And they're off...the election thread

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revjohn said:
I was in London last evening supporting a friend who was presenting research at Huron College. Brown hair, bushy tail, some of you would probably remember him.

At any rate it was late when I was heading home and crossed paths with a vehicle sporting many after market alterations, most of which struck me as not contributing to road worthiness. Because I was driving and had to make decisions about where my vehicle should be headed I did not get to take in careful detail about the messaging.

There was a name. Ali somebody or other. There was a rebuke about Canada past and I'm pretty certain it was topped by a Lebanese Flag. Ring any bells?
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That's the independent I'm talking about.

http://www.lfpress.com/news/ontarioelection/2011/09/28/18754531.html (from the 2011 election, he also ran provincially last year getting a whole 113 votes).
 
I think the last true "independent" who might have been elected to Parliament was Tony Roman way back in 1994. He was running, I think, in whatever riding Markham was a part of at the time. As I recall both the Liberals and Conservatives had very hotly contested nomination meetings, and ended up with controversial candidates that many from both parties couldn't stomach, so they set partisanship aside and convinced Roman, who had been mayor of Markham, to run as an independent. Roman won, but he didn't seek re-election. I think part of the reason for him not seeking re-election was that with the way Parliament is structured, as an independent he had literally nothing of any great importance to do when he was in Ottawa.
 
NOAM CHOMSKY author of Keeping the Rabble in Line blunt commentary on the Power Elites' strategy for controlling the masses:
"The bewildered herd are a problem. We've got to prevent their rage and trampling. We've got to distract them. They should be watching the Super Bowl or sitcoms or violent movies or something. Every once in a while you call on them to chant meaningless slogans like 'Support Our Troops' (not totally meaningless, IMO, it really means "support the military + intelligence + security + repression industry"), and you've got to keep them pretty scared because unless they're scared properly and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going to destroy them from outside or inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very dangerous because they're not competent to think, and therefore it's important to distract and to marginalize them."
 
Well, I have strong reservations about all parties, including the NDP. I think its too centrist. I think that it, like almost all political parties in our history, campaigns on relatively minor issues. I will vote for them largely because the NDP candidates always have more intelligent and more compassionate people in their ranks than the Liberals or Conservatives so.

And I wouldn't pay a whole lot of attention to any video that quote Rex Murphy who, whatever his intelligence may be, is a boot-licker for the rich.
 
Graeme Decarie said:
Well, I have strong reservations about all parties, including the NDP. I think its too centrist. I think that it, like almost all political parties in our history, campaigns on relatively minor issues. I will vote for them largely because the NDP candidates always have more intelligent and more compassionate people in their ranks than the Liberals or Conservatives so.

And I wouldn't pay a whole lot of attention to any video that quote Rex Murphy who, whatever his intelligence may be, is a boot-licker for the rich.
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Hmm...I've always loved catching snippets of Cross Country check up - you obviously know something I don't.

Unfortunately, I'm seeing some awful similarities between Mulcair & Harper, in a control freak sort of way. Don't like it.

Graeme, is there some reason you've dismissed the Greens?
 
Pontifex Geronimo 13 said:
Oh, oh!

looks like Harper govt is turning in a $1.9 Billion surplus for the year.

Who has their ducks in a row?????

Harper, Harper,
He's our man,
If he can't do it
No one can.....

Goooooooooo Harper!!!!!
Yay!!!!!

Now everyone sing it!!!!!
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Harper Harper will be out in a flash because he didn't pay enough attention to the middle class and now that the tar sands are of no note he will probably lose a lot of votes. Now everybody sing it!!!! Boooooooo Harper!!!!!
 
Thanks to Harper's Institutionalism ... no one will change their vote ... that would require an alteration of a well cemented mein ded thingy ... Zombie polity?

Polity extremely frozen poly tics ... big level mental disorders about anger management? Ashurism as revealed is ass Urial ism? Piscine BS!
 
They called me from Borys W's campaign office tonight to ask if Borys could count on my vote.

After I gave my answer, they asked me if the other members of my household would be voting for Borys.

When I replied, "No." they sounded surprised and asked me why not.

"They're citizens of South Korea" I replied.
 
I'm seriously disinterested in helping these guys with their numbers. Every time I get a call asking if someone "can count on my vote", I tell them that my vote, and my intentions, are my own damned business.
 
BetteTheRed said:
I'm seriously disinterested in helping these guys with their numbers. Every time I get a call asking if someone "can count on my vote", I tell them that my vote, and my intentions, are my own damned business.
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After I told the person on the phone that I'd be supporting Borys W, they replied, "Thank you for your support of Mr. Trudeau and the Liberal team." I answered that I wasn't supporting Mr. Trudeau and the Liberal team - I'm supporting Borys. That threw them for a second. Anyway, I'm getting a free lawn sign out of the call.
 
I would love it if we would just all refuse to say, and then there'd be a true surprise on election day. Bit like deciding not to know the gender of the child you're carrying...
 
UnDefinitive said:
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What a bunch of crap. It's as bad as the attack ads. Undef I don't trust your judgment as to the sources you often post. You could spin anything into a conspiracy! Nice "do do do do" twighlight zone music! He really didn't do anything extraordinary or frightening. It's the music and photo montage and the narrator's voice. Just to emtionally manipulate us into thinking Mulcair is vewy vewy scawy. Stop it!
 
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BetteTheRed said:
Hmm...I've always loved catching snippets of Cross Country check up - you obviously know something I don't.

Unfortunately, I'm seeing some awful similarities between Mulcair & Harper, in a control freak sort of way. Don't like it.

Graeme, is there some reason you've dismissed the Greens?
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A lot of people dismiss the greens because of vote splitting. They absolutely want ABC. The Greens are not major contenders and are not projected to get more than a couple of seats, but a vote for the greens could split the vote in key ridings.

Why do you think Mulcair is so similar to Harper? Propaganda got to you?
 
Kimmio said:
Why do you think Mulcair is so similar to Harper?
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Let's see:

Strong focus on balancing the budget rather than stimulus and program funding
Stay the course on child benefit
Stay the course on personal income taxes
Support for international trade agreements
Pro-Israel (or more strongly so than the NDP has tended to be in the past).

And, perhaps most damningly, his own left wing has released a manifesto that runs counter to much of what he is pushing as the NDP platform (the Leap Manifesto), showing just how much he has moved the party away from its former position.

To be fair, I'm not sure he's so much similar to Harper as to a centrist Liberal like Paul Martin, but he's certainly not following in the footsteps of NDP leaders past like Ed Broadbent and Audrey McLaughlin. Even Layton, who did move the party a bit more to the centre, was still to the left of where Mulcair seems to be going. The fact that he started out as a Liberal (albeit a Quebec Liberal, who tend to sit on the left of the party) likely says a lot about where he is going.

In the end, I don't expect an NDP government to become a centre-right rival for the Tories, but under Mulcair they do seem to be staking a more centre to centre-left position akin to where the Liberals have sometimes gone in the past - basically fiscally conservative but socially liberal. A rather different beast from the socialist party of Lewis, Broadbent, and their successors, which is already raising some alarms from the party base.

If the NDP does not finish at least second in this election, expect to see him go down and the party shift back left. Just witness what's happening with Labour in the UK. Blair and Brown shifted them strong to the centre (even to the right on some issues) but now that they're stuck well away from power, they've put a traditional socialist Labour leader in and are starting to move away from the positions taken by Blair and Brown.
 
Kimmio said:
A lot of people dismiss the greens because of vote splitting. They absolutely want ABC. The Greens are not major contenders and are not projected to get more than a couple of seats, but a vote for the greens could split the vote in key ridings.

Why do you think Mulcair is so similar to Harper? Propaganda got to you?
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No, unless you consider my fairly careful analysis of Peter Mansbridge's interviews (all 4) to be drinking the Koolaid. I actually don't watch any TV, or listen to anything except CBC (and I've been turning off all advertising), so I think I'm fairly safe from propaganda. I didn't like his answer to the accusation from an ex-colleague that he was a ruthless, power-hungry person.

I thought that Elizabeth May was head and shoulders above her competition, when it came to knowledge and composure. I can imagine her as our Prime Minister much more easily than any of the other three. Every 'new' party has had to contend with the accusation of vote splitting, because we seem to gravitate towards a natural 2-party system. But without new parties, platforms, policies, FOCUS, become stagnant.

All that said, because proportional representation is not yet the law, I watch the polls (and the signs) in my own riding, and if I think my vote is needed elsewhere to defeat the conservatives, I've been a strategic voter before.
 
BetteTheRed said:
No, unless you consider my fairly careful analysis of Peter Mansbridge's interviews (all 4) to be drinking the Koolaid. I actually don't watch any TV, or listen to anything except CBC (and I've been turning off all advertising), so I think I'm fairly safe from propaganda. I didn't like his answer to the accusation from an ex-colleague that he was a ruthless, power-hungry person.

I thought that Elizabeth May was head and shoulders above her competition, when it came to knowledge and composure. I can imagine her as our Prime Minister much more easily than any of the other three. Every 'new' party has had to contend with the accusation of vote splitting, because we seem to gravitate towards a natural 2-party system. But without new parties, platforms, policies, FOCUS, become stagnant.

All that said, because proportional representation is not yet the law, I watch the polls (and the signs) in my own riding, and if I think my vote is needed elsewhere to defeat the conservatives, I've been a strategic voter before.
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It's possible but I don't think he'a ruthless and power hungry. He's got a disgruntled ex employee on his hands - who spoke well of him until recently, didn't he? I think he's better than what we have, anyway.

May is the best of the bunch. I saw all 4 interviews. Even she knows she will not be PM. It's useless this time for her to run on that hope - which she's not. She wants the Greens to have a few more seats (12-15 is an unrealistic projection) and to remain a mediator - which she should do. I will not vote Green - not this time - because I do not want to risk the same old powers staying in. This is a critical election. It's critical to vote NDP or Liberal if we want ABC, I think. Saanich Gulf Islands (where May already has solid support) can probably afford to stick with Green but it will split votes in other key ridings. I'll be upset if that happens. She should be encouraging ABC too if she wants a government she can work with.
 
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