On election day…
The main reason being Dion of course.But if you need more convincing,why risk the possibility of death ?
For Dion,for the Liberals ? nawwww not worth the risk…
So stay home and take one on the chin for the good of all Canadians.
No worries Jack Layton & the NDP have things covered on the home front.
T-minus 14 days until the only poll that counts
And this is only a humble blog.
My attempt at expressing my views and thoughts on the issues of the day,particularly those issues related to Canada and her well being.
I would never ever post anything here and claim at as my own,I sure as hell would not read said piece out loud and accept applause/credit.
My self respect would just not allow me to behave in such a self serving manner.
But then I am not Prime Minister Steven Harper.
No wonder so many politician say one thing one day,then the opposite the next.
After all, when the words coming out of one’s mouth are not one’s own…
It must be difficult not only to keep track of “ones” word’s,but what it is,that one actually stands for.
Other than wanting power that is…
T-minus 14 days until the only poll that counts
After reading this blog post I think it appropriate I post the following piece by Kelly Nestruck [ first posted Dec 22/2005 ]…
An Actual Conversation That Took Place Between Me and an Intelligent Torontonian who Lives in Cabbagetown This Evening.
Scene: A downtown bar.
Actual Torontonian: I’m not a Liberal supporter.
Me: But you’re going to vote for the Liberals?
AT: Yes. The Conservatives are scary.
Me: But in your riding it’s a race between the Liberal and NDP candidate. Like everywhere else in Toronto.
AT: Yes.
Me: This is one of the few elections where you can vote NDP and have them really wield power, either in a Liberal or Conservative minority government.
AT: A Conservative minority is scary!
Me: I’m kind of rooting for a Conservative minority with the NDP holding the balance of power, actually.
AT: You’re rooting for a Conservative minority!?! Oh that’s right, I forgot. You work at the National Post.
Me: Dude, like, in the Arts section. I write about theatre. I think it’s important for the Liberals to have time in the wilderness, you know. Come up with someone to replace Paul Martin.
AT: So you want Prime Minister Stephen Harper!?! Scary! He wants to turn the entire country into Alberta. The Conservatives are like the Republican Party of Canada!
Me: I wouldn’t say that. They’ve moved pretty close to the centre. Truthfully, they’re closer to the Democratic Party of the North.
AT: Scary!
Me: You find the Democrats scary?
AT: Yes!
Me: So, both the Republicans and the Democrats are scary?
AT: Yes!
Me: You don’t find the Paul Martin Liberals scary, then? PM PM waffled on Iraq, he’s tried to pretend like the Chaoulli decision never happened and has allowed private healthcare to proliferate, he wants to enact those corporate tax cuts AND increase spending a la George Texas-sized-Deficit Bush…
AT: The Liberals are the lesser of two evils.
Me: But the Liberals have behaved corruptly. There was an elaborate kickback scheme going on in Quebec.
AT: Yeah, corruption happens. It’s not nearly as bad as what happens in the United States.
Me: I hate that kind of casual anti-Americanism.
AT: That’s not anti-American! It’s anti-Republican. If the Conservatives get in, the country could break up!
Me: But support for sovereignty in Quebec has increased under Paul Martin…
AT: It’s because Alberta won’t share its oil revenues!
Me: Okay, whatever. Look: Just admit you’re a Liberal. It’s fine. You can vote Liberal, if you want. I’m cool with that. Some of my best friends vote Liberal.
AT: I’m not a Liberal supporter!
Me: You’re just going to vote Liberal.
AT: Yes.
Me: In Cabbagetown. Because you’re scared of the Conservatives.
AT: Yes.
Me: Waiter!
AT: Waiters are scary!
Note: I may have embellished some of this. But the word ‘scary’ was used frequently… just like in the newspapers!
Posted by J. Kelly at 2:38 AM
Strategic voting is not a strategy,it’s wishful thinking.
First it assumes…
every voter has perfect knowledge of what is happening in the election, in general, and in their riding, in particular. That’s a tall order. Most voters, unfortunately, simply don’t or can’t take the time to gain “perfect” knowledge.
Secondly Liberals do not vote strategically they vote Liberal…
The Liberals have been doing everything they can to mislead voters about strategic voting. A key example is the riding of Oshawa. In the 2004 election, NDP candidate Sid Ryan came in second place by less than one per cent to his Conservative challenger. You would think the Oshawa Liberals would strategically vote for Sid Ryan to turf the Conservative candidate. Instead, the Liberals have been falsely claiming that a vote for Sid Ryan and the NDP was a wasted vote, even though the Liberals came in only third place. The Liberals have been using these kinds of arguments to mislead progressive voters in many ridings across the country where the NDP has the best chance to defeat a Tory.
Thirdly it does not work…
History has shown that strategic voting has never helped Liberals vote out Conservative incumbents. In the 1999 Ontario election, many New Democrats voted Liberal to get rid of the Tories. What happened? The Tories were re-elected. Mike Harris’ re-election was based on his personal popularity and Ontario Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty’s poor leadership skills. Even if the NDP didn’t exist in Ontario, the Liberals would still have lost the election.
Further more…
Voting NDP is not a wasted vote, but an investment in your country’s future. A strong NDP presence in parliament, can keep the government in check.
T-minus 15 days until the only poll that counts
Who can remember,if ever,when the NDP was in as favorable a position as it is now.
If any time was ripe for NDP supporters to turf all talk of strategic voting that time is now.
To waste ones votes,would be tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Strike while the striking is good…
I looked up the 2007 paper “Strategic Voting in Canada: A Cross Time Analysis,” by the political science professors Jennifer L. Merolla, of Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, and Laura B. Stephenson, of University of Western Ontario, from the journal Electoral Studies.Merollo and Stephenson look at how many voters voting cast a ballot for someone other than the candidate of the party and leader to whom they feel most attracted. They relied on data from the Canadian Elections Study surveys, which employed what’s called a “feeling thermometer,” asking respondents how warmly they felt toward the various parties and leaders.
The proportion of Canadians who intended to not to vote for the party and leader they felt most warmly about was pegged at 13.3 per cent in 1988, 10.7 per cent in 1993, 15.5 per cent in 1997, and 13.3 per cent in 2000.
That’s a pretty big chunk of the electorate voting head rather than heart. Obviously, the Liberals, who aren’t generating a lot of warm feelings just now, will want to push that number up in the stretch run of this campaign.
To do so they’ll need to shore up the rapidly eroding perception that this is mainly a Tory-Liberal contest.
Here’s why. Strategic voting is far more prevalent among those who believe their first preference has a less chance of winning than their second preference. It’s not surprising: if your instinct is to like the NDP best, Liberals second, and Tories third, you’re more likely to vote Liberal if you don’t think the NDP stands much chance of winning.
So, based on the voters’ own predictions (again from the survey) of what percentage of the vote they thought the various parties would get, how many planned—if they didn’t think their first choice was really in the race—to vote for their second choice?
In these cases, Merollo and Stephenson report the percentage of those who didn’t intend to vote for the party they liked best was much higher: 34.3 per cent in 1988, 24.5 per cent in 1993, 26.2 per cent in 1997, and 34.8 per cent in 2000.
When the real race is between your second and third preferences, then you’re likely to drop your first preference and go with second best. But if your first and second choices look to be about equally likely to knock off your third choice, why not just stick with your first choice? Get it?
It basically means that among left-of-centre voters, the key is for the NDP is to limit strategic voting by emphasizing the rather novel—but, according to polls, increasingly plausible—notion that Layton stands as good a chance as Dion of preventing Tories from winning.
The way I read these numbers: a sizable minority of voters (maybe somewhere in the low teens) are willing to pass over the party and leader they feel most warmly about, and an even more sizeable minority (maybe a whopping third of voters) are willing to do so if the strategic case for doing so is compelling.
Read “Warm feelings,strategic voting” and “Strategic Voting”
T-minus 16 days until the only poll that counts
Liberal desperation that is…
Doom and gloom seems to have infected the Liberal Party, as Liberal support continue to sliiiiide….,
a new Toronto Star/Angus Reid poll put the Liberals at 21 per cent, tied with the NDP, with the Green Party at 7 per cent.
Witness Deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff’s latest appeal to Canadians…
One based on stoking fears in the minds of voters,rather than on Liberal polices or leadership.
It goes something like this,vote for us if you don’t,the Harper/conservative boogy man will getcha,all will be doomed…
“If you don’t vote Liberal, Canada will go into a major economic crisis,” said Ignatieff, who joined with Liberal Leader Stephane Dion at a morning campaign stop in Stoney Creek.
The benefactors of Liberal’s misfortunes,or as one columnist likens it “Fortress to Flophouse“,are undoubtly the NDP and ultimately ordinary working Canadians.
I for one welcome,”the end of the party“.
NDP support continues to rise,as has been the case since the launch of the NDP’s first rate election campaign.
Despite all the talk about the improbability of the NDP ever forming the government,from the so called “experts”.One fact sticks out that being the undecided…
Mr. Layton, they say, is trying to create a sense of comfort among the huge number of voters who remain undecided. They point to their own surveys that say many Canadians have not yet ruled out voting NDP, and they want those sentiments to survive until Oct. 14.
Things are still up in the air,but that said the NDP just might bring the prize home and humble all the so called “experts”.Also least we forget this election is unlike any other in recent memory in so far as the NDP goes,i.e Quebec break through,campaign finances,overall support,leadership style, etc etc.
Read more here and here
T-minus 17 days until the only poll that counts
Allegations or even the perception of anti-semitism is the kiss of death for any one running for public office.
Even when the allegation are unproven and or ridiculous as in the case of Lesley Hughes the Liberal party candidate for Kildonan-St. Paul,it matters in the least.
Earlier, Dion fended off questions about Hughes, saying the Canadian Jewish Congress was investigating to determine whether in fact the blog post should be construed as anti-Semitic.
The perception of antisemitism is enough to see most political party’s fleeing for cover,rather than stand up and denounce the allegations for what they are.
Expediency,being the preferred method of “handling” such matters.
An expediency that usually see the “offender” publicly humiliated,and sacrificed on the pyre of hysteria and phony self-righteous indignation.
Stephane Dion began his day defending Lesley Hughes over accusations of anti-Semitism.But by lunchtime Friday the Liberal leader had unceremoniously dumped the Winnipeg-area candidate in an abrupt move that seemed as much about removing the tarnish of intolerance from the party brand as it did with buffing his leadership image.
Antisemitism like all other expression of intolerance is total unacceptable there is no place for it in civil discourse.
Although it would seem some expression of intolerance are considered to be more egregious than others.
Take the case of Samira Laouni, a Muslim candidate running for the NDP in north-end Bourassa.
In which she,and the Muslim community in general,was brow beaten and humiliated on the public airwaves by FM 98.5 host Benoît Dutrizac who…
goading his Moroccan-born guest with jibes about her “sexy” hijab, about being “at the mercy” of her husband, about “imposing” fasting on children during Ramadan and for saying that under Muslim sharia law, “if I were to rape you here today, you’d need witnesses to testify that you weren’t consenting.”
These remarks were sexist,racist and full of hatred.Was there a media outcry no,did any government agency express it’s concern no.
Indeed was there a hint of concern from B’nai Brith or the Jewish Congress,both who are quick to point out,and rightly so, that intolerance must be combated where ever it appears so as not to allow it to take root.
Both are quick to urge the dismissal and public humiliation of anyone accused of anti-Semitism,many times based on but a few lines or sentences that may have been exaggerated or quoted out of context.
But when that same intolerance is aimed at Muslims, [or indigenous peoples for that matter] ,both are silent to the point of hypocrisy.
On another note these public lynchings are more about political correctness than any notion of justice.
Indeed if we were all held accountable for things we might have said at one time or another, over a lifetime,none of us would be safe from those that would judge,as if they them selves are above reproach.
At some point we would all be labeled,dismissed and humiliated.
Enough is enough.
T-minus 18 days until the only poll that counts
Indeed they are often the best indicators of a person’s character & thought process,the “cut of their jib” as the saying goes.
Particularly those words spoken during moments of spontaneity or shared between friends and compatriots.
In this case Conservative’s ,from cabinet minister’s,to candidates,to party insiders…
Calgary Conservative incumbent Lee Richardson on immigrants…
“Talk to the police. Look at who’s committing these crimes,” added Richardson, the Tory candidate in Calgary Centre. “They’re not the kid that grew up next door.”
Conservative Candidate for Toronto Center Chris Reid...
A man with a knife was able to go on a murderous rampage decapitating a fellow human being. The rest of the bus was unarmed and helpless. What was the generous Canadian thing to do? Help a fellow human being? No. Flee in terror. Passengers and the bus driver stood by and watched another person being butchered, and couldn’t muster up any courage or self sacrifice to intervene. This is where socialism as gotten us folks, a castrated effeminate population.
Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz on the recent listeriosis outbreak which caused the deaths of 17 Canadians…
He called the crisis over tainted meat “a death by a thousand cuts – or should I say cold cuts,” and jokingly expressed the hope that Liberal critic Wayne Easter was among the victims.
Darlene Lannigan aide to Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon on native protesters…
“If you behave, and you’re sober, and there’s no problems, and if you don’t do a sit-down and whatever, I don’t care.
Ryan Sparrow, a key war room operative in the Conservative campaign on the father of a Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan for…
suggesting the father of a slain soldier who criticized Stephen Harper today was a Liberal.
Conservative MP Tom Lukiwski on gay’s…
“There’s A’s and there’s B’s. The A’s are guys like me, the B’s are homosexual faggots with dirt on their fingernails that transmit diseases.”
Least we forget “puffingate“, which again illustrates quite nicely,the childishness and stupidity of even more conservative insiders.
T-minus 19 days until the only poll that counts
With vacancy rates in metro-Vancouver at an all time low.
Thar’s gold em thar suites…
But first there that sticky matter of the existing tenants,…i.e families,working people,you know the usual suspects/irritants.
No problem just do an end run around the “Tenancy Act” and renovate.
Well say/pretend you’re gonna renovate,then increase the rents by 50%,next re-rent to all the desperate people,that are now,even more desperate.
The sky’s the limit…
Tell me that you are not so naive as to believe that, “a Tenancy Act”,would actually be past without a few built in loopholes ?
After all housing is not a necessity,there’s tents,homeless shelters…like what more does a guy need ?
Show me the money,yahoo…”good times” are here again
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