Some interesting headlines
Jimmy K wants the big chair, however he might want to realize that between then and now there was this thing called an election. The current government (a conservative one) has no obligation to dither like last government (that would be the liberal one) .
16 days then as opposed to less than half the time now.
"Karygiannis said he believed Canadian victims of last year's South Asian tsunami
were treated differently than those fleeing Lebanon."
Would-be Liberal leaders promise less vulgarity, quotas to woo womenOne question answered is, we now know that some of the candidates would refuse to sign a nomination.....however they haven't said who gets to make that decision and which ridings this would apply to?
A
Liberal MP has intervened on behalf of a would-be assassin trying to get a visa to visit his native India.
"Dosanjh thought it would be inappropriate if he followed up, given that Atwal had been charged and acquitted of beating him with a metal pipe in 1985"
Gee, ya think?
The divide widens
For Harper the next election will be like
shooting fish in a barrel.
The split in Liberal ranks is reminiscent of a similar division that
plagued the party last spring over Harper's decision to extend the current
military mission in Afghanistan.
Can't wait to see their reply to this one
Warren Kinsella's (I'll admit a favorite blog) has issued the following email to all the liberal leadership candidates.
It peaked my interest in that this conflict in the middle east is being waged for the same reasons that we are in Afghanistan, the same mission Chretien sent the troops initially, the same mission that Martin increased our involvement in, and the same mission the liberals are so very, very, very divided on, that being the fight against global terrorism.
Warren writes
I am the media columnist for the National Post. I am writing to each of the Liberal leadership candidates to seek their views about the escalating conflict in the Middle East. I intend to argue in the column that the candidates' respective positions deserve more media coverage than they have been receiving. I intend to file the column no later than Tuesday evening. If your campaign/candidate has a brief comment to make, please send it to me at wkinsella (at sign)hotmail.com. Thank you for your attention to this matter and I look forward to hearing from you.
Warren Kinsella
I look forward to which ones respond and five years after 9-11 the liberals actually have this one thought out other than to say "Harper is too cozy with Bush".
Methinks Iggy is the only one that has a coherent opinion on the subject.
We shall see.
(this posting was edited to remove direct references to email addresses i.e: the @ symbol)
Update:
Warren has been contacted:
Yesterday's quest - to ascertain the Middle East-related positions of Liberal leadership candidates - continues apace. So far, I have received a statement and a phone call from Scott Brison; a phone call and statement to follow from Joe Volpe; an email and prepared statements from Bob Rae and Stephane Dion; and an email from Martha Hall Findlay that a statement is forthcoming. From the rest - Kennedy, Ignatieff, Bevilacqua, Dryden, Bennett and Fry - so far, nada. I'll keep you posted.
So far a statement from Brison, Rae and Dion, a promisary note from Martha, and diddly from the rest.
You would think that the people that aspire to someday be prime minister would have this thought out at least tentively to the point of not having to either respond with "I'll get back to you (after I see what the polls are saying)" or putting the "inkstained scribes" on ignore. I find Iggy's non-response revealing in that everybody is well aware that he has an opinion on the subject, and not responding seems to suggest that he may be experiencing regrets, or is second guessing himself. Neither are qualities that Trudeau was supposedly claimed to be known for, let alone Warren's hero Chretien.
They can't say they where never warned.
Toronto Star advocates for Quebec separation
Richard Gwyn
takes the side of the PQ.
It's also always been pretty clear that while Quebec would experience some considerable difficulties if it ever did separate, in the end it could make a go of things on its own.
Can you imagine the uproar, with the TORSTAR and the likes of Gywn, Travers and the rest of the Toronto illuminati leading the charge, if these words had been uttered by the Prime Minister? Perhaps thats the logic behind journalists asking leading questions like "Is Quebec a nation"?
Just for the record Mr Gwyn, I don't consider your statement "trite", I consider it inflamatory.
And they worry about this now?
Fruedian slip?
Some of the Liberals’ biggest headaches over the past couple of decades have
been rooted in the party’s trench warfare over rules and membership.
Claims of huge sign-ups this week from Joe Volpe’s leadership organization, for
instance, have re-awakened party angst about the role of “instant
Liberals.” As well, policy-driven people who want to change the world
are increasingly attracted to interest groups and away from political
parties, and Eizenga said the Liberals want to stop that erosion.
What person of reasonable intellegence keeps doing the same bad move over and over again?
I think thats referred to as insanity.
Eizinga a lawyer by trade should know several truisms about politics.
- There is no such thing as "off the record".
- Never telegraph your punches.
- Never reveal your weakness.
- Don't talk about taking action unless your prepared to take said action.
I've no doubt Mike wants to give the message that the liberal party really is learning from its mistakes. But if you let the scribes know in no uncertain terms that a) the bad stuff (insta-members) really was happening b) its still happening and c) they won't be doing anything about it till "some time after the convention" the message is that all that bad stuff is still going on and worse they really can't help themselves. He further enforces the message by revealing that the party is losing members to interest groups (read kook fringe) and they therefore don't have the numbers they once had. To get what I'm alluding to, the numbers game is very much in play here. The liberals are expected to have close to 5000 delegates attend the convention, they have as yet not revealed the number of memberships they where able to sell before the cutoff. My guess is that they are reluctant to release those numbers because its a "it bleeds it leads" kind of story. The media is always looking for a train wreck to report on, not making the same numbers as the last time is a perfect lead in to such a story. It looks even worse if they don't reach the 5000 delegates for the convention.
The commentary will go something like that they really lost a huge amount of support because they are not the governing party, and it suggests that maybe those numbers where not really there. The collorary being that some candidates might be inflating their numbers....another story the LPC surely doesn't want to see in the morning headlines. Frankly Mike openly musing that Volpe may be mass recruiting insta-members isn't that the story may come out, its that its only a matter of time.
My final point is that if the LPC doesn't find somebody with a pair that is willing to enforce not just the rules but the intent behind them, Stephen Harper will have no problem finding that majority. The insanity is that they see this but they won't do anything about it, and when your trying to convince a nation that you're still the "natural governing party" it just turns prospective members off. They see the problem, they know what to do about it, hell they even have a report from ten years ago telling them what to do, but still nobody in the party has the will to make it happen. Its like nobody in the liberal party has the courage to do what must be done, or they depend to heavily on the interest groups to keep themselves in business.
Its like they've been co-opted.
Puff piece on Martha Hall Findlay or airing the dirty laundry?
You decideFirst this
You can see the problem. There couldn't be two Liberal candidates in
Newmarket-Aurora, and Stronach ... well, let's just say she wanted to keep her
riding, if not her party.
What to do, what to do?
The official problem-solver was Karl Littler, senior aide in the PMO. He delivered the news to Hall Findlay that May evening at a Liberal reception at Reds. Or, as she
recalls: "Technically, Karl told my friend Liana Turrin who was with me, who
then took me aside (into the women's washroom, to be precise) to tell me that
`Belinda is crossing the floor.'
"It was pretty crowded and that was a more private place to absorb the news. I had just been introduced earlier by (then-cabinet member) Bill Graham to the crowd as one of `our key candidates' getting ready for what we felt was an imminent election, so you can imagine it was a tough message to deliver. Then, we went to dinner."
They went upstairs, where they were joined by party president Michael Eizenga, who remembers Littler telling him: "We may need somebody with soft hands." Hall
Findlay didn't need to be told what was coming: they asked her to step aside.
Stronach was the bride — rich, well-known, glamorous, daughter of auto-parts
magnate Frank, linked to Bill Clinton — and who was Hall Findlay but a
bridesmaid?
So Eizenga was in on the move too?
Then this
"With all due respect, the shit hit the fan," says Wallace. "I was shocked. I couldn't believe it. I wanted Martha to come out screaming and yelling and pulling out Belinda's hair and gouging her eyes out. A lot of people thought, `Well, okay, the Liberals will take care of Martha,' but they didn't. They just said, `Too bad.' I had a chance to sit down with Paul Martin after that and I had just one question for him. I asked him point-blank what they did for Martha Hall Findlay, and he said, `Nothing.'"
I'm no fan of the liberal party, but half of the article is full of good reason's why this woman deserves to be liberal leader, and none of them partisan.
The other half of the article describes very honestly what is wrong with the liberal party.
I now believe that if she became leader she would give as good as she gets.
Her only handicap would be the same as any other winner in the race for Stornoway, the inner circle of the liberal party would drag her down.
The internet shall set you free
A torstar columnist discovers a
paper tiger.Free China from communist dictatorship.
A liberal scandal from the past
When is the best time to offer an apology?
Usually ASAP.
Why should an apology be offered?
When one recognizes a wrong that they committed.
How should it be done?
It should be done in a manner that dosen't attempt to deflect blame or reassign some of it to those that had nothing to do with the wrong in question.
Why am I bringing this up?
Just this.Why do I take issue with the columnist?
Oh lets start with the obvious, here's a clue. Does the term "lest we forget" mean anything?
Secondly, Douglas Fisher has mistaken this scandal as being a canadian one, in the same fashion as Paul Martin did with Adscam, when in fact its a liberal one.
Thirdly, its because the zombies thought they could have their cake and eat it too, they should be the ones apologizing to the families of those that didn't return.
Say it with me...KING LIED, SOLDIERS DIED.
