Molly

My tangle of typos made my comment difficult to understand, August, but I said nothing at all about the folks from BC, except as non-Ontarians. The BC folks I know have some off-beat political takes, but certainly know what they are about. Ontario stands alone in their desperate need for a universal crash course in rudimentary civics.

I couldn't handle that many shots of milk, much less rye. However, I could see wiring the seats in the chamber, so that every time the word 'coalition' is used, one randomly-chosen MP gets an electrical shock sufficient to bring them to their feet. It should be accompanied by ... a bell. I thought maybe buzzer, but a bell would be better. Question Period would become mighty entertaining. Mighty entertaining. (It'd look like human whack-a-mole.)

Insight can be found in many places. Yesterday I was dubbed a fan of Hermann Goering. Meh! The man knew a thing or two about propaganda.

Chauncey Gardener...

Holy, holy, holy cow. Just watched Peter MacKay answering questions about the Atlantic Opportunities appointmets during the Libya daily briefing... I don't think I've ever seen a politician look sp completely 'get me outta here!' gutted as that. Not ever.

The people who way that are from Ontario, Toadbrother, because in this province is not- seriously not- politically up to speed. Folks here, for the most part, don't 'get' what's federal, provincial and even municipal/ don't know who is representing them at any of those levels. (And all my fellow Ontarians can be mad at me for saying that, but it's oh so true. The person who can name their representatives and comment sensibly on them is an extremely rare exception here, not, as in other provinces, the common rule.) I'm thinking that all of the common wisdom is overstated right now, and that this could be an extraordinary, horrifyingly volatile campaign. It could end up being a 'virtually no change' outcome, but if it does, it won't be because folks are fully entrenched and almost no one changes a vote, but rather because almost everyone changes their vote and all the switches balance out. I think those who predict a bad performance from Ignatieff are getting ahead of themselves. He might be crap, but I honestly believe it's too early to tell. We'll have a very good idea by the end of the first week of the campaign, but just now, I don't think so. His potential performance is one of the things that makes this one so very unpredictable. There's a lot of indecision out there, so a lot at stake. The NDP will lose ground, but NDP leadership will decide whether the support they lose goes to the Liberals or to the CPC. So far, they seem to have chosen the CPC. (Hence some of my disdain for the NDP.) No real prediction from me yet. I know what I want; what I fear; what I expect, but that's three very different outcomes and all three are well within the realm of possibility. Each is equally a long shot.

Do folks remember Dion's strength? The thing that gained him as much regard as he exercized? He was a gentle man and a sweaty-palmed sort of politician, but giving in to 'the separatists' is not his game.

"Usage note The traditional distinction between amount and number is that amount is used with mass or uncountable nouns ( the amount of paperwork; the amount of energy ) and number with countable nouns ( a number of songs; a number of days ). Although objected to, the use of amount instead of number with countable nouns occurs in both speech and writing, especially when the noun can be considered as a unit or group ( the amount of people present; the amount of weapons ) or when it refers to money ( the amount of dollars paid; the amount of pennies in the till ). " Yeah, it occurs, but the grammar police notice it, and cringe, every time.

You might have to explain what that difference might be. On a practical level, I don't see one. Either their consent must be achieved, or their consent must be achieved. Pick one.

Scotty: And either you don't know anything about the tea party or you don'tknow anything about the Conservatives. Or perhaps, you don't know anything about either group. Nooooo... I think that's just an expressidon of holding no respect for either group.

I don't hold any great fiscal fear of the Liberals, nor any great regard for Conservatives on that front, either. I was brought to the point of absolutely no return on the Conservatives while watching John Baird spit disinformation about the fundamental nature of our governance in order to save Tory bacon after they took a smug and graceless stride too far, trying to bankrupt the other parties... What I saw then was extremely poor judgement (not just 'oops'), and an utter absence of integrity. He would have said anything, no matter how presposterous, to save his and his buddies' phoney-baloney jobs. Truth or the good of the nation had nothing whatever to do with it. He was 'playing the marks'. Until then, the only reason I didn't vote CPC was the specific candidate they offered me. There'll have to be a generational shift-- a decimation of the party, and a rebuild with all new blood before I could consider them again.

Amen. It also buffaloes me to see folks rave about the brilliance- the 'consummate tactician' yada yada. I don't see it. I see hubris-- as you say, pointless pissing contests. Nor do I see any rational equation between Manning Reform and and Harper/MacKay (Baird/Flaherty/Kenney) CPC. (So shots about foaming Alberta reformers seem like points missed to me.) Reform all but worshipped process. It was a nerdy wonk party through and through. Reform would have been incapable of committing 'Contempt of Parliament', but for the CPC, it's standard proceedure. (Thread drift paragraph, I know. Sorry.)

Oh, trust me, some of us heard it. (Some of us were even there at the time.) A scant few of us called BS right out loud, but others rolled their eyes as often, let the screamers shoot off their mouths, and walked away. The outrage was based entirely in partisanship and apalling ignorance- and that's a fact. A shameful, disappointing fact.

I just added a quotation to my signature page that, IMO, provides a bit of a hint about why they'd all be so easily amenable, though offering it here risks premature invocation of Godwin's law: "Naturally the common people don’t want war. But after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.” --- Hermann Goering When you consider also that, even if it isn't percieved as being so useful, diving in is still the position easiest to justify with a sound-bite...

Here's one where I disagree withy 'every major party'. IMO, this one belongs in Europe's lap to let them do as they will. Sometimes it's just not really our business, and really not our turn at all.

Or any other. They had lots of chance to make a deal with someone, but didn't. The only way one can take that is to believe they didn't want to (even if they did want to appear to be trying).

I think you could search a long time to find anyone who doesn't honestly believe that they are a Regular Joe, no matter how absurd such an assumption is. Just this past weekend, I met a young fellow who described himself as just a regular small town boy... The 'small town' was Port Credit, and no one had to get close enough to see the whites of his eyes to pick him out as an urban silver spoon! In this small town he couldn't have been more (clearly) esoteric if he'd painted himself green and walked on stilts.

More than verges! It is deeply undemocratic, no ifs , ands or buts about it. Toadbrother, I can't tell you just how much I appreciate the clarity and patience with which you articulate this issue. Thank you.

I'm willing to bet that was the original plan, but the growing pile of ethics issues put a touch of frostbite to the toes.

Wanna hear a whopper of an anomaly? Aboriginals aren't visible minority in those stats.

Of course they are, If they weren't, it would be a pretty stupid choice of 'bait and switch'.

I can keep looking, but 1 in 6 Canadians self-identifies as a visible minority. I don't know how many of that number are foreign born, but a honking large number aren't, and when we start counting up foreign -born, some fairly large number of them are not visible minorities... Anyone who wants more exact numbers is welcome to go looking for them on their own time, but I'm personally satisfied that second-language skills is not the issue. Heck, just within the opening link: "The colour code persisted for second-generation Canadians with similar education and age, though the gap narrowed slightly — with visible minority women making 56.5 cents, up from 48.7 cents in 2000, for every dollar white men earned, while minority men in the same cohort improved by almost 7 cents, to 75.6 cents." We are not talking language skills.

http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~pendakur/pdf%20docs/VisMin_1967-2017.pdf There we go. Check out pages 9 and 10, and this: Summary – labour force gaps • Visible minorities, even those born in Canada, earn less than majority workers with similar characteristics. • The earnings differentials faced by visible minorities are persistent over time. • The earnings gap is often worse at the bottom of the distribution. • The gap is very different by gender. – Visible minority women do not face the same magnitude of earnings discrimination as do men.