Wild Bill

Why stop there, Harry? If things are as you say, then it is inevitable that the NDP will win 308 seats! That's right, all of them! I'm just following your extrapolations here and that's how they would have to end up! In fact, with a few seats we would have to have a recount, just so Jack could win them more than once, so as to reach your projected totals!

Not at all, TB! Despite the technicalities of the law, the only antipathy to a coalition in the minds of the typical voters is if it is made up of the losers! If the Tories have more seats than anyone else but have to cut a deal then you're really just talking about an ordinary minority government, which Canadians are used to. Now if the NDP and the Liberals each have less seats than the Tories but decide to band together, THAT might cause some waves but a regular minority? Nobody will care!

Do you really think so, BT? "Dominate the airwaves"? Myself, I'd rather watch paint dry! Or Ben Mulroney! Sorry, didn't mean to be redundant...

Not necessarily true, Mr. P! My field was electronic manufacturing. Labour was a very small factor in that business, since so much of the assembly was done by automated machinery. Yet that business collapsed after 9/1/11, leaving for China and Ireland. Why? Taxes and government required paperwork are the reasons I heard most often! I have a good friend who worked for a local steel company in their HR department. She told me they had to pay for at least 6 employees just to provide all the data for StatsCan and other government departments! The government doesn't use their own people. They require businesses to do it for them! It's too easy just to blame labour. Gives a nice diversion for the government, too!

Yeah, and if wishes were horses my granny wouldn't bump her ass when she hopped! When will YOU understand that the world goes the way it will and doesn't care about your wishes? You can't demand that companies become "educated". They will simply leave! As a matter of fact, they have been leaving! In droves! And it sounds like you are in favour of driving them away!

I wouldn't go there if I were you, Mr. Lionstorm! I have direct and personal witnessing of a VERY prominent NDP member who installed a 15 year old girl in an apartment in Ottawa as his mistress! He was married at the time. He strung the young girl along for several years before he dumped her and went back to his wife. I know this because she was the sister of one of my best friends at the time. I will not mention his name here. No need to cause trouble after all this time. So don't try getting all "holier than thou" on us! Besides, ALL parties have had scandals! It's what happens when you make them up out of human beings! Because it happens to all parties, it really becomes an irrelevant factor, except when one party does something truly unique, like stealing over 140 million directly from tax payers!

Scare tactics? I have been following the NDP both federally and provincially for over 40 years! If someone says and does something for that long one would assume you could predict their behavior reasonably accurately! Give me a break, Mr. Wyly! I have good reason and evidence for my political views, unlike some of the partisan fanatics posting here lately...

As Jbg has already pointed out, there is a big difference between many of the provincial NDP parties and the federal one. Saskatchewan and Manitoba have both had CDP governments FAR more sensible than what we've historically heard from their federal cousins! Unfortunately, in this situation we're not talking about a Gary Doer cabinet but a Layton one. Imagine! Assuming all NDP parties are the same! What terrible logic! Besides, you attacked my model and totally ignored my point. If that's not a cliche socialist thing to do I don't know what is!

Mr. Wyly, if the Tories have been riding as close as spit to 40% nationally for the last month there's no way in hell that could be only on the strength of their Alberta numbers. There simply aren't enough voters in Alberta to skew things that much! There HAS to be many ridings where their strength exceeds 40%, as well as many where they are far LOWER than 40%! So in ridings where they have a strong showing, they obviously will have the better chance. Again, their support tends to come out to vote and also not waver. There's very little chance the NDP will steal from the Tories. Philosophically, the average Tory voter is not a socialist. To him or her, the NDP looks like a party that has nice dreams of how to spend money but not a clue as to how to sustainably generate it. When's the last time ANY NDP type espoused a practical theory of wealth generation? In my entire life I've never heard anything out of them but how to redistribute the wealth. They've always taken business for granted, as if businessmen are genetically programmed to create businesses and never leave the country! Naive in the extreme! This is what I mean when I say that the NDP has to mature. When you never expect to become the ruling party, it's easy to promise anything. You don't have to care how things would actually work because you won't be responsible for proving it will work! You can call BIG Business all the nasty names you want. You won't be the government dealing with them. You can suck up to small business and never worry about the fact that every small business knows that if they ever grow and cross the magic line into being a BIG business you'll start spitting on them too! Jack Layton's party has never had to learn that you can champion the little guy without totally alienating other players in the economy. All real jobs come from business. Everything else runs on money originally generated by private business. You can't have a viable economy where everyone is a postie and just mails letters to each other! We can argue about this, of course. I'm sure you don't agree with me. Still, it doesn't matter a whit. It's still true that most Tory voters think so and will not easily switch to voting NDP. This works both ways. How many NDP voters would vote Tory? After all the demonizing we hear about Harper, not likely very many! My model still stands. In ridings where there is a strong core Tory vote they can much more easily win if there's vote splitting between the NDP and the Liberals.

You've missed the point! What made this script so funny is that the peasants in this movie, which was written decades ago, are parodying the talk of so many British socialists at that time. They would stand on soap boxes in parks and make speeches very similar to the ones being lampooned in this Python scene! People with common sense, of ANY political stripe, would recognize that these speakers were anal-retentive nitpickers with no concept of ordinary life, fixated on leftwing political minutiae and making endless arguments so contrived and involved as to be almost impossible to understand, of value to no one who actually has a life! I was equating that sort of nonsense with the arguments continually being made by my quoted poster. I did not mean it as praise!

Wouldn't understand, or just disagree? Whatever. Politics is the art of perception and usually doesn't jive with reality anyway. The environmentalists have proven to be poor politicians. They've been crying wolf with such extreme predictions that the average citizen has stopped believing them. It makes no difference that it might take decades to prove things one way or another. This is politics and a month can be an eternity. Perhaps this is the same thing that is hurting the Bloc against the NDP. They've been flogging the separatiste horse for so long that many Quebecers have become bored and disillusioned with their message. So BT, if you feel you have to keep presenting "scientific" evidence, you've lost! You might even be right as far as the physics but in the court of popular political sentiment, you've lost!

Maybe possible Mr. Wyly but I don't think it likely. The reason is that the Tory support is just too solid! Most of it doesn't waver. It's not likely that the NDP and the Liberals are pulling any votes away from the Tories, or at least not many. Between each other is a different story! Voters have switched between the Liberals and the NDP since the NDP was first formed! So suppose the Tory vote holds firm at 40%. The other two steal from each other and theoretically achieve a balance of 30% each. The Tory candidate wins! For either the Liberal or the NDP candidate to win he or she would have to beat the solid 40% of his Tory opponent. Anything less than 41% might beat his other rival but NOT the Tory one! No, this NDP surge is the best thing that could have happened for Harper and the WORST for Ignatieff! The Tories will gain more seats, perhaps even a majority. The Liberals are going to lose, big time! The BQ as well. That means the NDP can't help but grow their seat count. Winning Loyal Opposition status is not unlikely at all! As I've said before, this can be a good thing for Canada! Hopefully the NDP will seize the opportunity to mature, lose their flakiness and modernize. The Liberals will either re-invent themselves or just die! Many of us won't care either way. The Bloc can just go piss up a rope in a high wind, for all I care!

Didn't want to touch this one, eh Rick or Harry?

Is that not what our present system does? Set a benchmark of winning a seat, ANY seat out of 308! Surely a new party can win a seat somewhere if they are truly popular. We did it with Reform! Why can't any other party? Reform proved that it can be done. This makes other contenders who would rather change the rules look like whiners who just can't cut it. As I said before, it's not the fault of our system that Elizabeth May is consistently too stupid to run in a seat where she might have a chance!

I think where we differ is that I don't believe that the true goal of those parties pushing any form of PR is a more democratic system. Rather, I think they are just trying to boost their own representation when they simply are not popular enough to do it under our present system. As an Ontarioan, I was given evidence of this by the nature of the PR system that was on our ballot last election. It called for extra MPPs to be appointed BY THE PARTIES THEMSELVES! Either this was done through naked greed or abysmal ignorance. Either way, I totally lost respect for those pushing the idea. Whatever! As you say, our system works better with fewer parties involved. If Jack manages to kill off the Liberals the question will become moot.

Well, youth does tend to vote NDP or Liberal when they are young, becoming more conservative as they gain life experience, particularly with financial matters. There are exceptions, of course. There will be young Conservatives just as there are young scientists or mathematicians. However, there will be far more arts students who think that government money is free. Still, while I laud anything that gets the new blood more involved I don't think it will have quite the impact some think. There just aren't as many young folks as there used to be! The Baby Boom is over. Most parents of small children have noticed elementary school closings. There was a mini-boom about 6-8 years ago but it was nothing like the one that led to huge wave of citizens born after WWII and beginning to die off now. Sadly, this demographic situation is why politicians are really just stalling us about a lot of the medicare and income needs of the older baby boomers. They know that if they can BS us for just another 10 years or so the problem will begin to fix itself, as the numbers fall.

Actually, I CAN say that our system is representative of Canadian views! It's just that those views are coming from LOCAL areas! Our system is based on people in individual ridings choosing their representative to Ottawa. This is not supposed to mirror the national popular vote! Just because Alberta is so solidly Tory does that mean that areas of Ontario should have fewer NDP members? That's exactly what would happen if the House mirrored the NATIONAL popular vote! Different ridings in different areas of the country have vastly different interests and concerns. They deserve to be represented and ARE by our present system! Don't blame our system just because Elizabeth May is so stupid she keeps running in ridings where she has no chance of winning! It all depends on what you feel is important. By your model, it's obvious that you think representation of local riding interests is irrelevant. Who cares about PEI? They don't have enough population to be significant in terms of the national popular vote so let's ignore their wishes and just appoint their MPs for them, according to how the REST of Canada feels! You seem to have a problem with math, other than at its most simplistic. Why do you feel that PR would "eviscerate" the traditional parties? Harper is polling more of the popular vote than any other party right now! No doubt if we ever implemented a PR system the fringe parties would keep demanding changes until they finally got what they wanted - a great number of seats without having to convince any actual local ridings to vote for them!

Another one for the list!

Or Dosanjh's handlers succeeded big time! All's fair in love and politics, after all.

"We're makin' a list, checkin' it twice! We'll vote and see who's wrong or right..."

There's another prediction from Harry! Added to the list, to be reviewed and discussed after the election.

It's not that simple, Mr. P! A lot of folks are leaning NDP for the first time, especially in Quebec. During the campaign, has anyone heard one word from Jack that he will raise personal taxes? Those of us who are familiar with the NDP would not be surprised but suppose the NDP were to take power, or become a key player in a coalition and got their own way. To many folks who had voted NDP seeing their taxes going up would be an unpleasant surprise! Being Canadian, they would immediately start complaining. At that point, their neighbours who had known better would tell them "What did you expect? The NDP has to pay for their promises SOMEHOW! Do you think that would help or hurt the NDP's chances NEXT election? Or do you really believe that most Canadians would have thought it through and said to themselves "Wow! It's all worth it! I'm HAPPY to pay more taxes!" Perhaps you also would think "Gee, those Canadians who voted for us are pissed off but surely they would understand that it was THEIR mistake and they can't blame the NDP!" No, Mr. P. It would be a shame for the NDP to come so far and then blow it for the next few elections!

Surely you can understand how someone could consider the other choices to be worse! Or are you one of those people who thinks that all intelligent people would only hold YOUR views?

Tell it to Rick, BM!

But I have NOT defended everything about Harper! Far from it! It's just that agreeing on a few things seems to be enough for you to slap a stereotype label on someone's name. You seem to think in absolutes. Harper is ALL bad! The NDP is ALL good! Angels and demons, saints and sinners with no grey area in between. This is a very childish and simplistic view of the world. Everyone and certainly every politician is a mix of things some folks like and some folks don't. Even Hitler liked dogs, which would endear him to some. And just because someone belongs to or supports another party than your own favourite hardly makes them evil. They just don't share a few of your beliefs, that's all. I enjoy a good political discussion, especially in a bar with lots of beer! However, if I knew that everyone there agreed with me I wouldn't bother to go! Where would be the fun? How would I learn anything new? No, I have no desire to spend time in a discussion with people that agreed with me on everything. That's what I meant by "group masturbation". The only thing possibly more boring would be spending time with a group that thought that if I disagreed with them about anything I must be EVIL! BTW, I'm not a guitar man! I service and build the amplifiers - damn good ones, too!