Election 2011

[ModlrMike]

So, at least according to Nanos, the NDP's national numbers are still being buoyed by their Quebec effects. I think a Tory majority is still attainable as I'm not sure that the NDP support in Quebec will translate into enough seats. The other facet in support of that idea is the delta between Liberal, NDP and undecided voters. I maintain that outside of Quebec, there's sufficient Liberals jumping ship to allow the Torries to win some otherwise close seats. There's very few Tory/NDP contests, and where there are, those disaffected Liberals might slip right. Even rightward slippage in Lib/NDP contests can cause victory for a Tory. The other likely outcome is that the Parliament returns with the same left/right number of seats, with a different distribution on the left. For the Lib/NDP to have any credible option at government, they have to come up with 40 or more seats in order to exclude the Bloc from the party. I just don't see that happening.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

It isn't necessary for the CPC to take a step to the left; the LPC and BQ already provide that service to the NDP.  It would be unwise for the CPC to take that step; it is a battleground of Layton's choosing and both Dion and Ignatieff were suckered into a prepared KZ.  All that remains is the pursuit.

Dion, especially, forgot two things: to never take what your enemy offers, and that the NDP is not the LPC's friend.  Ignatieff's latest remarks show a disinclination to surrender and a realization that the NDP is not a safe haven.  It would have been interesting to see Bob Rae in Ignatieff's position now.

The most useful likely outcome of this election will be to render the BQ impotent, or at least significantly weaker as a bargaining partner in Parliament.  If the LPC prolongs its foolishness, it will surrender to the NDP - that bridge has been prepared, and now some pundits are giving voice to the "opinion pieces" intended to provide the push.  If the LPC comes to its senses, it will temporarily become a vassal of the CPC in Parliament while rebuilding its centrist core and pruning the left-leaning branches.  The latter should include Bob Rae.

Anyone want to bet how long it is before Bob Rae and Ujjal Dosanjh, both ex NDP Provincial Premiers, dust off their orange blazers and become the bridgework between the deceminated libs and the Opposition NDP?

'C'mon guys, were all really socialist brothers fighting for the same thing, aren't we? Why can't everyone just get along and take out that evil Stephen Harper. We're sure we can come to some sort of merger arrangement condusive to both our parties. After all, Ujjal and I have always been firmly in both camps and can change stripes again if it will give us more power and influence'

Or maybe something like that ;D

And while I have my tinfoil hat on, Bob Rae is connected to Power Corporation, Jack Layton is not. 8)

 

[vonGarvin]

The following is from the CBC Website, and I think it illustrates how serious the NDP are as a party:

Just as the NDP appears to be doing well in the national election campaign, two local candidates have yet to attend any all-candidates debates.
The NDP candidate for Carleton-Mississippi Mills, Erin Peters, has been keeping a low profile, as has Martine Cenatus, of Ottawa Orleans.
A spokesman for the party said the decision whether to campaign is left up to the individual candidate.
Cenatus said she hasn't been able to get any time off work to campaign, even though she works for the party itself as a fundraiser.
"If I would have decided earlier to run in the campaign, then other arrangements would have had to be made to take care of my responsibilities here in the office," she said.
Cenatus was recruited as a candidate just two months ago.
The 21-year-old candidate hasn't been campaigning, debating or doing interviews.
A recent Carleton graduate, Cenatus said she wasn't really trained in how to run a campaign.
"I haven't had any training per se as to how to be a candidate, nor do I think that there is a way of training a person as to be a candidate. Really, what it is is you have to stand up for yourself to spread the word and get other people to stand up with you," she said.
Customers in an Orleans coffee shop Wednesday said they had never heard of Cenatus.
She has a few days left to try to correct that situation.
In the Quebec riding of Berthier-Maskinonge, NDP candidate Ruth Ellen Brosseau took this laid-back approach to campaigning even further. She's on vacation in Las Vegas from her job as a bartender at Carleton University in Ottawa.An NDP spokesman said these ridings are perfect places for young candidates to "cut their teeth" in politics because the NDP isn't expected to win there.

But the NDP can point to both candidates and say "Look!  We have xxx women running for parliament!  We care!  Ms. Cenatus is a "woman of colour", highlighting our concern for blah blah and Ms. Brosseau is conducting research for the party abroad

If either of these women get a single vote, in spite of not campaigning, it's a slap in the face to democracy.  And "smiling Jack" Layton will happily point to their genders, and not their actions, as a clear demonstration of his party's progressive and equitable nature.

 

[observor 69]

Let's have Rick Mercer cover the next election with ths kind of great writing.

Is Stephen Harper a hologram?
Rick Mercer on what he learned on the campaign trail with the party leaders

by Rick Mercer on Thursday, April 28, 2011 11:30am -

Grown men all over North America pay big money for the privilege of riding on a horse, sleeping on the ground and spending 12 hours a day driving cattle down a dusty trail with actual cowboys. For me, going out on the campaign trail, riding on the planes and following the leaders is pretty much the same thing. This wasn’t so much an assignment as it was a trip to a dude ranch. Some men want to strap on leather chaps and breathe in the aroma of cow dung; I want to slap on a press pass and breathe the same air as Harper, Iggy and Jack.

To get a seat on those planes is not an easy proposition. The Conservative party charges media organizations $50,000 for a seat. In return you get fed and watered—after that, all bets are off. There is no guarantee you get to ask a question, just the guarantee you won’t.

My week at the dude ranch started with the big gun: Team Harper. I met up with them in Rivière-du-Loup, Que., rode the bus to Edmundston, N.B., flew to Fredericton, crossed the pond to Conception Bay South, Nfld., back to Sydney, N.S., and then on to the Nation’s Capital.


In hindsight, I spent too much time with the front-runner. To get a feel for the Harper campaign you only need a few hours. The differences from one event to the other are minuscule. In English Canada they start each event by singing “O Canada,” and Stephen Harper tells the crowd he’s proud to lead a party that starts every event this way no matter where they are in the country. In Quebec they skip this part and they hide the Canadian flags in the plane. Barring this nationalism of convenience, if you have seen one Harper event you have seen them all. The Harper campaign is far and away the most disciplined, the most professional and the most scripted. Every word is on a teleprompter, it is delivered in exactly the same way, and the Prime Minister does something I have, in a lifetime of watching live performers onstage, never seen before: he actually stops and sips his water in the same spot every time. Nothing is left to chance. Either that or he is a hologram on a loop.

My first Harper campaign event in Quebec was held in a senior citizens’ home, what we in show businesses call a captive audience. No vote mobs here.

Politics is a dirty racket, and certainly all politicians on occasion must do things they find personally distasteful, but I would like to think that most of them would draw the line at scaring old ladies. No such luck on this tour.

Continued at link

http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/04/28/is-stephen-harper-a-hologram/

 

[dapaterson]

TV asserts that voting for certain candidates is an affront to democracy.

To the contrary:  Democracy means people make their choice.  Those choices can be well-informed or ill-informed.  People can vote for an individual to represent them; they can vote for the party they like best nationally; they can use a random number generator to determine which box to put an X in.

If they choose to vote for Bloggins, the incumbent who rarely shows up in the House, so be it.  If they vote for Jones, the challenger who's on a gambling binge in Atlantic City instead of campaigning, so be it.  If they vote for Smith, who moonlights as a bus driver for senior Bingo runs, so be it.


Democracy isn't pretty.  It's about letting people make choices - choices we may disagree with, for reasons we may disagree with, but respecting their right to make their own choice.

 

[Scott]

CAUTION​

This web site will be a "news portal" on election night - rather like the TV networks. They, the TV networks and, for example, the newspaper web sites, are forbidden by law from broadcasting results until the polls close in BC. Those "news portals" that break the rules are subject to criminal charges and large fines.

I ask all members to help Mike Bobbitt by obeying the law on 2 May 11 and keeping election results secret until the polls are closed in BC.

Thanks, in advance.

You were listening to Q this morning as well, Edward?

Very frustrating to listen to, IMO. Anyway.

All, please heed Edward's words and abide by the law. You'll be a great help to the Staff here if you report any posts that appear to contravene the rules as they stand. You can agree with them or you can call them draconian, either way we ask your cooperation

Thanks
The Staff

 

[vonGarvin]

TV asserts that voting for certain candidates is an affront to democracy.

To the contrary:  Democracy means people make their choice.  Those choices can be well-informed or ill-informed.  People can vote for an individual to represent them; they can vote for the party they like best nationally; they can use a random number generator to determine which box to put an X in.

If they choose to vote for Bloggins, the incumbent who rarely shows up in the House, so be it.  If they vote for Jones, the challenger who's on a gambling binge in Atlantic City instead of campaigning, so be it.  If they vote for Smith, who moonlights as a bus driver for senior Bingo runs, so be it.


Democracy isn't pretty.  It's about letting people make choices - choices we may disagree with, for reasons we may disagree with, but respecting their right to make their own choice.

Choice.  It is indeed about choice.  Running an empty beer can as your candidate would get the same choice.  If a party puts in someone who couldn't even be bothered, just imagine how well that riding would be represented in Parliament.  THAT is an affront to democracy, and I stand by it.

 

[ModlrMike]

When is the last poll released? Is it Saturday or Friday?

 

[dapaterson]

When is the last poll released? Is it Saturday or Friday?

Monday night

 

[vonGarvin]

Monday night

You beat me to it

(And as a reminder, not to be shared on Army.Ca until the last polls close across the Country)

 

[Infanteer]

Running an empty beer can as your candidate would get the same choice.

That would be something new, as the beer can has value due to the return deposit....

 

[vonGarvin]

That would be something new, as the beer can has value due to the return deposit....

:rofl:

 

[Rifleman62]

Had a dental this afternoon. My 20 something dental tech/hygienist and her friends are going to vote Green as Harper is going to privatize health care.

She is a sassy blonde, and I do live in BC.

 

[Haletown]

The question I have  is about the distribution of the Orange wave in Quebec.  I have a feeling it is highly skewed into the major urban areas and very under represented elsewhere - and elsewhere is where their are a lot of seats.

That plus the election day ground game being a very strong  Bloc strength and a very major NDP fault I think will result in a lot fewer NDP Quebec seats than a lot of media hype/headlines are predicting.

Just a gut feeling . . . .  I'm still hoping that the Left-Centre/NDP-Liberal vote split will yield enough  CPC up the middle victories to yield a Conservative majority  victory.


But ya never know when voting hysteria hits hard . . . I can remember Trudeaumania.

Monday will be an entertaining day.

 

[Dennis Ruhl]

Had a dental this afternoon. My 20 something dental tech/hygienist and her friends are going to vote Green as Harper is going to privatize health care.

She is a sassy blonde, and I do live in BC.

So the guns in the streets don't bother her?

I am not sure how Harper could privatize health care as the federal government doesn't actually have a health care program for other than employees and natives.  Provincial responsibility.

Why would the Conservatives stop health care?  They started it with the 1957 Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act.  9 years later the Liberals added a free trip to the doctor for the sniffles and everyone thinks they invented it.

http://www.socialpolicy.ca/cush/m7/m7-t2.stm

In 1957, federal legislation called the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act was passed in which the federal government agreed to finance 50 per cent of the cost of provincial hospital care.

 

[Good2Golf]

Well, you know academics.  Waving those red pens in the air; making idle, incoherent chatter that masquerades as first-year courses; threatening to leave your publication off their reading lists... the atmosphere is pure poison.

...I don't even need a smilie for this one...



;D

 

[Rifleman62]

She is a sassy blonde, and I do live in BC.

The quote above explains her thought process.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Shared in accordance with fair dealings from the Toronto Star:  www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/982133--layton-blames-harper-for-high-gas-prices

Layton blames Harper for high gas prices

YELLOWKNIFE, N.W.T.—Jack Layton says regulating gas prices could be a way to lower the price at the pumps if competition laws and other oversight measures fail to do the job.

“Our first step would be to establish the ombudsman and use the competition laws to go after collusion in the industry,” the New Democrat leader told reporters in Yellowknife on Thursday when asked directly if his government would regulate gas prices. “If that doesn’t work, then we’re clearly going to have to look at further measures.”

Layton was responding to criticism from Jack Mintz—the economist oft-quoted by Conservative Leader Stephen Harper as justification for his tax policies—that the cap-and-trade system the NDP proposed to cover the cost of $3.5 billion worth of green initiatives in the first year would raise gasoline prices by 10 cents per litre.

The Conservative war room circulated the analysis to the media throughout the day and even Harper mentioned it Thursday while going after Layton—warning of destruction if he leads the country—at a small rally in Niagara Falls, Ont.

Layton responded by saying gas prices are already too high and said Harper is to blame for some of it because his government subsidized big oil companies and helped to bring the harmonized sales tax to Ontario, which increased the price of gasoline by eight per cent last summer.

“These gas companies are gouging Canadians right now,” said Layton. “I don’t accept this analysis that is being offered, that the big polluters should suddenly be justified to raise prices . . . If you look at their own books, they are already booking the cost of a cap-and-trade system and they’re dealing with it elsewhere.”

The Nova Scotia government began regulating gas prices in 2006 under pressure from the provincial NDP, when it was in opposition, and Layton said his party has discussed it before and remains open to the idea.

Layton said he will start with an ombudsman and see how that goes.

“I think with an ombudsman’s office exposing what is going on, raising those serious questions, perhaps suggesting regulatory or legislative changes through that ongoing scrutiny,” Layton said.

Layton dismissed the suggestion that an ombudsman would have a hard time controlling the oil companies.

“It can be a very powerful position,” Layton said. “It can expose where companies are working in collusion of one sort or another. It can raise public awareness and public pressure on these very companies. Remember: they’re out there trying to get customers and right now they seem to have carte blanche to raise the prices.

“On one corner it goes up, it goes up on the next corner, a competing company — just like that — as though they were talking to each other on the phone and I think a lot of people, rightly, suspect that there is something wrong in this process and they want a government that can stand up for them,” said Layton, saying Harper always leaves it up to the provinces. “He is abandoning any leadership on the issue.”


Jesus wept. There is so much wrong with this that it is hard to know where to even start. This man is a few steps from 24 Sussex Drive and this is his grasp of economics?  If he ever makes PM, Jack Layton will make Trudeau look like a Conservative.

Jack- let me ask you this- how are you going to compel the Oil companies to refine and sell product at a loss in Canada, when they can ship it to the US (or China or Japan or Europe or...) and sell it for a profit?  Are you prepared to nationalize the oil industry?

Ask PEI how they made out regulating gas prices a few years back.  That last a week before the oil companies stopped shipping to PEI.  Morons.

 

[a_majoor]

The Liberals are throwing everything out the door in a last push. (I keep seeing the staff conference in Downfall; the one that is constantly spoofed, in my mind)

I wanted to show my wife the "Canada is, and always has been, our country" ad, but was not at the computer. I borrowed her laptop and typed "Conservative Party of Canada" in the search bar of Google; it came up SECOND(?!) after the Liberal Party of Canada...

This is either Google bombing, manipulating page ranking or a big, fat cheque to place the LPC as the top choice. (I notice it didn't happen just now when I tried to replicate it, so I will put it down to some sort of manipulation like Google bombing).

 

[Rifleman62]

Jack knows what he says re gas price "controls' will resonate with the I'm alright Jack Canadians.

I will repeat two posts:

The Cdn media had a big role in this possible mess. Relentlessly demonizing Harper at every opportunity, ignoring the NDP policies other than the occasional feel good pieces about Jack, pushing Iggy.

The lack of ethics, professionalism, and untruths. Well, now it is going to possibly come back and bite Canada on the ***. A bunch of nobodys.

[size=14pt]Stupid [/size]people in my Condo don't like Harper's eyes!!!!!

and

Had a dental this afternoon. My 20 something dental tech/hygienist and her friends are going to vote Green as Harper is going to privatize health care.

She is a sassy blonde, and I do live in BC.

These people are voting!

It is like firing the owner (boss) of a successful business and replacing him/her with a union member who never ran anything.