Wild Bill

In the words of the immortal Gomer Pyle: "Surprise, surprise, surprise!" What else is new? The media goes with what they think will be more interesting (if not outright lurid) to their viewers and listeners. They couldn't care less about the details, or even the Truth! They sell papers, Gwiz! What did you expect? And Ignatieff should damn well have been ready for the coalition question! I watched that scrum and couldn't believe he would be so naive! He's a politician, for Pete's Sake! He should have known better! As a Reformer, I saw the media for years slant nearly everything about Manning and the Party. We used to joke that if Manning discovered a cure for cancer then the CBC would report it as Manning was attacking jobs for doctors and medical workers. It wasn't true and it wasn't fair but so what? It was the way it was. A politician has to deal with it. Welcome to the real world!

Quite right, Oleg! There is an extremely popular notion about evolution that we automatically become more and more advanced. Comic books, cheap science fiction and Hollywood have for years portrayed men from the future as far more intelligent than present day. As I said, the idea is almost universally popular but it is also dead wrong! All evolution means is that a species will adapt to changing conditions. Intelligence became a survival factor to some of the great apes. Smarter ones were more likely to live to reproduce than those that weren't. It was as simple as that! When we were in the trees, those great apes had feet that looked like hands, as apes do today. When we came down onto the prairie grasslands, being able to walk more efficiently and eventually run faster than the lions became major survival characteristics. So our hips and our feet changed. Nowadays, we're already more than smart enough to survive in our environment. The vast majority of us don't need to run faster than the lions or bears, either. So evolution of our intelligence or our feet stops! The important thing is that a species changes ONLY if it has to for survival! If it doesn't have to then it simply doesn't! There IS NO evolutionary program in our genes to make us continually evolve towards some superior being! Mankind has evolved little or none over the last 50,000 years or more and unless something drastically changes it will not evolve any more over the next 50,000.

Pretty well just for myself, Harry! Sometimes I'll comment that I think my opinion is widely shared, or NOT! Sometimes I'll openly state that I'm wishing about something, very hard! This seems only logical to me. I can't speak for everyone because I don't know them all! Sometimes I can make a guess as to how big a group shares my feelings but that's all it is, a guess. Yet if we want to do something like predict an election we absolutely have to put our feelings aside and be objective. If we were campaign managers we would either have to deal with situations objectively or be perpetual losers. We have to deal with the real world and not our fantasies if we want to succeed. It seems to me that the people who trumpet the loudest that they are representing the will of the people who usually are really pushing the views of the smallest minority. They try to get what they want by making unproven claims about popular support. My attitude has always been "Prove it!" Like anybody else, I would like the "system" to represent my own views but failing that, I feel more confident we're in good shape when the system refuses to allow itself to be hijacked by a few who are the loudest at screeching out their BS! Even more, I've met some people who sincerely believe that their minority views are actually "the silent majority", as we saw when Stockwell Day's evangelicals tried to hijack the old Reform Party after he won the leadership. When people are that lacking in objectivity I seriously wonder if things are going a bit wonky under their hats! At best such an attitude is arrogant and at worst - frankly, it's crazy!

All the stronger to prove that most Canadians want an effective local representative more than they care for a representative given his or her seat solely because their party garnered 6% of the national popular vote!

Well, there's you! There's also a few Liberal political junkies here on MLW. Frankly, that seems to be about it! What the Liberals need are MILLIONS of Canadian voters who also are "sick of all these Harper lies." So far we just aren't seeing any evidence of this. I can't help but notice in your postings Harry that you never seem to talk about what the voters are actually going to do. You are strong on your own feelings and you are quite willing to say bad things about Harper. Yet you never talk much about what percentage of voters are likely to agree with you. This is really all that matters, you know. Your preferences and MINE are not very relevant! The name of the game is not to shout out our wishes. It's to accurately predict how the Canadian electorate will choose when they go to the ballot box.

I wrote the book on that one, Jack!

How can you tell? How many seats are involved? There are always areas in any metro city where people are more business class, union factory workers, rich folks or whatever. So some ridings might hog certain types of voters over the other ones. You realize that your poll shows only a 7 point difference between the Bloc and the Tories? That's more than small enough to make WHERE the inevitable pockets of support occur important! Few cities vote solidly for just one party! There is always a bit of a mix. Harper could take a few seats around Quebec City and some from some other areas and keep his 10 seats. If August is right and Quebecers start to sense a Harper majority, they have proven a number of times before that they will get behind the parade! Quebec likes those who can do something for them! That is always the BQ and used to be the Liberals. The NDP, being perpetually in opposition, was largely ignored. Now the Conservatives occupy the position formerly held by the Liberals. It's quite possible they may take as many seats as formerly done by the Liberals. The NDP will likely be lucky to retain their one seat. Unless something changes during the campaign, it is the LIBERALS who are doomed in Quebec!

TimG is quite correct. Your premise totally ignores even any diference between percentage of the national popular vote and popularity of someone running to be the representative of a specific local riding. You are entitled to that POV but the fact remains that most Canadians care very much about choosing a specific person to represent them, not just trusting that a party answering first and foremost to its own party brass will give a damn about a specific riding. All parties pay lip service to that idea but in practice they cheerfully will sacrifice the odd riding if it brings them overall gains in the party's fortunes. Also, our First Past the Post system has another advantage. It establishes a minimum level of support necessary for a party to become a contender. All this talk about representing ALL Canadians ignores the point that there is always a small percentage of voters who are uninformed, poorly educated and/or just flakes! Trying to develop a system that will represent every single citizen's views, no matter how silly or possibly even racist, is just futile! Under our existing system, a party must attract enough followers in a riding to win a seat. If that party has even a reasonably popular platform there is always some riding SOMEWHERE in Canada where they would have a chance! They may not be attractive in a Metro Toronto riding but perhaps in Red Deer, Alberta. Certainly there would be something in British Columbia, the home of all the "oddball" views. A system that relies entirely on a percentage of the entire nation's electorate to acquire even one seat is frankly just a vehicle for all the tiny minority extremist views to achieve more power than they really deserve! It's all just an attempt to change the game if you are a perpetual loser. By yourself, you wouldn't likely be able to get enough people to come to a stadium to see you play but if you can somehow rig the system you can force yourself to be included in the league, where all the other teams provide the draw that finances everything.

Actually, I rather suck as a guitar player! However, I have a LOT of happy guitar amp customers! I make my living repairing and building such gear. I know all the circuitry tricks that gave Hendrix his tone and the same for Eddie Van Halen. I could modify YOUR Marshall to sound the same way. Still, it wouldn't matter a damn if your fingers couldn't do their part!

Sorry Jack, but you swallowed the McGuinty Kool-aid on this one! Do a bit of googling and you'll find that Stan and his relation were hired years before Harris came to office and were f**kups practically from day one! You can cite MoE cuts all you like but it all came down to the fact that those two clowns drank all day and didn't do their jobs! Harris didn't put a gun to their heads and FORCE them to just falsify the tests! Just because you don't like Harris doesn't mean you can blame anything you pull out of your butt on him! How about tsunamis? Those two should have been hung!

Didn't he show up about the same time as Gwhiz disappeared? And isn't his style quite similar?

Don't bother me none to call Harper a loser! I'm not a conservative! Never have been! And yes, I've seen the letter! So what? 99% of Canadian voters couldn't care less! Only political junkies like you and me get upset about stuff like that. It's not a factor in winning this election. If anything, I'm a classic liberal. Since the modern Liberal party is NOTHING like the definition of a classic liberal there's little or no appeal for me there. I was and am a very strong Reform supporter. Especially for their planks about populism in how parties should be run. Now Reform is dead and the present CPC has managed to completely kill off even the memory of Reform I find myself supporting the Tories solely and only because they don't seem as bad as the Liberals. Never having been a socialist there's nothing for me with the NDP and being a techie for how I earn my living there's no way I can support the Greens, since they seem to be long on dreams and REAL short on practical approaches that might actually WORK! So again, I'll say anything bad about Harper you like, as long as I feel it might be true. I'll say bad things about the Liberals as well, for the same reason. What I will NOT do is simply slam those I don't like with no truth or justification! Ad hominem attacks are the product of idiots and I refuse to stoop so low.

How about right now? The CPC should not keep dragging up 1990 quotes from Igatieff! Didn't bother me none! Make you feel any better?

I forgot about that, Max! The Tories DO tend to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, don't they? Last campaign Harper said some dumb things that cost him much support in Quebec. There were other gaffes, too. As an incumbent he is much more vulnerable to that sort of stuff. Ignatieff looks like the new kid and people often will forgive the rookie. Harper is supposedly the experienced man, having been PM all this time. He's not expected to make newbie mistakes and is therefore not so easily forgiven. I'm feeling rather liberated about this election, Max! Given that no matter what the result it won't be all that great for this old hippie Reformer! If my choice doesn't win then I don't have to feel any responsibility!

I keep saying this. You are likely totally correct in your position as to the legality of a "coalition of the losers". It just doesn't matter! The average Canadian voter doesn't give a damn about technicalities of constitutional law! He knows what he likes and he knows what smells bad to him. Constitutions are supposed to serve the People and not the other way around. Any party that participates in such a coalition is running a risk. Some may be right that most Canadians will simply yawn. Others may be right that they will get totally pissed and never vote for those parties for the rest of their lives! Or some result more in-between. Personally, I think it would hurt the Opposition badly in the long term, so much that I think I might like to see it happen! I always love to see politicians get their comeuppance, in any party! Anyhow, it's easy for you or me to say anything. It would be the Opposition parties who would be taking the risk and accepting the consequences, if any. I just think that you are rather cavalier in not bothering to even mention that there's some risk! You cite the way the law works as if that's all that matters!

Yeah, I watched that scrum, Scrib! Ignatieff really blew that one, big time! He tried to give a politician's answer and was clumsy at it. The reporters were right when they said that unless he gave a straight and definitive answer the question would follow him for the entire campaign. He and his handlers should have expected that and been prepared for it. The fact that they didn't speaks poorly about their campaign skills. Still, the voters haven't had time to wake up yet so it probably didn't do him any lasting harm.

No, he can't. So what? The real question is "Will the Canadian people care?" Or at least enough of them to matter, Jack. I really think this coalition thing is too complicated for the average voter. Polls showed that they don't really like the idea and when the Opposition brings up what Harper did years ago it sounds to the average Joe as if they are just throwing crap at the wall, hoping that something will stick. Notice that personally, I agree with you that Harper is a bit of a hypocrite! I just don't think it will affect the election results. Strong factors, like Ignatieff seeming like an out-of-touch egghead and Harper coming across as cold but competent, are what will have the most affect. All the parties are desperately trying to choose their weapons against their opponents but I don't think the real issues have developed yet. Things will happen during the campaign and the Canadian people will tell their politicians what they care about - not the other way around!

According to your own link Molly, he said those words 17 years ago. 17 years is a long time and things were different then. I would think that the real question would be if this man still believes that rot or were his apologies sincere? I personally know a few 'rednecks' who have lightened up considerably over the last 17 years. It's possible that Lukiwski is still prejudiced and it's also possible he no longer holds those extreme views. I don't know which is true but I would be leery about condemning him unless and until I could find out! Positive behavior should be rewarded and negative behaviour should result in being beaten with an ugly stick! The comments in this thread have not mentioned this point. They all sound as if he made those comments last weekend. Doubleplus unfair!

I quite agree, August! It's the perception that really matters! We've talked before about how Quebec historically has gotten behind a majority trend. We may see a bit of that again. Obviously, MPs from a majority government can bring home a lot more pork than others. The question about voters in TROC is even more interesting. I still remember the Ontario election, where everyone I talked to felt that David Petersen no longer deserved a majority and thus voted NDP, intending to reduce him to a minority as a lesson not to take voters for granted. Of course, the morning after showed that too many people had the same idea and Bob Rae squeaked in with a razor-thin majority! Perhaps something similar might happen with Harper. The mitigating factor to that idea is that Canadians seem genuinely to believe that even an arrogant Harper is a better choice than Ignatieff. Still, as Scrib says, it's early and anything could happen. I was going to make a joke about how Harper could be caught with a pair of 15 year old twin doxies but I refrain. The man is just too boring for that to ever even be suggested as a joke!

Not at all! I made a conscious choice to embrace my heritage and to make most of its values my own! This means that I also consciously try to let my heritage guide by actions through life. It's how I run my life that I take pride in!

Maybe! I'm not sure. I think the Dion factor also didn't help. Here was a man with the lowest approval rating of any Liberal leader in history trying to usurp the party that beat him at the polls and put himself into power, albeit as the head of a coalition! One minute the Canadian people would have overwhelmingly rejected him and the very next he'd be sitting as PM, without any input from the Canadian people at all! The people weren't Constitutional scholars and didn't need to be to hate such an idea. Ignatieff was quite right when he distanced himself from the idea. He knew it was electoral poison. TB has spoken on how people aren't as adverse to the idea today as we were during the last election. He's probably right in principle but I still think it would be a very risky thing to try. At all costs, if it looked like a mere power grab I think ordinary people might light torches and storm the castle! The problem for the Opposition is that as long as the Tories got more votes than any one of their parties, even though they lacked enough for a majority, to form a coalition and usurp them might be legal but it would piss off all those Tory voters, who numbered more than those who had voted for any one of the other parties! Where would those parties look for new supporters next election? No, somehow they would have to sell it as "being for the good of the country". THAT would be an interesting spiel to watch!

You make some strong points Wyly but something about PR systems keeps bothering me. One thing I have no respect for is the idea that was on the ballot here in Ontario last time, where THE PARTIES would pick extra MPPs from a PARTY list, according to a proportion of the popular vote! Screw that noise! No politician should get to choose MY representative! I don't care if he was good at sucking up to the party brass! The PEOPLE and ONLY the People should pick their riding representatives! Anything else is elitist crap, in my book! That aside, I generally feel most comfortable when the majority rules, even when it goes against my own personal choices. At least I can always say that "I didn't vote for him, so don't blame me!" When people start trying to find ways to appease the minority view, it always seems that much of the time the least number of people end up running the show. That's a very screwy definition of populism, at least to me. Or maybe I'm just too suspicious!

Well, those that don't vote make themselves irrelevant! Also, it's true that an opinion poll is not an election but it can be invaluable in predicting an electoral outcome! That's what feeds Nick Nanos' kids! As for directly voting for the PM, of course we don't. We have a British-descended system that works "First Past the Post". IMHO, this is a democractic system and I prefer it. I'm far from the only one. Others, like perhaps yourself, might prefer some form of proportional representation. Many other folks do as well. It's rather hard to say what is more or less democratic in our political system, since really it's often a matter of personal preference. One can always make an argument as to why one way is better than another. As a Reformer, I don't find ANY of our parties that democratic, including the new CPC, which I have said many times is really just a clone of the old Progressive Conservatives. Any trace of Reform in the new CPC has been wiped out and chucked "down the memory hole". Harper and his crew will often refer to Mulroney but since he took office I don't think he has ever mentioned Preston Manning's name in public! Whatever, my point is that just because someone like yourself doesn't think that highly of the Canadian voter doesn't change if he's likely to vote one way or another. Our own preferences are irrelevant as well. Anyone who wants to work on a campaign team has to learn very quickly to be objective or he will simply become another loser!

Yes, I did control that. I CHOSE to adhere to my heritage! I could conceivably have joined some other culture, assuming they would let me in. Certainly, even then I could have abandoned my own heritage. Once I was old enough, I made a conscious choice to belong to my culture. I made a similar choice as regards to my religious views. I was born into the Anglican Church but I chose to sever that tie, to become an independent, devout agostic! That's the beauty of putting culture over race. Race is really an irrelevant concept. An Inuit can chose to emigrate to Scotland and adopt that culture. You can raise a Somali with a Japanese family and you will have a culturally Japanese young person. If anything, skin colour differences will eventually be bred out or diminished. We are genetically programmed to find the possible sexual partner in our group who is different to be more attractive. This is just Nature's way of mixing our genes. Any animal breeder will tell you that mixed breeds are usually stronger and healthier. I'm probably talking a few thousand years but I'm confident it will happen. I'm curious as to what the bigots of that time will use instead of race to discriminate against people.

Right arm, Jack! Farm out! Sorry! I'm still an old hippy with old hippy expressions but sometimes I get 'senior's moments" with my memory and the words don't come out right...