They only hear what they want to
So in a few days the liberals pick their new leader.
Just a couple of thoughts on "leaked memos" and anonymous non-quotes from "unnamed sources" that make the claim that there is one candidate the conservatives fear most.
You might want to re-read those non-quotes again. There is no fear.
Its that out of all the candidates, not one would beat Harper in an election than the others, but still not win. All scenarios lead to one conclusion, if the liberals could win an election it would only be a slim minority, and for liberals a minority is not a win.
Best that the liberals can hope for is to hang on to official oppostion. I can vouch for conservatives when I say they're not afraid to go into an election against any of the liberal contenders.
All their gods have feet of clay.
"Its a quarter to three"
"and no one in the place...cept you and me"
Thats how the words to that old blue eyes ditty goes anyway.
I was a bit disappointed over the results in LNC and the liberal winning the riding.
Ah well, they hate us and they don't want us to win.
However it does have some silver linings.
Pearson can't run in London-Fanshawe now.
The next election will be in the spring before Glen even gets his boxes unpacked in Ottawa.
Dion, who Pearson supports for the leadership, isn't likely to win and Iggy is. Sorry Glen no front bench for you.
(strike one on this prediction, however I didn't see Glen's face on the front bench)The nation issue isn't over for the liberals, that nasty little motion is coming to the floor of the plenary session and the only way the liberals can stop looking like they are leading the parade is to actually get out in front and (how is that Hebert explains it) put some meat on the constitutional bones.
(sort of a foul line ball, they managed to keep the motion off the floor, but expect that after Kennedy mkaing a deal with Dion the payback is a safe seat in TO to run in, and if Gerry can get a seat in the house you can bet this issue will be a potential wedge between MP's that voted for it Dion and those that voted against Kennedy, Trudeau, et al)I expect that Pearson will be flogging his pet project (slave redemption) once he gets to Ottawa. What he better hope is that someone doesn't write a nasty expose of how badly that program has been managed, and the fact that the monies being used for slave redemption is used to fund the same militias that are terrorizing the people of Darfur.
Ah well, such is life you win some, you lose some.
There will be another election another day.
Conservative moment of the week Nov 22 2006
So every talking head is going full drill with Harper's motion tabled in the house and a great many are exclaiming how it historic in that it recognizes Quebec's distinctiveness.
Good for them I say, and keep blowing the sanctimonious horn as long as you like.
As ususal they missed the big picture and are not listening to what Harper has said.
Whether Quebers call themselves nationalist, distinct, special, is moot.
The meat of the motion is that it makes it unequivicably clear what Quebec's definition of "nation" does not mean. Harper has as usual thought ahead to where the constitutional game inevitably leads.
Its like a poker game, not a crap shoot.
The players have to determine when to hold and when to fold, but the outset is always the same. Each player places their bid as a dare to the other players to reveal how sure of the cards they hold. Essentially its calling the other players bluff.
The liberals sloppily left this opening for Harper when its Quebec wing pushed for a recognition of Quebec as a nation in the constitution, but then the rest of the party tried to recall the "bet" by letting everyone know they didn't want to go as far as revising the constitution. The equivilent of a player advertising that for the last few games of constitutional poker, they've been "rolling the dice" all along.
With Harpers motion he's basically left the other players to decide if they want to fold or up the ante. For the Bloc they now have to state clearly and unambigously they are not working for anything but full independance, so put away the knife you've held to Canada's throat for so long or use it...by the way did we mention this was a gun fight.
For the liberals its either they offer to go the to a constitutional recognition or they get behind the guy they have spent the last few years demonizing as bad for Canada (remember solders in the streets). The real stickler for them is that their Quebec resolution (which still talks about constitutional "officializing") is going to be voted on and if it gets accepted the only guy that comes out smelling like a rose is Iggy, and the goat will be Dion. They got stuck with a choice of either making the bluff that the party will be offering constitutional ammendments to the Quebec wing, and if they don't they can kiss that support goodbye.
Again so that nobody misses the point of Harper's motion.
Everyone was running for decades (even Trudeau) trying to figure out what it was Quebec wanted to satisfy its desires. Harper has made it clear that it was never up to Canada to tell Quebec why it should remain part of the country, its up to the separtists to prove they have a case, that effectively is calling their bluff.
Liberal party is in a "crisis"
Oh dear me.
Graham summons contenders to discuss QuebecInterim Liberal leader Bill Graham has summoned all eight party leadership
contenders to an emergency meeting Thursday morning to find a way out of the
crisis over whether the party should recognize Quebec as a nation, sources
say.
The week thus far
Lets recount some history shalll we.
In 2002 Chretien signed the Kyoto protocol putting our Nation on the hook without so much as a national blueprint to achieve same. Teh task to come up with an actual action plan fell to Bucky Dither's and he and Stephane Dion cobbled something together on the eve of the last election. That plan consisted of having Rick Mercer flog liberal policy and spending billions on information sheets, but still no way of acheiving anything more than a talking point and trying to maintain the moral highground on the enviroment (conservatives after all being detrimental to the enviroment per liberal policy).
When Harper's government produced a clean air act it made something quite evident to the writer. The conservative plan was less about words and more about common sense. Or put another way, less about UN meetings about dubious scientific research and more about cutting pollution. Of course the disciples of the Kyoto protocol will scream and snarl, but the point is that no one has yet provided proof that there is a connection to hunamkind and so-called global warming. Even more obvious is the fact that not one of the proponents can explain global warming in 300 words or less. Case in point, Al Gore needs to produce an hour long movie with lots of scary pictures and graphics so that people see a threat....however, short of scaring the viewer nobody comes away with anything other than its all George Bushes fault.
The big flaw in the Kyoto gangs claim is that they differentiate between pollution (which can be seen) and the green house gases (which is a generic list of naturally occuring substances rated on extrapolated data..but you can't see them, and its all mankinds fault).
This gets further debunked when you consider the "drastic measures" that our Nation Canada would have to take to achieve the targets Chretien obligated us to because of his despirate need for a legacy other than being the man behind Adscam.
Park your car, freeze in the dark, and don't worry about going to work cause there isn't any electricty to operate with. With the grid shutdown, don't bother about getting sick cause without power the hospitals can't operate either. The only choice would be to join the exodus going to the USA where they refused to cater to the Euro-socialists and third world banana republics.
But I digress.
Earlier in the week when the entourage left for Africa, the media couldn't report enough times about how Rona was going to be shadowed by some opposition MP's intent on embarrassing her on the world stage. Imagine their surprise when Ms. Ambrose cut them a new one by letting the international community understand Canada's position that a)the targets a previous government agreed to where bought into sight unseen b) they cannot reasonably be achieved and c) the goal may be noble so we don't think it should be abandoned lets think outside the box.
The UN reacted predictably so no biggie. But the the push back came with Rona's 5 minute speech. Those so eager to embarrass her on the world stage (liberal MP's) basically got a taste of their own medicine and they think its unfair.
Too bad they hold that double standard so tightly, the citizens of the Nation of Canada see our version of Maggie Thatcher stick it to the kook fringe and they like it.
Now over to the APEC summit.
Harper gets "snubbed" by the Chinese because we are told by the hyperventillating media that the Chinese cancelled a meeting at the last minute (forgetting to mention of course it was the Chinese that wanted the meeting in the first place). That of course was the cue to bring in the liberal pundits and Harper haters decrying this action as bad for business and "woah is me the sky is falling" prognositcations that relations with China are at an all time low and its all Harper's fault.
Ahem
Imagine the back tracking and rewriting that is taking place this very AM after we hear that the one on one chinwag is back on again. Seems the Chinese had second thoughts after it was becomeing evident that refusing a meeting because they didn't want to talk about human rights issues would only give a big soapbox to the various groups like amnesty international.
The beauty of this is that the liberals long the party claiming the ground of the party of the charter (human rights don'tcha know) must now ceed some of that ground to Harper.
Schedenfreud.
And what of Garth?
The big news he had? The disturbing revelation? The one he ramped up the media prior to releasing?
He was tearing up his CPC memebership because the CPC didn't want him as a member anymore.
Note to Garth, don't telegraph your punches, now go sit in the corner with Bucky Dither's.
And what of the London by-election?
Seems that with only two and a half weeks to go there could be the makings of a civil war in the newsroom of the London Free Press as factions are being drawn between the liberal candidate (whose wife is a Free Press reporter) and the NDP candidate (whose husband is also a reporter at same venue).
The icing on the cake?
The liberals are scrambling to avoid a "trainwreck" which could destroy the LPC over the motion to declare Quebec a nation in the constitution. It seems that in the rush to pander to sepera... sorry "soft-nationalists" in Quebec and bring them into the fold they didn't think that doing so did not have an excape clause. What the irony is, is that this scenario took two mandates to bring down Mulroney's government, with the liberals its only going to take less than a year.
And they call the NDP "liberals in a hurry".
Gives more credance to the statement (especially since Bob Rae is in the race for Stornoway) that liberals are socialists that can't make up their mind.
All in all its been a good week for Stephen Harper. The nation is strong on the world stage once again and the liberals are in disarray and its drinving them to distraction.
Sucks to be them.
Bob see's religion..almost
If Bob Rae is now convinced he's seen the light on fiscal responsibilty, why has his campaign run up a debt load of close to one million dollars?
News flash: Baw Brae runs up camapign deficit
Bob Rae says
he's learned to be fiscally responsible.
"The lifelong New Democrat, who rang up a resume deficit as Ontario premier that should have banished him from politics forever, has successfully converted to become inside Ottawa's best bet for the Liberal title on Dec. 2."
The facts say otherwise.
"
Bob Rae's Liberal leadership bid has built up a $705,000 debt to give it a financial edge over other campaigns, new financial-disclosure documents reveal.The money all comes from within the family, including
$580,000 in loans from Mr. Rae's brother, Power Corp. executive and former Jean Chretien campaign manager John Rae. The campaign also borrowed $125,000 from the candidate himself."
Can yo uimagine what this guy would do with the federal treasury?
Yikes!!!
We have our moments
The liberal moment of the week“Folks this is not helping. We need to dial down the rhetoric.”
No, its not a God complex, I was born to greatness"And when you look at it, I won the birth lottery. I got to be born to Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Margaret Sinclair”
Conservative moment of the week"He's a grinder and a mucker and he'll be there to the end,"
There are two types of individuals in the liberal party of canada
One is the typical power at all costs liberal. Iggy is an example of that and would best represent that type.
The other to varying degrees, are the ones that still believe in power at all costs but stop short on only one issue.
That issue is the memory of Trudeau.
Any attempts to denigrate that memory or lessen the legacy will be dealt with desicively and without remorse. November 6, 2006 - Chantal Hebert is a pro-Meech, pro-distinct-society
nationalist. Everyone in Ottawa knows that. She is forgiven that venal sin
because - unlike a lot of male writers, this one included - she keeps her cool.
You might not always agree with her, but she has an ability to dispassionately
dissect politics. She also treats her readers with respect. That's why I found this paragraph, at the tail end of her columnizing today, so
appalling:
"But when Justin Trudeau - who has yet to see electoral political
action - chimed in recently to say that his late father would have rejected the
Quebec resolution, that view was afforded front-page billing in many media
quarters, including the Star. A party that takes its instructions from the grave
on Quebec rather than seek inspiration in the collective experience of the
living should not be surprised to find itself dead in the water in that
province."
Wow. "A party that takes its instructions from the grave." In one
subclause, Hebert condescendingly writes off history, past learning, and the
hoary old Atkinson Principles to which her newspaper claims to be attached. If
it isn't happening right now, Hebert doesn't want to hear about it. (Unless, one
presumes, she agrees with it, in which case history again has merit.) As I say,
in a lot of other writers, such solipsism wouldn't merit comment. For her, it
comes off sounding pretty cheap.
Those candidates on what is considered the left, are crowding that field.
None of the candidates for leader dare to publically touch that third rail, with the exception of Iggy. Even when he does he makes a point of trying to reclaim his bonifides by reminding everyone that he was a delegate for Trudeau many years ago.
Now here's the rub. If some minor blogger can figure this out, I've no doubt that those that compile election strategies have as well.
I'm going to be passing this info along to other conservatives
Dion will win says Toronto Star
Ooh look its a
push poll.
