Teddy Ballgame

- gerryhatrick ... 1) No, you don't feel sorry for Bush. In truth, you are well know to be the biggest left wing whackjob on this board (and that is saying a lot) when it comes to having a pathological hatred for Bush and for Harper over here, a nonstop penchant for twisting and turning and distorting and misquoting everything Bush and Harper do and say to make them look as bad as you possibly can, and an eagerness to troll 24/7 on every far left mindlessly partisan blog in cyberspace to find things you can use on your nutty crusade against Bush, Harper and anyone else not to the left of Che Guevera's ghost. 2) WHAT - EXACTLY - DO YOU FIND SO OFFENSIVE WITH BUSH'S QUOTE? IS IT: 1/ You strongly favour socialist dictatorships like the old USSR and are still mouring its passing and resent Bush's effrontery in criticising even the new Russia? 2/ You think that the leader of the world's only hyperpower should be "seen and not heard" and keep his mouth and his nose out of the affairs of the rest of the world and allow your corrupt mugs, thugs and slugs in the UN to dictate the state of world affairs which means usually just ignoring the ruthless tyrannts who repress, ensalve, impoverish, torture and kill their countrymen and neighbours by the hundreds of thousands as your good pal Saddam Insane used to do in Iraq? 3/ You contend that Bush is wrong to be the strongest ever US presidential advocate of fundamental democratic change including freedom of the press and of religion and other manifestations of open government and open economies and should keep silent on what most discerning people see as some disquieting and disturbing backsliding by Putin in Russia concerning democratic freedoms? 4/ You are anti-US and Bush, pro-Russia and Putin, and are opposed to freedom of the press and freedom of relgion and even opposed to those who favour such freedoms? 3} WHAT - EXACTLY - DID YOU LIKE SO MUCH ABOUT PUTIN'S QUOTE? 1/ That instead of actually addressing Bush's well founded concerns about new restrictions in Russia on freedom of speech, assembly, the press and religion - thereby threatening the country's still emerging democracy - he chose to take a cheap and superficial shot at the even newer and more fragile democracy in Iraq? 2/ That his cheap and superficial shot at Iraqi democracy was especially hilarious to you in that if it were up to Putin and his ilk and useful idiots like you there would be no democracy at all in Iraq and Saddam Insane would continue to be ensalving, impoverishing, torturing and killing Iraqis by the thousands? You know, except for Biblio Bublia (sic) who was known as Rudyard The Insane on prior forums and is quite clearly insane as well as someone whose nonstop libelling, stalking, harrassing and outing of others on former boards got him suspended from said boards for life, you are the most annoying character on this board due to your obvious hard left bias and your equally obvious animus and bile for Bush, Harper and all of those not on the left. It will probably get me banned from here for saying so but, frankly, I could care less if Greg The Legend of Lethbridge wants to act like an ass again and ban me instead of nutters like you and Biblio.

- Amid the loony lefties and the merely misguided lefties continuing crusade to make the world safer and more inviting for tyranny, terrorism, poverty, repression and totalitarian, anti-Western values by denigrating the US administration, opposing the use of US military forces everywhere and magnifying every atypical incidence of rogue soldiering to discredit the military comes a comprehensive and revealing study of the extraordinarily benifical impact of the long term presence of US troops in countries around the world. - As The Globe's Neil Reynolds reports below, this study provides abundant evidence that long term commitments of US troops abroad is directly associated with astounding improvements in the governance and economic performance of the host countries. - Indeed, countries with a high presence of US troops in the last 50 years of the 20th century enjoyed per capita GDP levels of nearly double the world average. In fact, the study indicated that this one factor - the long term presence of significant numbers of US troops - correlated by far the most strongly with the increased GDP levels in the countries concerned compared with any other factor including foreign aid, democracy and even the rule of law (which was determined to be the second most significant factor in these countries' superior levels of economic growth). - As Reynolds' column and the summary of the study which you can find online under "US troops and economic growth" suggest, it is difficult to ascribe specific weights to the numerous factors which combined to produce the remarkable growth of the fortunate countries that have enjoyed long term US troops commitments such as Germany, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Turkey. Freer and more open governance and economies, the rule of law, natural resources, foreign aid, declining corruption, US military salaries and other "in country" spending, enlightened domestic leadership, high quality labour forces and geographic proximity to trading opportunites all play their part. - However, as one who has travelled and lived in several countires including some that have had the great benefit of US troop concentrations and others that have not, I have at least a tentative theory as to why the long term presence of US troops has such an overwhelmingly strong correlation with superior economic growth. - In my view, this presence of sizable numbers of US troops for lengthy periods of time - over fifty years in many countries - ensures that most of the other growth factors including stability, the rule of law, more democratic governments and freer economies, declining levels of corruption in government and business, and more enlightened and outward looking domestic leadership are manifested and strengthened. - Any objective student of post WWII history will acknowledge that the long term commitment of US troops - in some cases initially by occupation, in others by request, and later on by mutually agreed long term alliances in all cases - brought with it not just US military spending and a rooting out of the bad guys but the establishment of stability and the gradual development of western liberal values of governance and wealth creation and sharing. - Contemplating the economic evidence from this study, US military personnel serving overseas can be very proud of their cumulative positive impact on the prosperity and freedom of the countires in which they have been not merely US mercenaries on military missions but on the ground ambassadors of the western values, attitudes and practices that have improved the world more in the past fifty years than has been the case in any other comparable period in history. - US troops can also be encouraged that they and their commander in chief are very likely to be seen in the long term as on the right side of history ... not just taking on the terrorists in the terrorists' lairs to keep their own country safe but proactively establishing democratic templates in the Middle East that will ultimately flourish in prosperity, peace and freedom. - They should also take away from this study the perspective that building better societies takes time and therefore they should steadfastly ignore the left wing weasels, opportunists and useful idiots who preach the bootless gospels of cut and run, moral relativism, pacifism and isolationism. FOREIGN AFFAIRS Key to economic growth? U.S. troops NEIL REYNOLDS OTTAWA -- In postwar Germany, the Americans invested 10.4 million troop years -- defining a troop year as a single soldier for one year -- in the most successful military occupation of the 20th century. In Japan, they invested 3.9 million troop years. In South Korea, 3.3 million troop years. In these three countries, the U.S. made long-term security commitments and kept them. They didn't cut and run. And the three countries built workable institutions, developed advanced economies and achieved high rates of economic growth. Could Afghanistan and Iraq do the same? Using sophisticated econometric analysis, two U.S. economists say yes, they could. Indeed, they say the long-term presence of U.S. soldiers essentially ensures superior governance and economic performance. Garett Jones is an academic economist in Illinois. Tim Kane is a research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. In March, they published a study titled "U.S. Troops and Economic Growth." They analyze growth rates in 94 countries during the past 50 years of the 20th century -- countries to which the U.S. had deployed troops. (At the bottom of the list, the unfortunate Rwanda -- with a mere three U.S. troop years.) They conclude: "Countries that host large numbers of U.S. troops experience large and persistent increases in their long-term growth rate." How large are these increases? How persistent? "Countries with a high presence of U.S. troops during 1950-2000," they say, "enjoyed GDP levels, per capita, nearly double the world average." Further: "The difference between having a single U.S. soldier or 1,000 U.S. soldiers is an additional full percentage point of per-capita GDP growth a year." Multiply this by 20 years or 30 years and you can make a real difference. Between 1960 and 2000, for all 94 countries, the average increase in GDP was 1.86 per cent a year. For the 10 countries with the highest presence of U.S. troops, the average was 3.25 per cent a year. For the next 10 countries, with a more modest presence of U.S. troops (including such countries as Turkey and Morocco), the average was 2.82 per cent a year. For the 50 countries with only a negligible presence of U.S. troops, the average was 1.22 per cent a year. In 1960, the countries with the most U.S. troops produced per-capita GDP of $4,916 (U.S.); by 2000, they had tripled this number to $16,413. By contrast, the 50 countries with marginal U.S. troop presence had increased per-capita GDP from $2,523 to only $5,505. Mr. Jones and Mr. Kane measured other factors that might explain the statistical differences -- elements of democracy and the rule of law, corruption, natural resources, national income, the direct economic benefit of U.S. military salaries. They conclude that the only "statistically significant" extraneous factor was the rule of law, which (they determine) always pays off economically -- more strongly than democracy. They also looked at foreign aid. Between 1950 and 2000, expressed in 2004 dollars, the U.S. gave more than $500-billion in foreign aid. In particular, Mr. Jones and Mr. Kane examined the contribution made to long-term economic growth by the Marshall Plan, the most celebrated foreign aid program in U.S. history. In four postwar years (1949 through 1952), the U.S. gave $90-billion to the countries of Western Europe. Mr. Jones and Mr. Kane conclude that the Marshall Plan contributed nothing significant to Europe's long-term prosperity. "In a sharp rebuke to conventional wisdom," they write, "foreign aid is economically and statistically insignificant alongside U.S. troop presence." It wasn't foreign aid that rescued Germany, Japan, France and Italy after World War II. It wasn't U.S. foreign aid that sustained South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Turkey during the Cold War. It was, simply, the transformative presence of the American military -- which, according to Messrs. Jones and Kane, "is more important than peace itself for improving pro-growth institutions." How could this be? "Whether in Kosovo or Iraq," they say, "U.S. troops are intimately involved with the civil life of those countries -- training police, resolving disputes, holding elections." Mr. Kane says: "If the past is prologue, U.S. [military] alliances with Iraq, Afghanistan, Qatar and other Middle Eastern states will reap rewards in peace, democracy and prosperity for these countries, too." Mr. Jones and Mr. Kane concede an important qualification. The economic advantage provided by U.S. troops occurred only in countries where they were welcomed. Canada now has troops in Afghanistan, perhaps for the long haul. By most accounts, the Afghans want us there. Extrapolating from the findings of Mr. Jones and Mr. Kane, we now have more reason than ever to regard the mission as foreign aid in its finest sense and in its most effective form.

How typically Calgarian... - BD ... Harper is supposed to be the one totally lacking a sense of humour but clearly he takes second place to you in this category. I realise, of course, that your obvious and obsessive animus and bile to anyone not well to the left of Che Guevera's ghost renders you unable to appreciate a sense of humour or anything else about conservative politicians like Harper and Bush. But clearly, Harper was MAKING A JOKE when he observed that a picture of him wearing an Edmonton jersey would be held against him by Calgary hockey fans. - The reason he didn't wear an Edmonton jersey is because he is the prime minister not the head male cheerleader or Don Cherry's understudy and he is less likely than your previous heros Jean Chretien and Paul Martin to indulge in cheap and classless publicity stunts. - Obviously, he is NOT NEUTRAL about the Cup finals which is why he took time out of his busy schedule to fly to Edmonton and cheer the Oilers on in person. Obviously, he understands and appreciates good hockey no matter what team is playing which is why he is writing a history of hockey in Western Canada as a hobby and a labour of love. But to expect him to comport himself like a Don Cherry stand in attired in a hockey jersey and maybe one of Don's nifty hats and multi-coloured jackets is simply stupid and not like the man. - He was also MAKING A JOKE when he recently observed in Parliament that the Liberals in 13 years in power failed to deliver a Stanley Cup to Canada, that the last Canadian team to win (Montreal in 1993) did so with the Conservatives in power, and that his administration aimed to bring the Cup back home to Canada after the long Liberal drought. - Just as obviously, he was also MAKING A JOKE recently on the steps leading up to his Centre Block office when he responded to a reporter's question as to whether he was concerned about the alleged terrorists' plot to kidnap, torture and behead him by saying, "Those things don't bother me as long as they're not coming from my own caucus." - You know, the more I see of Harper's coolness under pressure, his obvious mastery of the complex files he recently took custody of, the focused, businesslike, effective way he and his cabinet do the nation's business, the remarkable progress he has made in mere months in keeping his campaign commitments, AND YES, HIS DRY, UNDERSTATED SENSE OF HUMOUR, the more I see Harper and his government deserving and earning at least a couple of terms as a majority government. This, if nothing else, will lead to partisan lefties like you desperately dregging up anything no matter how absurd to discredit Harper, even whether he wears a certain hockey jersey. - The more I see of you, on the other hand ....

- CANUCK ... Yes, somehow I missed those uniquely Canadian torture techniques. Not only did I miss those but I am now informed that there are still more anti-terrorist torture techniques favoured by Canada's correctional service. Oh when will this savagery end? Myself, I blame it all on Bush and of course Harper and lets not forget the nefarious neocon policies of Reagan and Thatcher not to mention Churchill and Borden! - In any case, here are 7 MORE CANADIAN ANTI-TERRORIST TORTURE TECHNIQUES: 7/ Phone service from the prison to Islamabad is sometimes "crackly and indistinct". 6/ Fellow inmates monopolize the TV, watching jiggle shows instead of Al-Jazeera or the CBC. 5/ One guard once made eye contact with one of the prisoners, causing feelings of persecution and objectivication in the poor freedome fighter. 4/ The muezzin giving the daily call to prayer in the prison is occasionally off-key. 3/ The chick-pea to tahina ratio in the prison cafeteria hummus is ever so slightly "OFF". 2/ The prison chaplain didn't have enough copies of "Protocols of The Elders of Zion" on his last visit, forcing some inmates to have to share. and 1/ Oppressive facility rules forbid visitors to bring bombs with them. How can we allow this inhuman torture to continue? Vote Liberal next time and they will put a stop to this barbaric behaviour by prison guards. Vote NDP and they will not only stop this torture, they'll organize a terrorists' union to strike for better prison conditions for Islamo-fascist terrorists. Their first union demand will be for management to order a lock out! The new union will be known as the National Union of Terrorists and Sympathizers or NUTS for short.

- Like all left thinking Canadians, I was shocked and appalled to learn from the lawyers of the 17 alleged terrorists that these poor misunderstood lads have been subjected to "cruel and unusual punishment" or as several of their lawyers called it, torture! - Surely, as The Red Tsar has noted, if we torture the terrorists, the terrorists win. (I'm not sure of the logic here since the corollary would be if we wine and dine and give in to the terrorists, we win but in any case since the Tsar says so, it must be right.) - Among the specific examples of this savage torturous treatment by Canadian prison guards of these put upon freedom fighters are the following: - Being locked in a small concrete cell without windows (instead of being housed in smart little prison cottages or townhouses with lots of windows and beautiful scenic views of The Rockies and the Pacific like some of our prisoners in BC). - Having their meals slipped to them under a small slit in the door (as opposed to being able to order out for pizza or to barbeque steaks like many of our federal prisoners). - Having the lights left on 24 hours a day (rather than having control of their own mood lights for romantic conjugal visits like some other federal prisoners). - MOST DAMNING OF ALL, in at least one case having a guard touch a prisoner's ribs, knowing the prisoner was ticklish, and then having that guard "giggle a bit." - WOW! I haven't heard of such heinous and heartless treatment since Hitler strung up his victims with piano wire after the July 44 plot to assassinate him or Saddam Insane cut off the hands and then shot his two sons in law because he thought they might be conspiring against him. - And what is even worse, I hear that there are even more severe forms of torture awaiting these poor misunderstood and falsely maligned freedom fighters in the days ahead. - Here for the information and mobilization of the usual useful idiots of the loony left are The Top 7 Canadian Torture Techniques vs The Alleged Terrorists: 7/ The only reading allowed the terrorists are the collected task forces' reports on the fiscal imbalance and the federal equalization formula. 6/ The only TV available is CBC reruns of Al Waxman as "The King of Kensington". 5/ The 24 hour muzak is a continuous tape of Celine Dion singing "My Heart Will Go On" en francaise. 4/ Instead of korans, the terrorists are required to pray using copies of Trudeau's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 3/ The guards are constantly playing "pull my finger" pranks and sometimes hide whoopee cushions under the prayer mats. 2/ Instead of the low rent losers who initially represented them, the court assigns to their defence the two best criminal lawyers currently practising in Canada, Clayton Ruby and Edward Greenspan. 1/ For meals, only poutine smothered in gravy until their arteries harden! Oh the horror! Oh the inhumanity! Have I missed any other uniquely Canadian torture techniques here? If so, please advise soonest! We must be vigilant in defending the rights and priveleges and needs and wants and whims and fancies of these innocent victims of Western liberal democracy.

The Peel Region spends 1.2 billion per year. The government of Newfoundland spends 4.9 billion per year. Your facts are wrong. - Riverwind ... Of course his facts are totally and laughably wrong. Clearly he is an obsessed and ignorant nutter in the Biblio Bublia league and will therefore refuse to change either his mind or the subject. - You are correct that Peel's operating budget for 2006 is $1.2 B. Its capital budget is $452 M for a total 2006 budget of $1.652B. This puts it at NO HIGHER AND PROBABLY LOWER than 16th among governmental budgets in Canada and nowhere near the top five which all have budgets of anywhere from 150X (federal) to 20X Peel's modest budget. As you pointed out, Newfoundland and Labrador's budget is 3 times Peel's. Other much larger public budgets than Peel's include all THE provinces except PEI, the federal government, and all major municipal budgets such as Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, etc. - Regrettably, Greg's only concern is that everyone be very polite and diplomatic with everyone else even if they parrot the most ridiculous and inaccurate and distorted crap in their posts. This is why the board is dominated by hard left and hard right zealots rather than by more balanced and knowledgeable posters who tend to post here rarely if at all and who only come here periodically to scan the latest idiocy for amusement.

- August1991 ... Thank you very much. Never fear, at my age I allow nobody to hijack my style, engaging or otherwise. Having said that, I fully expect the self appointed Legend of Lethbridge Gregg to swoop down momentarily and to once again come to the defence of the nutter known here as Biblio Bubli and ban me again from this board, this time permanently. I could care less. And so, it seems, could everyone else other than the nutter Biblio Bubli who was responsible for my banning and yet lied thereafter about being a friend of mine and kept complaining about my banning and asking when I would be reinstated. Others, it seems, are only interested in the sound of their own voice and could care less if an informed and articulate poster is unfairly banned and/or if an absolute nutter is allowed to pollute the board on a daily basis.

- You are incorrect. There are several governments in addition to the four you have named that are bigger than Peel Regional Government in terms of both employees and budgets. In addition to the feds, Ontario, Toronto and Montreal, other larger than Peel governments include the Province of Quebec, the Province of BC, the Province of Alberta, and the Greater Vancouver Regional Government. If you use only budgets as the criterion of size, there are others clearly larger than Peel including the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia. - The fact that you appear to have extracted this "information" from wikipedia means absolutely nothing because wikipedia is NOT an authoritative encyclopedia but rather a "peoples' encyclopedia" which means that any nutter who has an axe to grind may vent his spleen by making an entry in wikpedia without fear of correction. In this sense, it is much like this board. If you read the entry you cite, you will note that it provides no corroborating numbers and is replete with spelling mistakes and obviously is not to be taken seriously. - I am no fan of Peel Regional Government or of the regional type of government structure with its lesser and removed degree of democratic accountability. Having said this, it is obvious from this thread that you have an intensely felt grievance and personal axe to gring that may blind you to the objectivity necessary to make rational points credibly. If you have something specific, rational, supportable and credible to say about regional government or Peel in particular, kindly say it. Otherwise, you come off like the kind of nutter who has discouraged me from posting regularly on this board, sort of like The Lotus Land Lunatic Biblio Bubli, one of Gregg's great favourites.

- This post was an unintentional duplicate of the one following it so I have deleted it.

- W - Yes, there is little argument that Mulroney's administration not only talked about and promised and tried but actually accomplished more on the environmental front than any of our other federal governments past or present. There were 12 jurors with environmental credentials who voted on the greenest PM in our history. Almost all of them were on the left side of the political divide which meant that Mulroney was at a considerable disadvantage at the outset of the jury deliberations. Nonetheless, he received five votes, Trudeau the lefties' lovechild only managed three, and the remaining four were split among four of the other 20 Canadian PMs. - Tellingly, none of the four PMs who succeeded Mulroney received a single vote. Most tellingly, the fiercely partisan and pro-Chretien Liberal Sheila Copps - who managed a seat on the 12 person panel because Chretien had made her his Minister of the Environment in the early 90s - couldn't bring herself to vote for her old boss. She voted for Sir John A. MacDonald who started the national parks system (Mulroney finished it with eight new national parks). I guess expecting Tequila Sheila - the leader of the infamous Rat Pack who attacked Mulroney mercilessly every day in the House - to vote for Brian was just too big a stretch. But at least she was honest enough not to vote for Chretien and his Kyoto con job.

- In his typically incisive fashion, Toronto Sun Assocaite Eeditor Lorrie Goldstein's column today cuts through the left wing special interest groups' smoke screens and cant and self-interest on the day care front and reveals several points that the left wing big government day care lobby has tried mightily to keep hidden. - The column is found under http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Goldstein_Lorrie Here are just a few of the excellent points Lorrie raises: - The largest single group of young children in Canada by far, 46%, continues to be cared for by a parent in the home. - Of the remaining 54% in child care, fewer than one in three (just 28% of the 54%) are in institutional daycare, the only type of care that would benefit under the defeated Liberal government’s five-year, $5-billion daycare promise. - Daycare remains the least popular of the three major child care options chosen by parents. More than twice as many children in child care (60% of the 54%) are cared for by a relative or non-relative. Parents choosing these types of child care, and stay-at-home-parents, are ignored by the Liberal plan. - In a major poll released last year, the Vanier Institute of the Family found 90% of Canadians believe that in two-parent families, one parent should, ideally, stay at home to raise the children. Daycare centres ranked a distant fifth when people were asked who should care for pre-school children, behind parents, grandparents, other relatives and home daycare. Good work, Lorrie. Clearly nocrap and the daycare lobby is just out of touch with the thinking of most people on this issue — people who want daycare to be one option available for parents, but certainly not the only one promoted (and funded) by the state. No matter how much the daycare lobby tries to pretend otherwise.

- Four days before the January 23rd federal election I wrote the following column in a blog set up for the election. - Given two of our more popular threads here - the one in which the lefties plead feverishly for us to hand over yet more billions of our hard earned incomes to the government for a prohibitively expensive child care program and the one in which the righties argue passionately for PM Harper to return more of our money to us in both income and sales tax reductions, I think and hope you find that my column affords some food for thought about the position of those including me who want to see - at least in the mid to long term - a real reversal of the insidious trend over the last several years for Canadian governments to confisticate ever more of our discretionary income. - Enjoy and comment if you are so inclined: - Next Monday, Canadians will reveal whether or not they are cognizant of, and opposed to, their increasing servitude to the State. If they are aware and aghast at how much their economic freedom has eroded under Liberal rule, they will throw the rascals out. And while all Harper can do in a first term, particularly with a minority government, will be to put the breaks on the federal appetite for relieving Canadians of more and more of their discretionary income - in effect, to ordain a pit stop on our road to serfdom - a second and subsequent Tory terms might well result in a reversal of this pattern of federal confistication during the past several decades. - Let us compare what has happened in the government-citizen economic balance in the years since 1961 in Canada and in our closest neighbour, ally, partner and competitor, the USA. The Canadian GDP in 1961 was 85% of the US GDP and it has remained (2004 figures) at that level - albeit with numerous fluctuations - since those days of Diefenbaker. - In aggregate personal income - our gross pre-tax income - we have done even better. Canadian pre-tax income in 1961 was 67% of US income per capita and by 2004 it had risen to 78% - a very significant advance of 11% vis-a-vis our American cousins. - HOWEVER, our personal disposable income (PDI) - what is still left in our hands from our incomes including all government transfer payments AFTER the deduction of personal income taxes and social security taxes - also known as our honest-to-God income tells the real story of our increasing serfdom and loss of economic freedom. In 1961, Canadians' PDI stood at 70% of Americans' PDI. Through the 1960s and 70s, it rose steadily and peaked in 1981 at 90% which represented a spectacular closing of the gap of almost 20%! Then, the bills from Trudeau's profligate and wasteful social programs and payoffs to the public sector unions plus his huge deficit borrowing, hefty tax hikes and concomittant high interest rates began to come due! - By the time Mulroney came to power in late 1984, our per capita PDI was in freefall! It levelled off during the Mulroney era and then resumed its precipitous decline during the past 12 Chretien-Martin years. At the end of 2004, Canadians' PDI stood at 65% of Americans' PDI - the lowest level in more than fifty years! If this trend line continues for another 25 years - which it would under successive Liberal administrations - Canadians would find themselves with precisely ONE-HALF the personal disposable incomes of Americans. - Now there are many people who have no problem with this. One is Martin's Communications Director Scott Reid who opined that one of Harper's policies (the day care assistance rebate of $1200 per child under six) to return money to the people who earned it would only be "blown on popcorn and beer" instead of on an overpaid army of unionized uncivil non-servants. In the minds of Liberals like Reid, Big Brother government knows best, is best trusted with the peoples' hard earned money, and it matters little if at all if Canadians like the serfs of centuries ago have no personal disposable income but exist as vassals of and under the benevolence of the almighty landlord/government. - But others including myself believe that we as people have needs separate and distinct from governments' needs, that we should have first claim on our own money, and that removing more and more of our incomes from our personal control takes us down the pernicious road to serfdom. They obviously understand this in the USA, in the UK since Maggie Thatcher set the economic agenda and launched the economic recovery there, and in almost all of the economies that are truly free, competitive, productive and prospering. But our Liberal masters have yet to get the message. - Indeed, the huge and growing gap between the PDIs of the USA and Canada is even worse than these figures show. In Canada, we have much higher sales taxes, except in Alberta, and sales taxes are NOT computed in these PDI stats. So the real gap is even more dramatic in terms of what we really have left to spend on ourselves and our families. - And there is another gap that is worrisome and illustrative - it concerns personal disposable income as a percentage of personal income (i.e. real income as a percentage of illusionary income). In 1961, Americans' PDI stood at 89% of their aggregate incomes. And at the end of 2004, the figure was the same 89%! In other words, the USA has preserved the same relative importance of the citizen versus the state for over half a century. - But not so in Liberal Party dominated Canada! In 1961, our PDI stood at 90% of our aggregate incomes - a full percentage point ABOVE the American figure. By 2004, our PDI had declined to just 75% of aggregate incomes - an incredible fall of 15 percentage points and part of a trend in big government Canada. So it is obvious that the Canadian trend is to steadily diminish the relative importance and the economic freedom of the citizen at the hands of the State. - Now a person with steadily declining personal disposable income is increasingly a serf or vassal of the State. And the comparative savings and debt data are not much more comforting. By the end of 2004, the US personal savings rate had declined to one of its lowest levels in history, a picayune 2%. But the effective Canadian savings rate had declined to ZERO after peaking in the later Mulroney years in double digits. In terms of personal debt, the average Canadian worker now owes 113% of his personal disposable income which is roughly DOUBLE what his American counterpart owes. - For those who still haven't grasped the total picture, lets try to sum up. Canadians have comparatively much lower personal disposable incomes, lower savings and higher personal debts than the Americans AND THESE DESTRUCTIVE TRENDS CONTINUE. - Meanwhile, in Fat City, aka Ottawa, aka Ennui on the Rideau, the government is positively awash in cash. Through robbing Canadians of their incomes by several years of gross over-taxation, the federal Liberals have accumulated massive surpluses that will add up to well over $100 billion for the decade ending in FY 2007/8. The provinces, while having to spend more time than they would like on their knees going cap in hand to Captain Dithers to procure various one off and side deals in yet another form of Liberal money laundering, are not doing that badly either, at least compared with the actual citizens of the country. - In the USA, of course, where the people still count for more than the governments, it is the governments that are increasingly cash poor and indebted while it is the people who are thriving in relative terms. - Maybe this is the quintessential difference between Americans and Canadians. Americans believe that the people should have first claim on the money they have earned and should keep governments on a tight fiscal leash. Canadians - or at least the morons who habitually vote Liberal - believe that governments should have first claim on the peoples' money and should keep the people on a tight fiscal leash. - I know what approach I prefer. Next Monday, we'll see how many others agree with me

- S - Thanks for your support! I was blissfully unaware of this Drea character until she threatened me with the wrath of Greg. But this threat led me to scan her posts and quelle surprise! Like Nocrap, she is a decidedly left wing female who is anti-Harper and Conservative and Bush and US and our mission in Afghanistan and most of all she is anti Harper's child care package. Maybe Nocrap and she are related or sock puppets or something. Or maybe they are both monopoly public sector unionists who can't wait for the government to tax away every dollar we make and divvy it up among the child care and other unionists. - But it is interesting that the only defence Drea dredges up to support her position is the threat of censorship and banning. - In my experience, it is almost always the left wingers in this country who are the fascist censors, deleters, banners and bitchers when it comes to the exercise of free speech. The insufferable, ridiculous to the point of self paraody, Stalinesque rabble board is a classic case in point. - Perhaps you have read "1984" and recall the way that the authorties used a new language known as "Newspeak" to control the masses. The thing about "Newspeak" is that everything was the exact and polar opposite of what it pretended to be with truth being actually lies, peace being war, freedom being slavery, etc. I'm sure both Drea and Nocrap would be right at home using Newspeak. - Nevertheless, I'll acquiesce in henceforth pretending that ALLCRAP is really Nocrap. I do want to continue posting here without any hassles from Greg. And I also want Nocrap to continue posting here not because she is so easy to vanquish in debate but mainly because her positions and the rationale for them are usually so ridiculous that they actually gain converts to the other side which is the side I usually tend to support. So if we didn't have a Nocrap here, we conservatives might have to invent one.

- S - I simply cannot believe that the former CEO of Canfor the largest forestry products conglomerate in BC, the former head of the Greater Vancouver Airport Authority, the former deputy minister of finance in BC, and a former and current cabinet minister would be so indiscrete and irresponsible and suicidal (careerwise) as to sit down with the direct competition and unleash a barrage of criticism at his own boss and his own team, knowing it would be used against him by the competition. - Nor can I believe that a cagey reader and leader of people like David Emerson was not already somewhat familiar with his fellow University of Calgary economics graduate PM Harper's personality and management style before he ever crossed the floor to work for him. - But I can believe and I do believe that Liberal backroom boys, especially in these increasingly desperate times, will be highly selective in what they hear and in how they spin what they hear. - I also can and do believe the Toronto Star has been the pampered pet of the Liberal Party for over a century and will eagerly report anything that will hurt the Conservatives and help the Liberals, no matter how flimsy and suspect the evidence may be, which is what they did here. After the Star ran it, first inb their satellite papers and then in the flagship paper, the Globe and others had no competitive option except to also run with the story. But let us be clear that it was originated by the Liberals and the Liberal loving Star.

- I'm still grieving over the failure of my Maple Leafs to make the playoffs. Of course, it wasn't a total surprise. The Leafs this year suffered from a serious drug problem - formaldahyde. For most of the season, the busiest red light district in Toronto was the area directly behind the Leafs' goal. Maybe this was because the sign "anyone caught interferring with the play will be ejected from the stadium" was interpretted by the Leafs' defencemen as applying to them. And the team especially at the start of the season was just too old. After all, when they need a second trainer just to deal with the varicose veins you know the team is too old. - Oh well, there's always next year and the forty years after that.

- ALLCRAP ... You might like to know that in Canada we have a means of determining which of our political parties is in closest touch with the feelings, views, needs and wants of the grassroots and which of our parties has grown out of touch with the grassroots and what they want their representatives to do. It is called an ELECTION. In this interesting and innovative process, all the people who want a voice in how their country is governed get to vote to select the representatives they deem to be most in touch with them and their values, views and priorities. - Strangely enough, we just had one of these new fangled election thingies just three months ago tomorrow. And guess what, ALLCRAP? The plurality of voters decided that Harper's Conservatives and their five immediate priorities including their child care policy was most in touch with their views and needs. - Since then, all that has happened is that the Conservatives have continued to gain in popularity and the Liberals have continued to implode and to decline in popularity (the gap in popular support ranges from a low of ten points to a high of 19 points) so that an election today would result in a Conservative majority government. - But you keep on pitching, ALLCRAP. I get a kick out of you and your inventive posts. No wonder you are so enamoured of Count Iggy. He in one of his rare and brief sojourns in the country he now seeks to lead taught a creative writing course at Banff. So like you, he values "creative" writing. Indeed, examining the Liberal Red Books and annual surplus projections and other writings, it seems that they are all highly "creative" and so perhaps Count Iggy Ignatieff does after all have one qualification to lead the Liberals in that he is "creative" with the language.

- H - Believe it! Dedicated Harper haters and left leaning Liberal lovers like ALLCRAP are desperate to find something, anything at all, to use to reverse the growing popularity gap between Harper and his new government and the leaderless, principleless, moneyless Liberals who are now fighting not to catch up to the Conservatives but just to stay a few points up on the NDP as the (distant) second place party. - Since there has been hardly anything by way of early mistakes by the new government and PM, these dedicated folks must manufacture supposed mistakes and misstatements and embellish other occurences into looking like mistakes. Accordingly, we are here being asked to believe that an experienced senior executive with extensive CEO, deputy minister and ministerial credentials decided on the spur of the moment to sit down and spill his guts and vent his spleen about his boss and his organization with someone from the competition. Yes, a young Liberal backroomer desperate for another (political) leg up with his new boss Billy Graham just happened to get an earfull from Emerson and just happened to report the conversation to the Liberal house organ aka the Toronto Star. Gee, it must be true - have the Liberals and their house organ ever lied to us before? - Much more credible is Emerson's version of what took place in which he told the young Liberal aide how impressed he was with Harper's focused, disciplined business-like leadership and the way cabinet meetings are run (compared with the well know unfocused, scatter brained, inefficient and usually useless bitching sessions of Captain Panama Paul Dithers) and - to be as charitable as possible to the young Liberal aide - said person heard what he wanted to hear and spun it the way he wanted to spin it. - So it would be absurd to take the word of this Liberal aide over the word of an outstanding executive of Emerson's calibre, it would be absurd for Emerson to have made the comments the Liberal aide alleges that he made, and it would be reasonable to assume that Emerson as a former business executive of real talent and accomplishment regards as significantly better and more productive Harper's leadership and the Conservatives' cabinet sessions than Martin's leadership and the Liberal cabinet sessions. - But you are right in that it really is a non-issue well worth getting over.

- August1991 ... If you would like more detail, there is a softcover book published by Borealis Press in 2005 titled "The mad Bomber of Parliament Hill" written by an Ottawa lawyer named James Fontana. - At the time, I was finishing my degree in political science at Carleton and my mother was working on The Hill. She arranged a Members Gallery pass for me and I made a point of using it at least once a week for Question Period and/or the major debates of the time such as on capital punishment, the new flag, etc. I recall one day meeting the actor Gordon Pinsent who was playing an MP named Quentin Durgens (sic) in a weekly CBC TV drama of the same name. Pinsent was at the security desk when I came by on my way to the Gallery and a commissionaire was trying to phone upstairs to an MP's staffer who had prmised the actor a Gallery Pass. However, the line was busy. Being a fan of the show, I immediately loaned Pinsent my pass and then went and got another from my mother. We sat together in the Gallery for an hour or so and Pinsent was as friendly a Newfoundlander in person as he was in movies like The Rowdy Man. - Anyhow, the day of the bomber was a lovely summery day and I was a few minutes late getting to the Hill. By the time I arrived, the Members Gallery was full for Question Period so I went around to a general visitors gallery to see if I could get a seat there. As I was looking for a seat through the glass door into the gallery, I suddenly felt a brief rumbling of the floor like a small earthquake and heard a loud blast as from a cannon. Then, I also smelled what I later learned was the smell of burning dynamite powder. I remember thinking that it was past two o'clock so it was strange they would fire the noon hour cannon so late. A moment later, the hallway which had been empty except for me got crowded as the commissionaires herded me and everyone else on that floor of the building and in the galleries and the chambre outside onto the lawns of Parliament Hill. - None of us knew exactly what had happened so we all stood around for several minutes gossiping and speculating before making our way elsewhere since the actual parliamentary session was cancelled for the rest of the day. - On the evening news, we learned about the mad bomber and I realized that as the only one between the washroom and the gallery that I'd have been killed if the bomber Paul Chartier had an extra two seconds to open the thick and heavy washroom door before his dynamite exploded. - It may interest you to know that while there have been some security improvements on Parliament Hill in the subsequent forty years, security there remains laughably inefficient and lax compared with places like Congress in Washington and Westminister in London. For example, we have no less than five different types of security personnel on the Hill from RCMP to private guards for hire and these five operate in "splendid isolation" without even a means of communicating between the different groups. And we still have no bulletproof or other glass partitions seperating the Commons chambre from the visitors galleries so that a crazed megalomaniac like Chartier or a programmed islamo-fascist terrorist could even today throw the same sticks of dynamite that Chartier planned to throw from a seat in the gallery to the middle of the floor of the chambre, thereby blowing away our national leaders. In contrast, the Americans were smart enough to equip their congressional chambres with thick bullet and bomb proof glass in 1951 or 52. - So we were lucky in 1966 and it seems we still count on luck today. This, to me, is ridiculous and I and others have pointed out for years some of the security shortfalls on The Hill without managing to rouse the sombulent bureaucrats in the Speaker's office to do very much about it. I just hope it doesn't take a major security disaster to finally get comprehensive and effective action to properly protect our leaders and representatives.

- I'm doing my disaster preparedness by urging my new federal government to abandon the disgusting and disfunctional but politically expedient anti-Americanism and anti-Bush rhetoric of the Chretien-Martin gang as well as to encourage the new government to rebuild our armed forces run down shamefully by the Liberals and to tighten up our farcically liberal immigration, refugee, border security and criminal justice systems. - These things will help to ensure that the Americans continue to lead the war on islamo-fascist terrorism, continue to discharge the main burden for North American defence against terrorism on our shores, and that we also finally play a strong part in our own defence against terrorists. - Other than that, and keeping my eyes and ears open to possible terrorists and terrorist attacks around me, I don't think there is much I can really do to prepare for such eventualities. - I also am something of a fatalist in these matters and reckon that if my time isn't up, it isn't up. For example, I was no more than three seconds away from being blown to bits by the nutter who tried to kill our political leaders in the Centre Block in 1966. But this guy had miscalculated his dynamite fuses and, fortunately for me as the only person in the hallway between the washroom and the Visitors Gallery at the time, he blew himself up inside the washroom with his hand on the thick oak door as he was about to open the washroom and stride across the 50 feet to the Visitors Gallery and enter the Gallery to throw the dynamite down on the floor of the Commons, thereby wiping out Pearson, Diefenbaker, Douglas, etc. I've also had other close scrapes with death. It doesn't keep me awake. - This reminds me of Mulroney's remarks the other evening when he received the environmentalist award and was musing about his situation exactly one year ago when he was very near death. Said Brian, "I'm like the old Irishman who said that every morning when he awoke he would stretch both his arms as far as he could in opposite directions and, if neither one was pushing up against the sides of a wooden box, he knew he was having a pretty good day."

- No, I live in what we modestly call the centrer of the universe, the greater Toronto area. In terms of population versus the rest of Canada, the GTA is like New York, LA and Chicago combined versus the rest of the US. This, combined with the arrogance and smugness and left-lib attitudes of so many Torontonians, probably explains some of the hostility from TROC for the GTA. - I was born and spent the first 8 years of my life in Moncton, New Brunswick. The RCAF put me through university and I discharged my military/ROTP obligation in Chatham, NB (now merged with Newcastle as Marimichi) from 1966-69 which is where I met Ted Williams, Yvon "the fighting fisherman' Durelle and several other interesting characters. - I really like "The Picture Province" as NB is called but claim no current expertise in its political situation. - I can tell you that all the great ones come from New Brunswick, LOL. They include the late, great Dalton Camp, former PM RB Bennett, the guy who could have easily won the Liberal leadership if he'd wanted this poisoned chalice (Frank McKenna) and who did a great job as Liberal premier building the NB economy, the guy who will easily win the Conservative leadership (Bernard Lord) if Stephen Harper falters and who is doing a good job as the Conservative premier of NB, and many, many others. - cybercoma, I believe you'll find Fredericton to be a beautiful, friendly, peaceful city and NB to be a politically interesting and competitive province (Premier Lord and the PCs only have a one seat majority which, I contend, is the perfect democratic situation for the citizen-voter.) Enjoy.

- BD - 1/ I think that if we do not know our history, we are doomed to repeat it. I also think that knowing how previous leaders performed and in what context is essential to making realistic and reasonable evaluations of our current leaders and how they perform. As well, I believe that the main stream media is decidedly liberal in its orientation and accordingly the achievements of former Liberal leaders such as Trudeau and Chretien are embellished by the media while their transgressions and foul ups are ignored or airbrushed while Conservative leaders past and present get the reverse treatment. Since I contend that a healthy democracy requires at least two parties alternating power on a regular basis rather than the Liberals ruling in perpetuity, I consider it to be relevant to remind others of the dark sides of the Liberal leaders that the Liberal oriented media would prefer not to mention. For all of these reasons, I think we should discuss our political history, even history that goes way, way back by your standards, back as far as three years and even farther. 2/ If you don't like reading about political history and/or about former Liberal leaders, THEN DON'T READ THEM. I didn't "dredge up" this dormant thread, I noticed in the summary information that some other posters were reading it today so I was curious to read it myself. When I read it, I thought of Rick Mercer's hilarious put down of Chretien last night and decided to share it with others here by adding it to this thread. Obviously, you only like Mercer when he is cutting up the Conservative leaders. Tough. Nor did I initiaite the threads on Trudeau (or on Mulroney) as part of some obsession as you allege but because they were in the news THIS WEEK with the award to Brian and the book about Pierre's checkered youth. AGAIN, IF YOU DON'T LIKE THIS KIND OF THREAD, DON'T READ IT. 3/ Where did I say I could be selling this thread, my dissembling little nutter? Only my A material sells and sometimes it does not. Obviously, sitting down and typing without pause a quick political commentary does not constitute my A material. But it is certainly superior to anything you have written here that I have read. (Although in fairness, I - unlike you with my posts - don't bother to obsessively follow you around the board making sarcastic comments that add nothing to the discussion so I have read mercifully little of your left wing screeds.) Also unlike you, at least I do have A material and I do get paid for it. PS ... You mentioned in your snarky little note that Chretien has "been out of politics for three years". In actual fact, Chretien has only been out of politics for two years and three months. You didn't even know when Chretien had left office! But I understand. How could you know? He was A DO NOTHING PM. I am reminded of a do nothing president named Calvin Coolidge. When he died and Dorothy Parker was informed, she asked "How could they tell?". PS2 ... How far back - in your mind - are we allowed to go in our political discussions on this board. You've said that three years is too far back. How about two years or one year or one month or last week? Is yesterday OK with you? PS3 ... Since this thread the re-emergence of which so offends you was started last September, more than 18 months after Chretien's retirement, why didn't you write a stupid horse's ass post like thisd one THEN to whomever started the thread? Oh, wait, I get it! You are going to play tag team with your good pal Biblio Bublia aka Rudyard the Insane aka The Lotus Land Lunatic and follow me around like an obsessed nutter, unable to add anything of any value, able only to yap incessently at my heels like an annoying little terrier. If you do this, you will be ignored just as he is being ignored. PS4 ... If you are able to read simple numbers, you will readily see that threads initiated by me on this forum generate more readership and more responses than the average thread which means, smart ass, that even though YOU don't happen to like my writing (even though you can't seem to keep yourself from reading and responding to it), some other posters here DO. So don't be such a self centered horse's ass. Allow others to choose what they might wish to read and discuss. And you, why you can simply go away.

- Chretien was the most mediocre moron to occupy the prime ministership since the 19th century. He spoke neither offical language, looked like the driver of the getway car, attained the Liberal leadership through seniorty rather than merit, lied his way into 24 Sussex with the infamous conjob called The Red Book of 1993 and always put short term partisan political considerations (especially where Quebec was concerned) above the long term good of the nation. - His only accomplishment while in office was that he faithfully executed the courageous and bold and beneficial economic policy agenda of Brian Mulroney - the agenda Chretien he promised to scarp on order to steal power - including free trade, the GST, deregulation, privatization, tight monetary policy with attendant low interest rates and, a new emphasis on Canadian prodcutivity and competitiveness to continue and protect and enhance our status as the greatest export nation, proportionally, in the world. - His lies, boondoggles, bungling, burglary and missed opportunities are too numerous to list here and in any case have mainly been covered in earlier posts in this thread as well as in many of my own posts in other threads. - But I will leave this topic with an anecdote from last night's Ottawa dinner to honour Brian Mulroney as Canada's greenest prime minister. This has been covered in detail in my own thread on that honour but it is worth mentioning here that Chretien receieved NONE of the 12 votes from the environmental experts on the jury (Mulroney received five of the 12 votes from this mainly left leaning panel) for the simple reason that on the environmental file as with so many other files Chretien's initiatives were utterly useless. Even the rabidly Liberal individual he made his Minister of the Environment, Sheila Copps, refused to vote for him and chose MacDonald instead. - In any case, the co-host of the event was CBC's Rick Mercer, not the Tories' greatest fan, and in his humorous remarks he noted that some prime ministers did not accomplish the results Mulroney did because "they simply weren't in office for long enough to get things done." - Mercer than added, "I refer, of course, to John Turner, Kim Campbell and Jean Chretien." - Since everyone there knew that Chretien had been in office for more than a year longer than Mulroney, this deservedly brought the house down. Chretien, as he is with most in the know political observers, thus was a laughing stock last night as he usually is at other times.

- S - Indeed! In fact, I was being uncharacteristically circumspect in my remarks because I believe that Mulroney is not just easily our greatest living PM but one of the two greatest PMs among the 11 who have served Canada in the past fifty years. In my view, there is little question that Mulroney has been the greatest of these PMs in terms of economic policy while lester Pearson was the greatest of the bunch in terms of social policy. So I rank Mulroney and Pearson at the top of the pile and give Mulroney a slight edge because I contend that good socila policy is impossible without the good economic policy that provides the means to pay for the good social policy. - At the other end, I rank Pierre Trudeau as the worst and most destructive of the 11 modern PMs in light of his disasterous fiscal and economic policies, his divisive and wasteful social policies and his democratically destructive Chater initiative while placing his little bum boy who got the Liberla leadership through seniority Jean Chretien at the bottom as the most obtuse, unimaginative, inarticulate, ineffectual laughing stock to hold the office of PM.

- GH - In reality, the Bush White House, cabinet/secretary and deputy secretary levels have seen surprisingly little turn over in his more than five years in office, far less turnover than in the equivalent period of the Clinton administration. Here, you seem to be labouring to paint a negative picture of a bunch of panicky people jumping ship and all you can actually come up with is: 1/ After serving in the most high pressure and grinding job in any US administration, WH Chief of Staff, longer than anyone since Ike's CoS Sherman Adams in the 1950s, Andrew Card finally resigns to be replaced by an individual well regarded by senior members of both parties. 2/ The new CoS naturally decides to make some staff changes to make his job easier and accordingly he opts for a new Press Secretary and he does some minor tinkering including taking some responsbilities away from Rove and giving them to somebody else. So according to you, among the more than 100 people of senior WH, secretary and deputy secretary level, the departure of two of these executive level personnel and the changing of the job content of two others is "a surprising amount" and at a strange time. Yes, it is surprising but only because of the comparatively small number of staff changes which is a reflection of Bush's characteristic loyalty but, in my view, may not be enough changes to inject the new thinking and approaches and energy that is an essential process of organizational renewal that all organizations should periodically undertake. No, the timing is not surprising because it is early in Bush's second term and the logical time for making such executive level staff changes is in the relatively early stages of the second term which is where the Bush administration is. Perhaps you've been in the Canadian federal public sector where nobody is ever fired and nobody has their job content changed and if one executive out of a thousand is actually right sized or out placed or canned or make uncomfortable enough to want leave or leaves because he is fed up with the wrokload and pressures then the Ottawa psychiatrists do a landslide business for awhile as all the snivel serpants develop grrat feelings of anxiety and insecurity that they might actually be faced with having to go out and toil in the competitive market sector. Or maybe you've watched too many episodes of The West Wing, that left-lib Hollywood version of how things work in Washington. If so, let me remind you that while the Democrats will always win on The West Wing they generally and deservedly lose in real presidential elections involving real voters with just a single Democratic president elected twice in the past 61 years while the Republicans have elected four presidents twice in the same period. In summary, no story here. Best to move on to try manufacturing another more convincing anti-Bush tale.

ALLCRAP ... Coming from a poster with your reputation for objective and non-partisan observations, I am not surprised that you are now extolling the NDP over the CPC. Indeed, I would not be surprised if you were to extoll the Communists or the Marxist Leninists or the Groucho Marxists or The Lennon Sisters over the CPC. - Not to rain on your anti-CPC parade but under the British system of parliamentary democracy we elect individual MPs to exercise their best judgement to represent us in parliament and many times in British and Canadian and even US parliamentary/congressional history an individual MP decides that in his best judgement he can best represent his constituents and somtimes the country as a whole by crossing the floor to ally with a different group of parliamentarians and/or a different leader. For example, a chap you may have heard of named Winston Churchill crossed the floor on at least two occasions, at least six CA MPs crossed the floor after Stockwell Day became CA leader to sit with the Progressive Conservatives albeit as independents, and David Kilgour who served his Alberta constituents for many years also crossed the floor at least twice between the Liberals, Conservatives and independents. This is how our system works. Whether you happen to like it or not is neither here nor there. - No doubt the NDP is looking better all the time TO YOU but obviously your judgement about the rest of the electorate and your ability to relate to them leaves a lot to be desired ... according to the polls of the past three weeks, they are looking like a 14-21% party which at the top end (21%) puts them in a virtual tie with the imploding Liberals who got 22% in the same poll. But I doubt that PM Harper is losing a nanosecond of sleep about either the NDP or the Liberals.