normanchateau

And Israel has to take back the chewing gum: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/artic...E55DV8LHxvldfiA

That's it exactly.

"For Mr. Harper and his Conservative Party, the vote is an attempt to appease the religious social conservatives who form the core of the support for his minority government without losing moderate voters who want to avoid the issue. Though the expected vote in Parliament will not decide whether to rescind the gay marriage legislation, but instead whether members wish to reopen the issue for debate, it remains significant for the Christian right and the government. For leaders of the Christian right, the vote is a chance to get the marriage issue back on the government’s agenda and to get a better sense of where individual politicians, especially newly elected ones, stand. They have adopted that strategy in part because they say that the vote in Parliament will be difficult to win." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/world/am...agewanted=print

"The revelation of $400,000 in funding from the federal Conservatives for the recent Toronto Gay Pride parade, which is notorious for its inclusion of full frontal nudity and public sex acts by homosexuals, came as a shock to most social conservatives in the nation. According to Conservative MP Brad Trost, however, the decision to fund the event also came a shock to most of the Conservative caucus, even those inside the Prime Minister's office. Speaking to LifeSiteNews.com from his riding office in Saskatoon today, the 36-year-old Conservative said, "The pro-life and the pro-family community should know and understand that the tourism funding money that went to the gay pride parade in Toronto was not government policy, was not supported by - I think it's safe to say by a large majority - of the MPs. This was a very isolated decision." Trost also hinted that Minister Diane Ablonczy, who was responsible for the funding, lost the file as a consequence of the embarrassment to the Party. Protesting more than once that there was no "official connection," he said, however, "it should be noted that the file has been reassigned to a different Cabinet Minister since that announcement was made." He added, "The whole tourism program and funding for major tourism events is being reviewed." http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jul/09070615.html

Accusing the Prime Minister of Canada of supporting child pornography then failing to apologize was indeed a vicious act by Harper. But when you lack strengths like integrity and competence, resorting to vicious behaviour is often a better strategy than cutting-and-running.

Ignatieff left-leaning? I doubt that far left voters would go for Ignatieff. It will be the more moderate NDP and BQ voters who might strategically vote for the centrist Liberals. It's hard to imagine any middle-of-the-road or left-leaning voter EVER supporting a social conservative and apocalyptic evangelical type like Harper no matter how many times he tries to pretend that he isn't. http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun...x?postid=250271

Why did Stephen Harper find it necessary to apologize this time? He refused to apologize for his false claim that Paul Martin supports child pornography: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/stor...tos&no_ads= Perhaps the reason why he apologized this time was that he could transfer the blame to a staff member knowing that his supporters would happily buy into that cynical manipulation. Or perhaps Stephen Harper remembers that Paul Martin won the election after Harper failed to apologize. Be it a failure to apologize or apologizing while concurrently blaming a staff member, statesmanship, honour and integrity have never been among Harper's strengths.

Of course Harper despises him. Manning fired Harper as Finance critic and replaced him with Herb Grubel, a fiscal conservative who actually worked as an economist. Being a fiscal conservative and an economist, Grubel favoured income tax cuts rather than GST cuts. Manning also favoured cuts in personal income tax rates. Today, personal income tax rates are no lower than they were in 2005 before big spender Harper became Prime Minister. Harper has shown contempt for fiscal conservatism while continuing to appease the social conservatives in his party.

What that same poll also indicates is that 44% of Canadians would prefer a Liberal government and 33% would prefer a Conservative government.

Now you do. "About two decades ago, Harper shifted away from the mainline Protestant denominations of his father and began finding a home in the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church, which has about 2.5 million members and 14,000 congregations worldwide. One fifth of its members live in North America, with Alberta a Canadian hotbed. Since Harper moved in 2003 to Ottawa, he has been attending the capital city's Christian and Missionary Alliance Church, called East Gate, under the guidance of Pastor Bill Buitenwerf." http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/s...96-76f3db32808e

"It may be the heartland of the ‘it’s Adam-and-Eve not Adam-and-Steve’ crowd, but Saskatoon still hosted a Pride Festival last month featuring family walks, a pub crawl, the obligatory gay parade and a prom night drag queen show. The federal government reportedly found it worth $9,000 of your tax dollars to support this annual gay lifestyle celebration for the first time, courtesy of Heritage Minister James Moore. Last I checked, Moore is still forking over cash to anyone who performs a decent headstand. Not so fortunate is Calgary MP Diane Ablonczy. Diane Ablonczy was a serious political operator in the fledgling Reform party, which has evolved into the current Conservatives, in the late 1980s while a guy named Stephen Harper was still writing his masters thesis on the evils of government deficits. She has proven repeatedly she deserves a senior job in the Harper government, both to enhance the calibre of female representation and to raise the collective cabinet IQ But by taking steps to reduce her powers while leaving her largely undefended, the pride of Calgary remains weak in cabinet." http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/f...czy-s-fall.aspx

As I recall, the NDP initially supported Canadian participation in the NATO-led bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

But the Harper government denies that Ablonczy lost control of the program because she funded the parade: "Conservative MP Brad Trost, a critic of the Pride Week grant, is suggesting that the Harper government stripped Ms. Ablonczy of responsibility for the fund as a punishment. He implied in an interview with LifeSiteNews.com, a socially conservative news service, that Ms. Ablonczy lost control of the $100-million Marquee Tourism Events Program because the gay pride grant embarrassed the Tories. The Harper government, however, denies Ms. Ablonczy has been punished, saying it was always expected that she would eventually relinquish control of the program to Industry Minister Tony Clement. "She remains the Minister for Small Business and Tourism," said Darren Cunningham, Mr. Clement's director of communications." http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/nation...article1210367/ Social conservative Harper wants it both ways...appeasing the social conservatives while claiming just the opposite. Being truthful has never been one of his strengths. It's reminiscent of his sleazy attempt to "revisit" same sex marriage in parliament in December, 2006. On the one hand, he claimed the "revisit" was because he had "promised" this to the social conservatives. On the other hand, while he voted for it, he absolved himself of appearing to be a social conservative by stating that he knew his motion would not pass.

Lifesitenews is no fan of John Baird either: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/060627a.html

Apparently Prime Minister Harper does not deny some of his more bizarre beliefs: "End times thinking is a part of Alliance Church doctrine, based on the Book of Revelation. Prominent leaders of Stephen Harper's Christian and Missionary Alliance Church denomination, particularly B.C. pastor/author William Goetz, author of the bestselling Apocalype Next (book cover below), have been at the forefront of teaching that Jesus should return to save the sin-filled Earth in a cosmic cataclysm." http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun...x?postid=250271

You don't think that Ignatieff's work as a radio and television broadcaster counts as a job? You don't think that Ignatieff publishing hundreds of articles and numerous books is work yet apparently accept that being a lifetime professional politician like Harper is a real job? You might perceive the rest of my post as inane but can you describe which part of it below is untrue? "Harper is nothing more than a professional politician who jumped from the Liberals to the Progressive Conservatives to the Reform Party, who suddenly underwent a religious conversion to become a member of Preston Manning's evangelical church, then joined the extremist Northern Foundation then quit the foundation when he claimed it had extremist members, then had a falling out with Preston Manning and quit the Reform Party and jumped to the National Citizens Coalition, then joined the Alliance Party, then had a falling out with Tom Flanagan, his longtime mentor. How many Canadians remember that Manning fired Harper as Finance Critic and replaced him with Herb Grubel, a financial conservative with a PhD in Economics?" Can you imagine the CPC attack ads if Ignatieff had been nothing more than a professional politician all his life like Harper?

I suspect that there's a more compelling reason why Evangelicals like Stephen Harper and his Christian and Missionary Alliance Church are staunch supporters of Israel. The establishment of Israel is a prerequisite for the second coming of Jesus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/564094

"If he has..." Do you think Ignatieff's position differs?

Or maybe it's because Canadians prefer a government which spends like a drunken sailor. "Here's an idea for Michael Ignatieff if he's still looking for an excuse to bring down the Tories: The Liberal leader should force an election on the basis that the country needs a conservative government. We don't seem to have one at the moment. If Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page is right, what we have is a deficit-crazed pack of wild spendomaniacs, who have drunk so deeply at the well of the God Stimulus that we'll be $160 billion in the hole by 2014, with a permanent $12 billion structural shortfall and no way out other than to cut spending or raise taxes." http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/f...hen-harper.aspx

Where did I say that I either want to raise the retirement age or deny people who've paid taxes for three or four decades a pension?

Liberal intellectual versus social conservative, born-again Evangelical Christian?

We don't need to dig up any dirt on Harper. Canadians have short memories. They need to be reminded of Harper's history.

One of the two candidates that Layton pushed out was Kirk Tousaw, a lawyer and NDP candidate in Vancouver Quadra. The offending video showed Tousaw smoking a joint in 2005. Jack Layton himself acknowledges that he smoked marijuana "in the past" and describes it as a wonderful substance: http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/4329.html A tad hypocritical of Layton but no more so than what we usually see from Harper and Ignatieff. In any event, it doesn't really matter who the NDP runs in Quadra. It's the safest Liberal riding in BC and the NDP usually runs a distant third or fourth in Quadra.

Unfortunately with employment now at its highest level in decades, this means that seniors are taking away jobs from the young and this is building resentment among the young: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/business/21age.html