Molly

Molly, I've got a news flash for you. They're ALL hypocrites! Bill, I could not disagree more vehemently. If I believed that only hypocrites offer themselves for election, I would have given up on voting 40 years ago.. but more than a few potential candidates are honorable, qualified and completely sincere. Some even manage to stay that way after a few years within the party/political system. When I have such a one on my ballot, they usually get my vote. (If a few more voters demand integrity from the candidates for whom they vote, we could even eliminate that sizeable hypocrite faction among our elected representatives... but as long as folks vote for a kitten-eater so long as they are waving the team flag...)

who is talknig about winter? Um, dunno about you, but while I was attending university, I was in that city from September to May... and someplace else for a job in between.

Right. One wonders whether his wife, the sitting 'family values' MP, knew about his habits wrt cocaine and drunk driving. Since she was vocally anti-floor-crossing right up until she became David Emersons assistant (then it magically became okay), should we now expect a similar shift to leniency for possession and impaired driving ?

Ceaucescu achieved higher birthrates. If you don't like the idea of artificially creating ignorance, poverty, disease, social problems to increase birthrate, you could always go with the suspension of fundamental freedoms. (Well, except that when you do manage to increase birthrate, those others inevitably come along for the ride. ) Totalitarian religious law regimes work, too. If we did that, that would really show those other undesireable mass-breeding societies who is better.

It appears to me that the ship of state just righted itself. The tactical situation meant the opposition couldn't fulfill its true role. With this groundshift-- the two potential governing parties again facing off-- now it can. All four parties now find themselves accountable for their actions from here on out. This is a good outcome for Canada.

Don't mistake my tone of utter disgust with being funny or false. That relationship between minimal-education/illiteracy/hopelessness/powerlessness among women and high birthrate is linear and pretty much universal, including here in Canada. Poverty, poor population health, and serious social problems are also part of the package. (Weird religious nutjobs are a subset.) IOW, the likliest outcome of providing more support for parents is fewer, not more babies born.

If you seriously do think that we have a baby shortage, the most effective way to 'remedy' it is to deny education to your own daughters. Ignorance breeds.

What a stunningly tribal set of assumptions! First, we'd best define the 'we' that is being outnumbered in the breeding race. If immigrants and their children are undesireable Canadians, what about those of us who are grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of immigrants? (Or are most of us okay, because our grandparents were pink and Christian, and a whole schwack of them chose English for a common language?) How is the world a better place if its resources are overwhelmed by native born Canadians, instead of folks born elsewhere?

........ to 2004.... Were they defending the residential schools class action, for which this order was the primary target? Facing down Tony Merchant, who billed $25,000,000?

I'd be in favor of a CPC majority if I thought it would be good for Canada, regardless of what it would do to or for the LPC. (but I don't.) 'Good for the LPC' could be interpreted as suggesting that a few years with CPC majority would result in voters resolving to never, never, never make the same horrible mistake again! Perhaps we agree on something.

... or even unemployed. Mind you, she has the potential to do that on her own.

Birthrate isn't static (obviously, so an end of society scenario is ad absurdum), and a population downtrend is only bad if you percieve present numbers, or more, to be some sort of optimum. The opposite rediculous extreme is Soylent Green, and sea to sea suburb. On a planetary basis, I figure we've got at least double the sustainable human population... which makes declining population a good thing.

...which is to say that the problem is the structure of our economy, not our birthrate.

Oh, good grief! I finally hit the link to look at that ad. Wow! It would take someone who bounced on their head when they landed on this planet to percieve that as being military, much less to write some offense to military into it..... What a flipping warped mindset! Rediculous! !

Edmonton and Saskatoon are both darned well COLD in winter... wickedly, unendingly cold, with no breaks from it. Winters in Calgary or Lethbridge are a lot easier to take.

(purple prose) ..... he rolled the dice in the mistaken assumption that they were sufficiently weighted...

Put me on that list of folks who'd find a vote for Duceppe pretty easy, too. He was a particular breath of fresh air during the English language debate last time.

Not so fast there, Goat boy. Harper is guilty of precipitating the whole affair, and then ALSO of, as Bambino says, of resorting to bald-faced lies about the mechanics of the Canadian consititution... and I'd add, and also of further playing the politics of division with the sole intention of saving his own political arse. The three unhappy options did not come into play, and would not have, until Harper, alone, committed the first of those three great sins. To tar all equally is like saying that the arsonist is no more guilty than the guys running in circles trying to figure out how put he fire out with no equipment. It doesn't wash.

It's a two-sided coin. I want very badly to vote 'for what I think is right', but there are many ways to skin a cat, different degress of rightness, and different weights for various priorities. Sometimes one has no choice but to vote against what one believes is wrong.

You think? Some political analysts in the last hour have said that many people in places like Alberta are already angry about him adopting less than Tory policies. I was thinking of some people voting for an even more right wing choice...... jdobbin Yeah... Alta4ever is already touting a breakaway. I always got a giggle out of a couple of SW Sask ridings that always ended up with an NDP MLA in the wild scramble to be as far right wing as possible. Dwayne Lingenfelter was elected once down there by way of gaining the benefit of 1100 votes being squandered on the WCC. The CPC has trouble with more than the right wing extreme, though. I stand as a classic middle of the road PC- fiscal Conservative/social liberal- and there is absolutely no room for me within the CPC. A right-leaning Liberal party is a far, far better fit. So long as the CPC continues as the mendacious, obstructionist bully, militarist, republican, bible thumping bigot, I could make myself vote a lot redder than 'right wing Liberal' to be rid of them.

I agree with you, August, that people aren't, on the whole, such easy dupes, but while we are on the subject of ad campaigns.... the theory of the Liberal attack ads 'smearing' Harper has risen to something of a mantra in this setting. While there certainly were ads aired that were not flattering to him (surprise, surprise) it takes a serious buy-in to Newspeak to accept that they held any particular equivalence to the bombardment of misrepresentation and personalization that the Conservatives have been shovelling ever since. Scale alone makes such acceptance of near-equivalence into pure nonsense.

soooo... if everyone else is jumping off a cliff, I should join them.....

You assume support for a party. WE DON'T ELECT PARTIES! We choose individuals, and their affiliation with any party may or may not have anything to do with why we chose them. (I've certainly voted for more than one in spite of, not because of it.) I am completely convinced that partiy affiliation shouldn't even be indicated on ballots. Maybe people would then figure it out, that they are choosing an actual person to represent their interests- and that person is not bound by party affiliation for a danged minute. Learn something from David Emmerson!

LOL Dion tried that. The Conservatives rebranded Greenshift, and branded him, personally. But honestly, I categorically agree.

Oh right! Like evidence suggests that Whowhere is meticulously careful to avoid ever offering offense! It's not unreasonable to assume that what walks like a duck, is likely a duck.