Kitchener

Oh, I'm frequently of two minds. But that's different from using an unanswerable question to point out someone's silly generalized smear. Well, it's good thing I've only been crying on the inside, then. As to thinking that factual claims go better when they're not unwarranted, I plead nolo contendere. Dang me! If you don't -- surprise, surprise -- have any reasoning to offer for your claim that the inquiry-supporters here are only interested in sticking it to the current government, and if having no evidence for one's claims is just A-OK here at MLW, to your way of thinking... then why the thrashing about? If you'd said, right at the outset, "I don't have any evidence to offer for my claim. I just believe it, for reasons I can't or would rather not give," then I guarantee it would have ended right there. No problem, as far as I'm concerned! Of course, if you don't actually want to say that straight out, that would make sense of the gee-hawing around with strangely ironic charges of evasion, and now this intriguing thesis that asking for evidence is somehow a problem, while impugning others' motives without evidence is just a quaint local tradition. Indeed. It was comforting to know that your claim was not merely unreasonable, but definitely false.

No, I'm not joking. But I'm not entirely serious either. Naturally I knew that you had no good evidence for your generalized aspersion on the motives of the 23 people (minimum) who voted for an inquiry on this thread. This would have been completely obvious, even were I not one of those who called for an inquiry on this thread. (I needn't resort to mindreading to know that I quite clearly did not say, and do not think, that the aim is to make something stick to the current government.) So, fair cop, I wasn't seriously expecting you to give evidence that anyone could tell does not exist.

Remarkable. 1996 = current matter 1993, 1994 = ancient history Who knew?

Staying on topic is not dodging. In fact, it's sort of the opposite of dodging. Recall: I questioned whether 52% in one poll amounts to "Canadians" very clearly stating that they don't want an inquiry. Your subsequent conjecture that some different result might have occurred if people had been asked a different question in a different poll is not a response to my point about the poor fit between the actual evidence and the actual claim. I see now that your conjecture too has been elevated to another fact about "Canadians", no qualification. In which of those posts do the endorsers of an inquiry explain that they want an inquiry merely to embarrass the government? A link will do fine, thanks. For my part, I find that it's quite enough to make an effort to actually read the posts to which I respond. It's an approach I recommend to all and sundry, excellent for avoiding irrelevant wanderings that culminate in misguided charges of dodging. No. I mean the posters who want an inquiry. Maybe they think the rule of law matters. Maybe they think that investigating evidence of corruption is as important now as it was waaayyyy back 3 years ago, when the Gomery inquiry was set up. These are hypotheses you don't seem to have ruled out very carefully, on your way to the "They just want to embarrass the current government!" view. Okay. I wish I could claim surprise at your responding to something I didn't say.

Heck, there might be all sorts of different, non-actual, circumstances under which it would have been true to say that Canadians have clearly stated that they don't want an inquiry. Such a shame I can't link to a Professor X "mind-reading" pic, here... Anyhow, maybe they think that a country serious about the rule of law should investigate evidence that a Prime Minister sold influence or lied under oath. It's a difficult possibility to rule out, however strong a feeling you get as you attempt telekinet... televangel... what's the word? telepathy, that's it.

So, the "no opinion" crowd have "very clearly stated" that they don't want an inquiry? Words have meaning, you see.

Naw. Remember, the claim was that Canadians have stated very clearly that they don't want an inquiry. Who could be so uncharitable as to think such a clear and unambiguous statement was based on one poll showing that 52% disfavored an inquiry?

So, you got the concept of "political content" out of my perfectly clear and explicit statement that they were reporting his statements "about hockey"? You might try reading in a way that pays more attention to the letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs. Rather than the... whatever else you're looking at instead.

Really? I haven't seen evidence for this in any news stories. Stuff you make up, or that sounds good to you, or that you wish were true, is not evidence.

Did I miss the referendum? Or was it a jointly authored letter to the editor? (Of, let me guess, The Western Standard...)

Seconded. Or maybe you seconded, since I said as much earlier in the thread. Anyhow, I'm saying it again. And I'm as atheist as they come.

Granted, by and large. But in this case, they -- and I suspect some moderate Republicans -- are united by their horror at what Bush/Cheney have done to the country. The current admin has done what the Dems couldn't do: successfully herd the cats. True enough. And what a sad commentary on the Republican domination in the South.

Yep, and that was stupid -- and cynical and manipulative -- of them. If TSN had slathered positive publicity on them at the time, and ever since, I suspect the politicization of that situation might have made more of an impression on you.

Sorry, the quotation marks in there: who are you quoting? Certainly not me. No. I'm not saying that. Though I do think that too much of that stuff, or in the wrong context, becomes cynical, manipulative, and debases the office of PM. (E.g., suddenly popping up with the troops for a photo op whenever the popularity dips... that would be bad.) I'm saying that TSN reliably reports Harper's appearances at games, interviews him about hockey, incorporates him into their publicity about hockey... it's invaluable PR for him, and a politicization of their coverage. (Notice: not because he's reading political tracts on the air. It's because he's being picked because he's a politician. But other politicians, from other parties, are not singled out for such close reporting and positive publicity.)

Nah, probably they don't. But they do get an awful, awful lot of it. And it seems to be conscious political strategy. The Georgia Straight reports:

Point taken about Huckabee. The problem for the Republicans (even more than for the Dems, who have a similar version), I think, is that their current "grassroots" mechanisms make it hard for sensible candidates to get to the fore without essentially perjuring themselves. So either you have to genuinely think that abortion should be outlawed, for example, or you have to betray your principles by saying that you do. Leading to Huckabee and Romney, respectively. It's sort of like polarized filters set at right angles: together they mean that a candidate who is both sensible and principled can't even get off the ground.

Sorry, I'm talking about things that actually happen. The CBC's using every excuse to display their disdain for anything center right of the spectrum would fall into some other discussion: oft-repeated but rarely defended myths, say.

Certainly it's neat for the PM to have a sports network devoted to reporting his every appearance, announcement, and message about hockey. Excellent PR, and a good way to sidestep the standards of neutrality that a news or broadcast channel might have.

World Junior Gold again! They did it the hard way, but they did it! The boy and I have lost our voices from running around the living room and yelling, our flag streaming out behind us. It's official: my role as an evil foot soldier in the War on Christmas is to treat the holiday season as being fundamentally about World Junior hockey.

I don't doubt it, and never denied it. What you have to take seriously is that the margins of victory in many key states are incredibly tight. What makes a candidate a loser in such a context can be simply that all his party's supporters don't come out to vote. No matter who the Dems put up, virtually all their supporters (and a good many of their non-supporters) will come out to vote for them. The reason is sitting in the White House. The same is not true of the Republican candidates, each of whom represents some split in the coalition of corporatists, libertarians, and religious social conservatives that Atwater-Rove forged and held together increasingly shakily. Not even hatred of Hilary or fear of a black president is sufficient to bring low-tax secularists out to vote for Huckabee, or anti-gay fundamentalists out to vote for 9iu11iani. In my opinion, of course. This is guesswork from all of us, at this point.

Rae days weren't very clearly a mistake, except perhaps for a PR mistake. They were a hard-nosed response to a (partially self-inflicted) budget crisis. They were also relatively fair: you didn't get paid for a certain number of days, but you also didn't have to work on those days. Compared to job and wage cutbacks that forced people to do more work for less money, Rae days were a bargain.

I know what you mean by Bush-like, but I think at most Huckabee really is what Bush pretended/was coached to be. But that quite rightly should sink his chances, since Bush's pretense was sufficient to do all sorts of damage (undermining CS separation, flooding federal appointments with evangelical law graduates from 5th rate degree-mills, defunding international programs that might have included instructions on how to have sex without getting pregnant, etc.)

Fair enough. We can save context, facts, and perspective for another thread. ZOMG!11! NPD r stoopid! Heck, that's kinda fun!

That is true; your misspelling was at least grammatical, though I much prefer the so-called Oxford Comma, when three items are listed. Also, you misspelled "grammatically".

I didn't want to say as much, but yes, that was obvious. Were you more competent or had you a longer attention span, I'm sure you'd have found it straightforward. Oh, and of course my sentence was not ungrammatical. "Rambling" I'm willing to say is in the eye of the beholder, but grammar isn't. And you misspelled "grammatical". It is a simple point indeed that obsessing on one party's flaws while ignoring similar or worse flaws in the others is a gross reasoning error. That doesn't mean everyone has to grasp it, naturally.