy! The border is kind of 'tortured' around the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence. But thanks for visiting. (h/t ChuckerCanuck)

Stephane Dion - Je peux voir clairement maintenant
Stephane drops out of the race, declaring himself a separatist. 'I can see clearly now', Stephane declares and goes on to explain that he never really understood the question in the 1995 Referendum. Until now.
'Andre and I had a very nice dinner together and he explained it all to me.'

'Canada, I wish I knew how to quit you.' (h/t ChuckerCanuck)

John McCallum - in Hospital
It's tough being John. He's just so scary. He's so far been successful in avoiding the obvious traps for someone in his position; he doesn't doo-knock at night, he avoids the gloomier hallways around cabinet hill and he never ever shows up at blood drives.
But alas, when it came time to show his support for public Daycare in Edmonton, John was in a quandry. There were so many crying babies that the cops actually showed up. They got there just as several mothers were beating Mr. McCallum with strollers. Misunderstanding the situation, the cops drew billy clubs and waded into the fray because one officer thought he looked like a 'black man with an orange streak in his hair'. Well, he was black (and blue) by the time they arrived and the orange was later found to be play-dough.
John is expected to be released by next January after his scheduled 'strollectomy' with a public sector proctologist. (h/t Joe Calgary)

Joe Fontana - er... Joe Who?
Nobody will even notice when he drops out so we'll never get to hear his excuse. (h/t Joe Calgary)

Shapiro is so done

2006-04-11T10:48:00.000-06:00

The strengthening of the Ethics Commission invloves an intersting little twist.

"combine the functions of the Ethics Commissioner and the Senate Ethics Officer and create a new position, the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner;"

I guess that means there will be a new position to fill.
I wonder if it'll be Shapiro?

Your daily Manning for Premier UPPERDATE

2006-04-11T10:32:00.000-06:00

The Globe has an interesting article about Manning drumming up support from the Alberta MPs. One line of thought regarding a possible Preston bid, is that he doesn't have the organization on the ground.
If the Federal Tories get involved, then this dynamic is totally changed.
I know for a fact that Diane Ablonczy is involved as she was the impetus for the Manning for Premier web-site that launched 4 days ago.

I'll be heading in to Ken Epp's office on my home from work today to volunteer my time if Ken gets on board the Manning train.

Who won the Afghanistan Debate?

2006-04-11T09:14:00.000-06:00

So we had the debate over Afghanistan last night. After all the hype it really seemed like a non-event. Every thing that needed to be covered was covered before hand. There was more debate over having a debate leading up to the debate than there actually was debate over Afghanistan in the debate.

I just wanted to see how many times I could say 'debate' in a sentence and still have the sentence be reasonably coherent. How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a wood chuck would chuck wood?

But who actually won? Because everyone always wants to know who the winner is.
And since I am a Blogging Tory, Kool-Aid Drinking Stephen Harper Apologist I have to do my best to show the Cons won. I'll state it out front, I don't think they did but they did reap some side benefits. I'll run this thing down group by group and try to rate them.

We'll start off with the Liberals. Bleh. Maybe I started off with them because I hate talking about them, maybe I started off with them because I have the least amount to say about them. They were losers simply by being non-factors and everyone scored points off them. It's the sad definition of their current existence and one I hope doesn't chaneg in the near future because frankly they scare me in a vampire-without-it's-head-cut-off kind of way. Not very many of them bothered to show because what could they say other than "we sent them, we support them and the mission".

Next we'll talk about Canadians. Did we win or lose? It wasn't about us. Get over it.

How about our soldiers? They got a few things out of the slap in the face if they choose to look on the bright side.
Number One, Stephen Harper wasn't there. A lot of people may look on that as a negative but the big guy said all he needed to say and was not in favour of a debate in the first place.
Number Two, O'Connor gave a pretty effective speech in support of the mission and the troops.
Number Three, 44 Cons left after the opening speech which pretty much sums up what the Cons think of the debate in the first place. Nice show and I hope the troops take that as it was meant.

The MSM? Judging by the all the covers at Norman's Spectator, the only war going on right now is between the Banditos and the Hells Angels. And today with the FAA being introduced it's pretty much a half day story.

Stephen Harper and the Conservatives take a small hit because they 'caved' in to pressure and held the debate after saying no for so long. On the other hand they can claim to flexible and listeners and not a minority governing like a majority. The aforementioned absence of Harper and the quick departure of the 44 Cons saves them a bit of face although it'll provide some small amount of ammunition for the NDP later, especially Harper's no-show.
But what did they gain? We'll never know but you bet some 'favour' or 'goodwill' was bought from the NDP.

And now we come to the clear winners of the debate that wasn't. The NDP.
They gained on two fronts where it counts the most for them, with the 'progressive' voters on the left and the 50% of Canadians who are not happy that we are 'over there'.

They can point to the very fact a debate was held as a victory over the CPC and a clear demonstration to progressives that the NDP is the party that gets things done.

They can point at the Liberals support of the mission in the House and the NDP's own successful evasion of the same, as evidence to progressives that they are the only party of peace in a world dominated by the aggressive and war-like Americans.

The whole exercise was the NDP siphoning of the Left from the Liberals while Harper and crew work on siphoning the Right. Harper held his nose and screwed over the Liberals again and the NDP came out of it smelling like a rose.

Now if only those Dippers were smart enough to have everyone at the debate it would have been a Grand Slam.

Small-c ways to increase Provincial treasuries

2006-04-10T13:52:00.000-06:00

It’s not very conservative to be talking about corporate taxation. Business, big and small, is what drives our economies and provides jobs. However, one can see why the NDP are always so interested in corporate money. After all, the individual taxpayer is all but tapped out, yet corporations are the great evil and they have all the money. So how do we, as small-c conservatives, get us some of that?

If you think about it, sports teams get corporate money all the time. We have 'Rexall Place' in Edmonton and there is the 'Air Canada Center' in Toronto, not to mention a whole raft of corporately sponsored arenas countrywide. There's the 'Tim Horton’s Briar' and the 'Scott Tournament of Hearts' in curling and the 'Telus Edmonton Open' in Canadian golf. It’s a model that works well. You trade advertising and name recognition for money. It’s time we applied this to the provinces as well. Let’s go out there and get corporate sponsorships.

Frankly, I’m surprised that Nova Scotia gets nothing from Scotia Bank. It’s shameful. Here they are, year after freakin’ year using the name of the province and what do Nova Scotians get out of it- nothing but the same high user fees as the rest of us. The province is missing out on an opportunity for a bit of cross-promotion at the expense of a very profitable bank. It wouldn’t be the same bank if it was called the Bank of the Atlantic.

New Brunswick could be sponsored by the billiards company or perhaps the bowling people. British Columbia could be making a lot of money doing work with the Columbia Brewing Co.

You could even charge a premium if you were willing to outright change the name of your province as I’m sure most people in Saskatchewan would probably love to do. I’d rather live in Regina, Potashcorp myself; it’d be much easier to spell.

Think of how much Bic would pay to market their lighters to all the smokers in the newly renamed QueBic?

Imagine driving east out of Manitoba and seeing the sign “This is OnStar-io, How can we help you?”

In spite of the awesome potential of this idea, I can see where it might run into a little trouble. Imagine the reaction from redneck Alberta when they try to rename the province after hair-care giant Alberto. Not to mention the uproar when they’d have to change all our postal codes to V05 Something Something Something.

All in all though, I’d move to Manitoblerone faster than I could spell c-h-o-c-o-l-a-t-e.

This poll says you should Run Preston Run

2006-04-10T08:34:00.000-06:00

Preston is meeting with a former Calgary alderman and a financial advisor today who will try and convince him to run for Ralph's job. CTV NewsNet and the Calgary Sun have more.

A current on-line poll at the Calgary Sun (and I've tried several times to link to the results but I can't) has the question of 'Would you like to see Preston Manning become premier of Alberta?' running at a near 50:50 split.

I'm interested to see what we're going to get out of this meeting. It's Alberta's current 'Box of Chocolates'.

UPDATE
Breaking News is that the meeting has been postponed till later this week so the Preston Premier Watch will just have to cool it's heels abit. The Globe article referenced, courtesy of CP, has quotes from Rick Anderson who says that Manning is trending positive with respect to running and is currently sitting at 50:50.

Franklin and crew must be rolling in those graves

2006-04-09T08:36:00.000-06:00

The Canadian Military, who I deeply respect, have renamed a smallish geographical feature of our country to bolster our claims to arctic sovereignty.

But couldn't we have picked a better name? The wonderfully romantic and historic name of The Northwest Passage has been renamed by the dreary and bleh Canadian Internal Waters. Full Story

Who thought this gem up. Two choices: Stephen Harper or Peter MacKay.
"Several members of the Northern Forces said the direction to omit references to "Northwest Passage" came down their chain of command from Foreign Affairs in January."

Maybe it was both of them? I like to think it went down like this.

"Peter, we need to protect our claim to the North, but no one thinks of it as ours."

"Why don't we change the name. And make it sound very Canadian."

(in shock) "Good idea Peter. But it'll have to be romantic and catchy to compete against 'The Northwest Passage'. It has such a storied and fabled history dating back centuries. It'll have to be something good."

"How about 'Scott Brison Strait'?"

(laughing) "You scamp you! It may just help him in the upcoming convention... but no. And don't let Zucker know we're doing this. He's still pissed that we didn't let him change the name of 'The Bay' to 'Stuff-Mart'."

"Well, let me think about it for a while... I'll try and remember to get back to you."

"Okay, but don't pick something asinine like 'Canadian Internal Waters'. That's what I call the contents of my bladder after 6 or 7 root beers."

"Don't worry! (leaves muttering to himself)
Not Canadian Internal Waters... not Canadian Internal Waters... not Canadian Internal Workers... not Canadian Auto Workers... not Buzz Hargrove... oh my Belinda!!!
Stop that! Stick to my knitting. Think up a new name for the Northwest Passage.
I got it! Canadian Internal Waters!"

The Grassroots are a-growin'

2006-04-08T09:22:00.000-06:00

Alberta grassroots are springing into spring with a Draft Preston movement that is beginning to show signs of being lawn-mower-proof. Sorry, too early in the morning for anything other than bad analogies run amok. I've decided to post the 'clippings' I've run across... groan. Just go.. read... I'll stop.

Yes I Support Preston was launched yesterday, requested by Diane Ablonczy and put together by Netmatrix Corp. Head on over and 'convince' Mr. Manning to run.

Something just in on the Bat-Phone

As well, for the truly interested, here are two stories behind the firewall at the Edmonton Journal. Sorry I said 'firewall' and 'Alberta' in the same post.

He's not chasing butterflies; 'he's got a plan'
Poll could spur Manning to run

The 'butterflies' story by Mike Sadava, a staff writer for the Edmonton Journal is very good. Near the end is a bit on the future of the Alberta Alliance that echoes my sentiments yesterday that a Manning-led PC party would signal the end of the Alliance.

Chandler predicted the Alberta Alliance party will die if Manning goes to into the premier's office, because the people who support the provincial party will move their support to Manning.
Paul Hinman, the sole Alliance MLA, insisted there would still be a need for the Alliance party. But he was disappointed that Manning could seek the Tory leadership. They came close to begging him to run for the Alliance, but he turned down the invitation.

Manning would unite the right in this province, and renew our direction that started becoming a little random under Ralph.

Update
I'll add whatever other Prston goodies I find here over the next day or so...
Preston on the environment and future of Alberta
Link to his PC Convention speech