Fall Election

[ollie]

GO TENS GO!!

[AD]

Some political leaders are notorious for mispronouncing names of world leaders (Jean Chretien repeatedly mangled the names of African leaders) and business and academic leaders they meet along the way. And so it was last week at a meeting with students at a high school in Walkerton, Ont., that the Dion campaign was faced with a dilemma.

Although Liberal Leader Stephane Dion's English is improving, he still has trouble - which he admits to - with intonation and pronounciation. So here was what the Dion handlers had to sort out: The event was at Sacred Heart High School, which has about 800 students. The principal's name is Murray Kuntz - a good, solid German name but one that may sound rather rude on television, especially when pronounced by Mr. Dion, whose first language is French and who struggles in his second language.

The compromise, according to Liberal handlers, was for Mr. Dion not to say his name but to have him thank “Mr. Principal†or “the principal†for his kind words of introduction.

By the way, the students at Sacred Heart asked good questions and were engaged in the discussion. Only a handful, however, were old enough to vote.

[AD]

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion is using some humour to swipe at Stephen Harper's cuts to arts and culture.

"A box of yogurt has more culture than this Conservative government," Dion told students gathered at University of British Columbia Tuesday.

[Kanada Kev]

A box of yogurt has more culture than this Conservative government

[AD]

The ever sober-looking Dion managed to elicit a laugh from the audience when Lepage asked him, in English, whether his poor command of English would be a problem in the English debate. “I don’t understand,†Dion replied with a grin.

[Kanada Kev]

http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/506328

Simplistic economic policy TheStar.com - Opinion - Simplistic economic policy

September 26, 2008

I am astonished at the continued success of the Conservative party in polls asking which party is best qualified to manage the economy. Conservative economic policy consists of only three elements:

Tax cuts. They are always presented as good, although this depends on the underlying assumption that all government spending is bad or wasteful.

Deregulation. Trusting for-profit corporations to give priority to things like public safety.

Privatization. Contracting for-profit corporations to provide services currently offered by the public service, on the theory that the private sector can somehow provide better service for the same or less money while making a profit at the same time.

No Conservative federal government in living memory has run a balanced budget. Stephen Harper's government has barely managed to refrain from completely erasing the inherited and undisputed surplus, and is likely to run a deficit as revenues from income and consumption taxes fall, "forcing" cuts to programs that are viewed as leftist, such as employment equity, harm reduction, court challenges and arts funding.

Transfer of primary responsibility for food industry safety to corporations has given us the listeriosis crisis and 18 people have died; in Ontario, similar moves by the Ontario Tories led to tainted water and propane explosions.

Those who believed the misleading and outright false claims in Conservative attack ads recoiled from the prospect of increases in energy costs. They seem to forget that energy costs soared by far more under Harper than they might rise if the Green Shift were implemented – without compensation in the form of directed income tax cuts.

If Ontarians in particular want Harper to do at the national level what Mike Harris did to Ontario, then by all means, they should vote Conservative. The boardrooms of the nation will applaud.

Robert Moriyama, Toronto

[Birdy]

[Birdy]

Warren Kinsella's got the best blog out there, imo.

Day 28: Kinsella's Clear Canadian Campaign Coverage

Up at the cabin, and it's damned cold. We've got the wood stove going, and some little heaters turned up, and the seven-year-old is finally in bed, covered up with as many blankets as he could find. Summer's over, seems.

On the way up here, we drove through Belleville, Port Credit, Cobourg - those places where folks still listen to Shania as they drive family vans with "Support Our Troops" ribbons on the back, and where they don't ever read the Globe and Mail, and where they don't go to black-tie fundraisers. If the signs mean anything, the Tories have this thing won. Outside the cities, folks are settled in. They're going for the guy they think is most like them. In these things, they usually do.

Stephen Harper - hockey Dad, Leafs fan, middle-aged guy with a paunch (because all us middle-aged guys have a paunch, pretty much) - is winning. Outrider polls will pop up a few times between now and Election Day - like Nanos did today, with a number that is fundamentally at odds with what older Liberals know is the reality - but, mostly, Harper is somewhere between a big minority or a small majority. That's where he's been for a while.

How come?

By design or by accident, consciously or not, Stephen is the Canadian Everyman. He let us know that early on, when he grinned and said that meeting Bono about peace was his predecessor's schtick - and when he carried his son's hockey bag to a game, and the resulting photograph said to a few million Canadians: "He doesn't just understand my life. He is living my life."

Whether he is faking it or not is now immaterial - just as it didn't matter if Pierre Trudeau's pirouettes and dating of starlets and cosmopolitan airs were real, or the product of Keith Davey's genius. It's what people believe to be true about the guy. It is what it is.

Now, don't get me wrong: being the Everyman isn't some sure-fire formula for electoral success. Your persona, real or not, has to be congruent with what CBC Radio hosts refer to as the zeitgeist: you have to fit the times. Trudeau did, coming as he did when Expo '67 had us aspiring to worldliness and the exotic. Harper does, because he arrives at a time when folks are looking for suburban simplicity. Something with one moral dimension, like a Leafs exhibition game.

At a time when unsupervised twenty-four-years-olds in red suspenders (to borrow the characterization of another Everyman, Jean Chretien) have been wreaking havoc on the global economy - at a time when men with beards and living in caves have the means and the inclination to bring the civilized world to its knees - the Everyman has many attractions. It's not that he's a conservative or a liberal, necessarily: it's just that, when things are going to crap, people don't go looking for flamboyant visionaries to lead them out of the darkness. They go looking for guys with a flashlight.

Stephane Dion, you might argue, is the Everyman too. He showed up in Ottawa carrying a book bag - and he took the bus to get there. He's decent and honest, and he doesn't seem to give a sweet damn about the elites and the chattering classes, either. Like Harper, he doesn't go to society parties, and he seems awkward in large groups of people. He loves his country in an unashamed and unpretentious way, and he doesn't care whether Le Devoir approves or not.

But, with all of the characteristics he shares with Stephen Harper, Stephane Dion is different in one crucial respect: he is hard to understand. If politics is a daily campaign, and the daily campaign is a great big communications exercise, then Stephane Dion is at a distinct disadvantage. He doesn't communicate as well as Stephen Harper. As a result, his goals - almost all of them thoughtful and praiseworthy - are susceptible to being characterized by his adversaries as risky or unworthy. Which they've done, in spades.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to over-romanticize this suburban, Leafs-loving Everyman stuff. The time will come - soon and soon enough, too - when we will again go in search of an erudite, over-achieving intellectual, and the Everyman will be discarded like last year's election pamphlets. But, for the time being, the unremarkable is what Canadians want. And they're the bosses.

Me? Why am I - unlike too many Liberals, who are running around like deranged street corner prophets, hollering about an imminent conservative apocalypse - so unafraid of Stephen Harper? Well, for starters, I'm from Calgary. Even though I'm one of the two dozen Liberals who lived there, it annoys me - it pisses me off - that Central Canadians perpetually associate Albertans, out loud or not, with Jim Keegstra and hooded Klansmen. When they get impatient with persuasion and argument, and when they start to insinuate that Harper is a Nazi, they lose me and a few million other folks, too. I disagree with many of the man's policies, sure. But I don't feel the need to peddle facile bullshit to beat him on the campaign trail.

The notion that he is a heartless automaton, too, doesn't work for me. When my Dad died, Stephen Harper called my Mom, right out of the blue, and he talked to her for a good long while. I had been ripping him and his party for years, and I hadn't held back - but he did that. My Mom is asleep in the next room, and I can tell you that neither she, nor anyone in my family, will ever forget that phone call. Cynics will sneer at that kind of gesture, but that's because they're assholes who have forgotten what feelings are.

Stephen Harper is winning, and will win, not because of that Tim Horton's vs. Starbucks stuff I said in 2006. That doesn't apply anymore, because he's been in power for three years. Harper will win because he is the Everyman, and that is what folks want right now. They want someone like them. Next year, or maybe the year after that, we will want someone who isn't like us at all.

In this way, politics is like comedy. It isn't about the quality of the material, necessarly; it's mainly about good timing.

Stephen Harper's lucky. Who he is, how he is, fits the times.

Time to put another log on the fire. It's cold up here - and Thanksgiving Day, and the day after, will be here before you know it.

[Thorgnor]

You know what they say about living in captivity, like when you've been kidnapped? That you tend to empathise a little too closely with your kidnappers.

[phishtaper]

latest numbers according to decima, tories are sliding, and sliding fast ... the liberals have actually moved ahead in ontario.

[Birdy]

The Libs are coming on strong!! I think the debates did wonders for Dion.

[phishtaper]

The Libs are coming on strong!! I think the debates did wonders for Dion.

who are you and what have you done with Birdy?!

[Birdy]

lol

leave me alone!

[Birdy]

Just checked the decima polls for Ontario:

Cons 32%

Libs 25%

NDP 21%

Green 12%

Where'd you find the Libs ahead?

[phishtaper]

here ... page 2, bottom graph.

[Birdy]

Whoa, ahead in Quebec too!

The Globe and Mail needs to update their little poll tracker thingy then.

I wonder what the 905's going to do.

[phishtaper]

yeah, ive been confused by the Globe's rolling poll tracker. doesnt seem to make sense sometimes, but it is fun to look at.

905 is harris harper's saving grace, i think. he will do well there, i suspect.

and fwiw, strolling the streets of guelph, ive noticed a lot --- and i mean, A LOT, of Green signs on house lawns. downtown, Green signs outnumber all others combined, and around the university, more keep popping up everyday.

Edited October 6, 2008 by Guest

[Birdy]

Jesus, Harris Decima is showing some big numbers too for the Greens.... ahead of the Libs in BC!

[Birdy]

Guelph's a big greeny town. A little lawn sign momentum game!

This is so all kinds of wrong:

Brake lines cut, cars damaged at homes

Oct 05, 2008 04:30 AM

Comments on this story (84)

Linda Diebel

National Affairs Writer

Toronto police patrolled a midtown area overnight, after vandals cut brake lines on at least 10 cars parked at homes with Liberal election signs on their lawns.

"We're investigating. Officers are paying special attention to the designated area and we take this very seriously," Staff-Sgt. Shawn Meloche, from 53 Division, said last night. "This is a danger to life as well as to property. Regardless of the motivation – and there appears to be a connection (to the signs) – this is a public safety issue."

Affected residents live in the riding of St. Paul's, in a swath of the city around Eglinton Ave. between Bathurst St. and Mount Pleasant Rd., and had Carolyn Bennett signs on their property. Although Meloche confirmed 10 cases of vandalism last night, Liberal riding headquarters said the number was going up, reporting 14 by 9 p.m.

The cars were also damaged in other ways; some were scratched and keyed with L signs. Phone and cable lines of some homes were cut.

"There are two child seats in the back of my car," said Andrew Lane, chief financial officer for Bennett's campaign. "To cut the brake line on a car like that is just evil. Awful."

Added Lane, whose children are 6 months and 22 months: "You have to crawl under someone's car and cut the brake line, knowing that it could kill someone, or their whole family."

Lane discovered his brakes didn't work on his silver Saturn View as he tried to pull up at a stop sign near his home yesterday. He kept slamming the brakes and, in a "moment of terror," narrowly avoided slamming into a bus.

Later, the garage called to tell him it had been no accident. When Lane expressed disbelief, the mechanic told him: "Look, this is a big, heavy rubber hose and it's been cut through with a very sharp knife. You should phone the police."

Police later said Lane was not alone and asked if he had an election sign, telling him, "The Carolyn Bennett sign seems to be the one thing linking events."

"I'm just sick to my stomach about this," a shaken Bennett told the Toronto Star last night. She spent the day visiting the vandals' victims. "It is so upsetting. I've spent my life encouraging people to get involved in the democratic process and now it would appear they are targeted for doing so."

Brent Johnston, former chief fundraiser for the provincial Liberals, was backing his Volkswagen Golf slowly out of his driveway when alarms went off. He then discovered brake fluid in his driveway. When he called Volkswagen, they told him he wasn't the first to call, and to check his car for damage.

He, too, has two young children and shudders to think what might have happened if he had driven the car with a cut brake line.

"This isn't about party politics. Putting people's lives at risk is a whole different thing," said Johnston. "We're not taking the sign down. We won't be intimidated. But I am really disappointed this is happening in Canada. It's beyond comprehension."

Bennett's staff worked the phones last night at riding headquarters, advising many of the 900-plus people with elections signs that they could be at risk.

"Most people want to leave the signs up," said Bennett. "They don't want to let the terrorists get away with this. They don't want to let them win."

Campaign manager Lynne Steele said there was other vandalism in the riding, including houses defaced with the words "McGuinty lies" and "B. Rae lies."

However, reports of cut brake lines didn't begin to come in until yesterday morning.

Said Steele: "Only a very small number of people took their signs down. It speaks to the resilience of the people of this riding... We're here to stay."

Police are appealing to the public for information.

[phishtaper]

yeah, that was happening in Guelph back in August during the by-election and it shocked the city. i mean, vandalize lawn signs all ya want kids, but cutting brake lines?!

and now it's happening in toronto. clearly, its an organized effort and its criminal. i just don't get it.

[Birdy]

vandalize lawn signs all ya want kids

haha same thing i was saying to a coworker minutes ago.

[Thorgnor]

http://video.google.ca/videosearch?hl=en&q=last%20place%20ontario&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv# Edited October 7, 2008 by Guest
finally figured it out... genius

[phishtaper]

hello my baby, goodbye majority, harper's blowing it again

[Birdy]

Rumour has it, the Conservative platform is coming out today... no google attempts by me have turned it up though. Anyone?

[phishtaper]

yeah, WTF is up with that? sounds like governing by polls to me. i mean, if their platform is solid, it should have been out long ago like the other parties'.

comes out at noon. hopefully his backroom boys will have fixed his blunders from the debates: quick guys, whenever it says "canadians are most concerned about the stock market" to "canadians are most concerned about their jobs and their homes".