phishtaper

politics and toothlessness aside, it's a good idea. the senate should be elected.

strange time of year to miss the road. i prefer summer. winter's too unpredictable

do you think the buzz will still be around / as high after their tour?

you may have something there, hux. guess when my MP was first elected :crazy:

and d, "dead wood" is putting it kindly.

well, my MP finally voted as her constituents want, and is today counted in the Nay column on this silly motion. I like to think that my constant pestering over the years had some impact on her changing her mind. of course, it didnt, i know that, but hey, one can dream, riiiiight?

...at least the ones where cheese gets served as a snack to neighbours' kids...

i prefer serving the neighbours' kids to the rats

thanks, guys, for this recognition......

funny, that. i hadnt noticed.

i posted the memorial yesterday after I wandered out to see if the flags were lowered at the university i work at. and yes, they were. the whole thing was, and still is, pretty powerful. and when i see so many young women here with engineering jackets on or just wandering around campus, i take comfort knowing that the Montreal 14 did not die in vain.

thanks for your hard work and dedication, Jane.

an interesting analysis on globe website today

A vote Harper doesn't want to win

ANALYSIS: A same-sex defeat blunts a Liberal arrow from the campaign quiver, Ottawa bureau chief BRIAN LAGHI writes

BRIAN LAGHI

OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF

Many Tories in this town have come to the conclusion that Prime Minister Stephen Harper would prefer to lose the parliamentary vote today on reopening same-sex marriage. Those still left wondering might reach back to Monday, when Stéphane Dion asked his first questions in the House of Commons.

The newly minted Opposition Leader signalled that a modern Liberal Party led by him intends to create stark differences between itself and the old-fashioned Conservatives on social issues such as same-sex marriage. He did so by characterizing Mr. Harper as hostile to the Charter of Rights, an issue that Mr. Dion will almost certainly try to exploit on the campaign trail.

But Tory sources say Mr. Harper would dearly like to take some of those arrows out of Mr. Dion's quiver, and that one way to do so would be to lose today's vote.

"You bury the issue by having the thing defeated and it looks like it will be," a senior Tory campaigner said. "I'm not saying you deliberately try to lose the vote . . . You try your best, but the reality of the vote being defeated is it makes it very hard for the opponents of the Conservative Party to attack the Conservatives for a lack of moderation."

Many party members are privately concerned that winning the same-sex vote and forcing yet another national debate on the issue would damage the party on the trail. What Mr. Harper doesn't want is the issue dragging down a new pitch to the middle class that may take the form of more tax cuts or income-splitting.

At the beginning of the last election campaign, Mr. Harper tried to dispose of the same-sex issue early on by promising to hold a vote when he became prime minister and praying that the matter would go away for the rest of the campaign.

Mostly, it did, allowing Mr. Harper to put a clear focus on other priorities such as cutting the GST, sending out $100 daycare cheques to families with preschoolers and wooing Quebec. But the issue indirectly came back to haunt him days before the Jan. 23 election, when he characterized some judges as social activists -- a remark that put many in mind of the party's anti-gay-marriage stand. The comments may have killed some of the momentum he had toward a majority. It's an issue he doesn't need to come back.

Another reason to dump the issue is that a Tory election strategy of promoting hard-conservative ideology to maximize voter turnout is risky. Take the example of the recent by-election in London North Centre. In that contest, the Tories brought into the race an old social conservative, former mayor Dianne Haskett, who was noteworthy for her refusal to sanction a gay-pride parade. At the end of the campaign, she circulated a letter outlining her opposition to same-sex marriage.

The Conservative election theory is that wooing hard conservatives by promoting issues close to their hearts will get them to come out to vote in large numbers. But in the recent U.S. mid-term elections and the London by-election, the strategy may have offended centrists who might have otherwise voted Conservative. Ms. Haskett ended up with 25 per cent of the vote -- a five-point drop.

There were a number of possible explanations for moderate Tories' departure, including the argument that the party didn't appeal enough to the hard right or that the Greens bled off a lot of Conservatives. But it might also be that resurrecting the same-sex issue sheared off the moderate supporters that Ms. Haskett needed to win. Tory thinkers will have to puzzle this one out, but there are some American observers who believe that the strategy -- propagated by Republican adviser Karl Rove -- may have cost his party some seats in the Senate and House of Representatives.

Finally, in putting off the same-sex vote until Mr. Dion came aboard as Liberal leader, Mr. Harper may have waited too long to avoid at least some collateral damage.

If Mr. Harper loses the vote today, he may rid himself of an albatross, but he also ensures that Mr. Dion will argue that he led the charge to beat back an archaic proposal put forward by an out-of-step government. It's an opportunity he wouldn't have been given had the vote taken place under interim leader Bill Graham.

[color:#CCCCCC]they made their choice

... i vote that we're able to start ripping into them! there's some fantastic topics in this thread..

let's talk! puhhhhhhleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease.

you may begin.

might I suggest we take each into its own thread? (Ive noticed people here stray off topic every now and then, LMFAO ... ah, I amuse myself, and really, thats what counts)

Watched Casino Royale in the same row as Dryden and wife last night at the World Exchange Cinemas.

i hope you didnt try that hole in the popcorn bag trick

Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien are also surprisingly tall people.

but make sure you are on chretien's left side because he's deaf in his right ear. and I thot he was ignoring me.

mulroney is really tall too, but trudeau was quite short. neither is deaf, though, they were ignoring me.

a colleague is a separatist and he argued that Dion is so unpopular in quebec that his assention will only serve to fuel the separatist movement. this would seem to suggest otherwise. let me go rub his nose in it, hehe

please feel free to share your thoughts

Especially those tacky white ones.

i prefer the dusty rose ones .... but the white ones do look very real ...

3) and 4) are a joke as well, and 5) has vanished!

well, they still have accountable government, riiiiiiight?

... in action

New outcome in Guelph Municipal Election recount: Ward 1 tie broken by City Clerk

At the conclusion of today’s 2006 Municipal Election recount for Councillors in Wards 1 and 6, the following results were announced:

Councillor Ward 1

BELL - 3212 (32.3%)

BAILY - 1717 (17.3%)

FARRELLY - 1717 (17.3%)

(ward 6 results snipped)

The Ward 1 tie between Laura Baily and Kathleen Farrelly was broken under the Municipal Elections Act with the City Clerk drawing Baily’s name randomly by lot.

Following direction from Guelph City Council, the election recounts were conducted for the Office of Councillor in the two wards. Ballots were recounted in accordance with the Municipal Elections Act in the same manner as on election day using the same vote tabulators. [machines]

two elected from each ward. sucks to lose that way, eh? and the city is so far unwilling to have a hand recount. wow.

my MP has consistently voted against SSM despite the fact that she's a Liberal. she recently announced that she is retiring after this term. i just sent her an email:

Mrs Chamberlain,

How do you intend to vote when the Prime Minister introduces a motion to revisit the Civil Marriage Act to take away Court-ordered, Charter-guaranteed rights of your constituents?

Voting for the motion will constitute ignorant, illegal and hateful action on your part - and this will be your legacy.

I look forward to your response and I sincerely hope that you make the right choice this time.

Sincerely,

...

and I cc'd it to the editor of the local newspaper.

nothing will come of it, never did in the past, but I feel better.

Why Top 6?

Its part of the devil's trilogy.

Check out this email that the Honourable Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety sent out to his entire department....

LOL, thanks ... my daily funny.

sweet looking machine - high on the "cool factor" as Sony says. not sure it's worth the price though, given that it's more geared for journalists than tapers. it cannot do a few things that tapers would normally need. there's no HQ interface for better, more convenient, external mics, let alone phantom power. (and at over a pound, its too big to hang on a stand to use the built-ins.) there's no coax digi for A/D, just usb. and it only runs for 3hrs. the limiter is a really nice feature though, as are the uber-cool analog meters. that said, if someone wants to give me one, I will say yes, please.

ive always been struck by how Sony seems to be on the very leading edge of stealth technology (D7/8, M1, MD, and now this D1) yet they also own so much copyright to material that they'd hate to have recorded. different corporate divisions, I know, but still, there's gotta be a lot of "jeesh, look what those techies have come up with now!" going on over there.

i used to delivery the Brampton Daily Times when I was a kid. my sister delivered the Globe and Mail. hers were a lot thicker and full of all sorts of gibberish about business and politics and stuff that just looked boring. mine had colour comics on weekends. she got better christmas tips. i got cookies.

when did the Globe turn left? it used to be sooo right.

I held a rock that was about 4 billion years old when I was in college. That was eerie.

I had a prof that was about 4 billion years old. That was standard.

i save my old christmas trees and make really big ear-rings for next year. its my own way of re-gifting.

im just waiting for when he tells us about his personal conversations with god ...

in the end this will be another feeble, and presumably unsuccessful, attempt by the politically-connected wing of the religious right to influence social policy by dictating how others should live, think, breathe, wed, etc.

sadly, ive just come to accept these silly attacks on human rights because I know that for every proposed (or even actualized) step backwards, good people like Egale force two others steps forward. the hurtful thing, though, is that Harper and his ilk are motivated by hate and inequity and thats sad and not Canadian.

hopefully, when he does come to have that final chat with god, he'll get an earful.