Election 2011

[Dissident]

I am now predicting 175 seats for the Conservatives.

 

[HavokFour]

I am now predicting 175 seats for the Conservatives.

Care to explain?  ???

 

[Old Sweat]

In my opinion, predicting seat count is a bit like climate science.

 

[Retired AF Guy]

Link busted.


Link fixed.

Thanks.

 

[Dissident]

In my opinion, predicting seat count is a bit like climate science.

Yup, migth as well read the entrails of a dead fish.

Call it a WAG, it is just a feeling. Based mostly on how I see the vote splitting (between the NDP/Libs) giving even a slight advantage to the Conservatives, helped with peoples fear of the NDPs economic policies driving the blue Liberals over to the Cons and how I keep hearing that the Conservative voter base is more secure.

 

[VinceW]

The latest Ipsos Reid poll

http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=5224

The good news is that most Conservative voters will vote Conservative on Election day ahead of Mr. Hopey Changies party of the North.

 

[Dissident]

O-M-G

SunTV is reporting Jack Layton being found in a rub and tug by the police in 1996.

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/924574695001

 

[VinceW]

Olivia Chow denies that anything but a massage happened.

http://www.torontosun.com/2011/04/29/layton-found-in-toronto-bawdy-house-former-cop

 

[Dissident]

Olivia Chow denies that anything but a massage happened.

http://www.torontosun.com/2011/04/29/layton-found-in-toronto-bawdy-house-former-cop

Yeah, I bet she did. I wonder if she will change her tune once she reads the police officers notebook.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Somehow I knew I'd like Sun News 8)

Now let's see if the rest of the media cover it

 

[trigger324]

Two words: Julian Fantino

 

[Dissident]

Sooooooooooooooo, how does 175 seats sounds like now?

 

[VinceW]

The new Angus Reid poll

Conservatives - 37%
NDPeers - 33%
Liberals - 19%

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/43895/conservatives-and-ndp-gain-in-canada-as-liberals-fall-below-20-mark/

 

[Gimpy]

Sooooooooooooooo, how does 175 seats sounds like now?

As unlikely as it did the first time you said it.

 

[Dissident]

From a PI who posted this on another forum I frequent:

1. Layton while a city counselor received police data from the PSB about the locations and enforcement of suspected Chinese prostitutes in 14/51/52 and 55 Division.

2. The location had previously been raided and charges laid and during a following raid was shut down. In both the before and after people were charged.

3. Jack never claimed any of these "treatments" as medical expenses not has he used a registered massage therapist on expenses.

4. The sex worker "treating" Jack was not a licensed Massage Parlour Attendant by the City of Toronto.

5. Layton was very critical about the police raids on the Toronto Bath Houses and the Pussy Palace Club and was campaigning that the police were antigay.

6. Jacks first marriage was trashed by his interest in asian "attendants". Pull his divorce court papers and have a fun read Toronto Court House on University Avenue if you want a hint where to look....

7. Lets see if Part 2 of this story comes out over the weekend....

Oh yeah....Shiatsu at what time at night? Strange how nobody published the time of the encounter.....1:32AM!

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is an analysis of the decline of the Liberal Party:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/

Liberal soul-searching begins as decision day nears

JANE TABER

Friday, April 29, 2011

Michael Ignatieff is now cautioning against declaring the Liberals done in these three days before the May 2 vote – but some Liberals aren’t listening.

The autopsy is already under way.

What happened? How did the so-called natural ruling party wind up in third place in the homestretch?

Under attack before they started

There are some who believe the jig was up before the writ was even dropped.

A senior Liberal campaign strategist blames the Conservative attack ads, which criticized the Liberal Leader for being out of the country for 30 years and accused him of coming back to grab power.

The Tories spent millions on the ads, which were launched months before the election was even called.

Liberals vowed they would not allow the Tory ads to define and denigrate Mr. Ignatieff the way they successfully defined and denigrated his predecessor, Stéphane Dion. But in the end, the ads took a toll.

Some Liberals believe Mr. Ignatieff had a chance to make a breakthrough in the English-language debate. But that didn’t happen, either.

No one is blaming “Michael”

There are those Liberals who blame the years of infighting between Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin for having damaged the Liberal Party – to the point that it needs massive restructuring and rebuilding.

Most polls are projecting a decline in the Liberal vote on Monday, which would make it the fourth election in a row the party has lost support.

The Liberal machine needs a lot of work under the hood before it can run smoothly again, the strategist said, and it needs to shake its sense of entitlement.

Despite Mr. Ignatieff’s repeated entreaties to “come on back” to the Big Red Tent, some Liberals say there has been no reaching out at all – especially from his most senior advisers, who are largely made up of former Chrétien advisers from 1993, led by Peter Donolo.

Mr. Donolo served as Mr. Chrétien’s former director of communications; he is Mr. Ignatieff’s chief of staff and most senior adviser on the campaign trail.

In late 2009, Mr. Ignatieff took a broom to his office, sweeping out the team that brought him the leadership, replacing them with these former Chrétienites. They didn’t bring in new blood, which drew criticism suggesting they are out of touch.

The message

Some Liberals blame the lack of consistency in Mr. Ignatieff’s messaging for what polls are predicting could be a disappointing result.

Some Liberals say Mr. Ignatieff is too generous with the press, fielding questions every day on topics ranging from Libya to his ancestors to coalition governments.

Stephen Harper, by comparison, took just five questions a day – and his reticence appears to have paid off.

The believers

And then there are those who ascribe no blame, but continue to believe Mr. Ignatieff will turn heads on May 2.

“The surprise on election night is how well he does and how the surge was not as much of a surge as everyone thought,” says Paul Zed, former Ignatieff chief of staff and a former veteran Liberal MP from New Brunswick.

“That’s my prediction. I know that is a little bit out there. And I think we all acknowledge that the Liberal Party will not do as well as the New Democrats in Quebec; that’s not a secret now. But I am totally convinced that Michael will do an awful lot better than the polling is showing right now.”

Mr. Zed said he believes the surge of the NDP in Quebec is not being felt in other places: “While people are not negative to the NDP, I don’t think they are prepared to vote for them.”

In a way it is very sad to watch the decline of a great national institution – one which gave us Laurier, King and St Laurent and, arguably, shaped the country we know today more than any other event or agency. In another way. I suppose, we might just be watching a natural evolution of party politics in Canada: something akin to what we saw in the UK one hundred years ago – the replacement of the Liberals by Labour. 

The Chrétien-Martin infighting, which is, I agree, still going on and is derstructive, predates those two worthies. There was Chrétien-Turner infighting and Turner-Trudeau infighting and, before that Trudeau-Pearson infighting. (There was a battle, of sorts, between King and St Laurent, too, on the issue of foreign policy, but it was, essentially decided, in St Laurent's favour, as part of the “package” offered to entice him into federal politics. Once in office St Laurent, supported by almost all the cabinet, simply and completely displaced King on all of the foreign policy file.)

 

[Edward Campbell]

Jack Layton demonstrates, once again, that you can fool most of the people almost all the time, in this article, reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

My emphasis added
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/

Gas prices could rise, but Canadians want polluters to pay: Layton

CAMPBELL CLARK
KAMLOOPS, B.C.— Globe and Mail Update

Posted on Friday, April 29, 2011

Jack Layton, who has campaigned on promises to create a gas-price watchdog, conceded there’s no guarantee that his proposed climate-change policies won’t be passed on to consumers at the pumps – but argued oil companies are trying to scare Canadians about the costs.

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper claimed this week that Mr. Layton’s plan to impose a cap-and-trade system on large carbon emitters would raise the price of gas by 10 cents a litre. Economists, however, estimate that pump prices would rise by 3 cents to 4 cents a litre.

Mr. Layton, in Kamloops, B.C., for a campaign rally, dismissed what he called the “various fabrications” that fly around in the late days of a campaign.

When pressed, however, he said he cannot guarantee that the costs will not be passed on to consumers.

“There’s no legal way, you can’t – ultimately, it’s their responsibility to relate to their customers in an appropriate fashion,” he said.

“What we’re saying is, however, if we are moving quickly on getting higher efficiency standards for the automobiles, or moving quickly on public-transit support, we can help keep the costs of transportation down, and transform our transportation system to something that’s more environmentally sound, and more affordable for Canadians.”

He insisted that Canadians want oil companies to pay the costs of pollution, but the oil companies are trying to scare people.

“First of all, it’s time that these companies absorbed some of the cost of their pollution. I think most people agree with that. Naturally, the big companies like Exxon, big global corporations, are going to try to scare Canadians – to say, ‘If you try to do anything about pollution, we’re going to make you pay.’ That’s exactly what they said when we dealt with the issue of acid rain and sulphur emissions.”

With his high-flying support in opinion polls, Mr. Layton’s opponents are turning their guns on his economic policies, insisting that he would raise taxes and the deficit.

Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty called a special press conference to attack Mr. Layton and argue his policies would dent Canada’s economic reputation.

Mr. Layton responded: “Are we speaking of the same Mr. Flaherty who established the record for deficits in the whole history of Canada?”

The opposition parties also jumped on a statement made by Mr. Layton in an interview with Reuters News Agency, in which said he was asked if he would like to see the Bank of Canada hold off on raising interest rates, and answered, “Yes.”

It led to questions about whether Mr. Layton – if he were to be able to take power as prime minister – would interfere with the central bank’s independence in setting monetary policy. Mr. Flaherty said that Mr. Layton would interfere with the Bank of Canada.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Mr. Layton’s comments only confirmed how reckless it would be to entrust New Democrats with power.

“This is one more reason why you can’t trust Jack Layton on the economy,” he told reporters at a campaign stop in the southwestern Ontario city of London.

“A responsible government does not tell Mark Carney and the Bank of Canada what to do. That’s Economics 101,” he said, referring to Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney.

Mr. Layton insisted he would not challenge the central bank’s independence, but that he crossed no line in answering a question about what kind of interest-rate action he would favour.

“I think that when you’re discussing the state of the economy and you’re asked your opinion about what do you think about interest levels, it’s all right to offer an opinion that’s in conjunction with a majority of Canadians,” he said.

“But let’s be crystal clear about who makes the decisions here: it is the governor of the Bank of Canada, and that’s the way it should be, and that’s the way it would be under any NDP administration.”

Make the polluters pay is the NDP mantra which is accepted uncritically by 95% of the media and nearly as big a slice of Canadians. The principle is fine; I do not disagree with it on principle but it is the method that Layton proposes, and which most Canadians support, that is rubbish. The poluters are not the gas stations or coal fired power plants or oil-sands producers; they are just parts of the pollution supply chain. The polluters – the people who must, eventually, pay 100% of the cost of cleaning up the environment are the ordinary Canadians, you and me, who heat our homes, drive our cars, watch out big screen TVs and buy groceries. And the only way we will ever change our behaviour – which is 100% responsible for all the pollution - is by paying for the necessary changes each time we pay our home heating bill, fill up the care, pay out hydro bill or buy milk and eggs.

But Canadians don't want to hear that. I suspect that Jack Layton is, actually, a smart guy and knows that he's blowing smoke but he is happy to lie to us because it is a lie that most of us want to hear.

Cap and trade is a silly system that actually creates as many problems as it might solve. If, Big IF, we need to pay more to clean up the environment then the only sane way is to apply a carbon tax – which flows through the entire system, à la the GST/HST – until you and I end up paying all of it at the pumps, at the check out counter or when we pay our hydro bill.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is an analysis of the decline of the Liberal Party:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/

In a way it is very sad to watch the decline of a great national institution – one which gave us Laurier, King and St Laurent and, arguably, shaped the country we know today more than any other event or agency. In another way. I suppose, we might just be watching a natural evolution of party politics in Canada: something akin to what we saw in the UK one hundred years ago – the replacement of the Liberals by Labour. 

The Chrétien-Martin infighting, which is, I agree, still going on and is derstructive, predates those two worthies. There was Chrétien-Turner infighting and Turner-Trudeau infighting and, before that Trudeau-Pearson infighting. (There was a battle, of sorts, between King and St Laurent, too, on the issue of foreign policy, but it was, essentially decided, in St Laurent's favour, as part of the “package” offered to entice him into federal politics. Once in office St Laurent, supported by almost all the cabinet, simply and completely displaced King on all of the foreign policy file.)

More on this, again reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, this time from Jeffrey Simpson:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/jeffrey-simpson/the-strange-death-of-liberal-canada/article2004564/

The ‘strange death’ of Liberal Canada

JEFFREY SIMPSON

From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published Saturday, Apr. 30, 2011

Michael Ignatieff, being a man of letters and cultivated intelligence, is quite likely familiar with George Dangerfield’s 1935 classic book, The Strange Death of Liberal England.

The years before, during and after the First World War, swallowed up the British Liberal Party in a “strange death,” strange because of “the approaching catastrophe of which the actors were unaware.”

Now, peering into the electoral abyss at the end of a campaign Mr. Ignatieff and his party so resolutely sought, Liberals might be witnessing their own “strange death,” or at least a new stage of political deterioration that spells the end of Liberal Canada.

Liberal Canada lasted a long time, from the election of Wilfrid Laurier in 1896 to Pierre Trudeau’s departure in 1984. A recovery ensued under Jean Chrétien for almost a decade starting in 1993, but the conservative forces were foolishly divided in those years and the Liberals themselves were corrosively split into two factions that time eventually made devastatingly public in the sponsorship scandal.

Liberal Canada’s singular contribution had been to keep French Quebeckers and other Canadians united in one country. In retrospect, the 1981-1982 patriation of the Constitution, engineered brilliantly by Mr. Trudeau, weakened that bridge by turning many francophones away from the Liberals. In reinforcing a country, he lost a large part of a province for his party.

The Liberals have not won a majority of Quebec’s seats in a general election since 1980, and now they’re reduced to a shrunken harvest of largely non-francophone voters. They are the party, honourably, that stands for a strong central government in a province that doesn’t want one.

Liberals thought they could count on the immigrant communities for whom Mr. Trudeau and his legacy were so popular. But when the Harper Conservatives began contesting some of those communities with sustained attention, changed policies and repeated blandishments, even this pillar of the shrunken Liberal coalition, already weakened by the long-ago departure of Western Canada and the more recent disaffection of Quebec, began to shake.

So, too, Liberals were being ousted from the industrial and northern cities of Ontario they had dominated for so long. And for a party that had pioneered protection for the official languages, they were even losing ground in French-speaking areas outside Quebec, such as Acadia, Eastern Ontario and St. Boniface.

The arching coalition of Liberal Canada, therefore, had been shrivelling for years, even if “the actors were unaware” of the unfolding decline. Mr. Ignatieff and his advisers convinced themselves that the anti-democratic tactics of the Harper Conservatives and economic uncertainties post-recession had made the electorate ready for a change, although there was little evidence of such a readiness.

As a student of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Mr. Ignatieff forgot the lessons of the Russian general Kutusov, who waited and waited for events to destroy Napoleon, refusing to give battle until the French had been weakened by their own follies sufficiently to be defeated in combat.

The “approaching catastrophe” wasn’t what Mr. Ignatieff and his advisers had in mind when they precipitated an election the country mostly didn’t want. That they might be replaced by the NDP as the alternative to the Conservatives never crossed their minds, for when had that party climbed above 20 per cent in the polls?

They were confident that the more the country saw of Mr. Ignatieff, the more they’d admire him. But the reverse occurred, and some of those who couldn’t abide the Harper Conservatives turned to Jack Layton, who’d been around for almost a decade as NDP Leader and who kept repeating much of what he always said, a threat no Liberal took seriously until it was far too late.

Defeat will mean less public money and fewer private contributions. It will cost the party MPs, morale and purpose. Liberals have burned through three leaders in six years, convened a policy conference, tried campaigns of bold ideas and less courageous ones, and now can only recall through the mists of memory a time when there was a Liberal Canada.

One quibble: I think Trudeau began to "lose" the Liberal's QC base back in the late 1960s - when it became obvious that he did not share, possibly did not even understand, QC's nationalist sentiments. (Trudeau had one big idea - he opposed nationalism in most of its forms.)

But I think the Liberals must, now, stop and think:

• Are they going to wither and die, like the English Liberals?
  
• Are they going to merge with - and try to take over, from within - the NDP? or
  
• Are they going to try to rid themselves of their current, Trudeauist, 'vision' which is, quite clearly, anathema to  most Canadians and rebuild themselves as a party of the centre.

 

[Rifleman62]

The TorStar endorses the NDP.  http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/article/983376--toronto-star-endorses-the-ndp

 

[Kirkhill]

ERC -

(Trudeau had one big idea - he opposed nationalism in most of its forms.)

Given the boy, the man was produced ...... and the man was ever an Ultramontagniste.  The only debate was over who was on the other side of the mountain.