Molly

This morning's news is all about Insite, and the irrational federal attempts to kill it in spite of it's obvious value. I'm honestly quite surprised to be seeing, every morning, a lead news story that describes yet another failure of the Harper GovernmentTM. I didn't expect so many, so regularly and so soon. Everything listed so far is obviously just references to, or results of, or the next chapter of past performance. We had the opportunity to 'Stop the madness!', but didn't.

Incidents like Parizeau's 'money and ethnic vote' suggest otherwise. ------------------------------------------------------- But how is your suggestion/expectation that people should abandon their own cultural heritage to adopt yours any less odious than the cultural genocide of which you accuse 'the english'? Why would anyone want to adopt the cultural heritage of the 'french nation', when they have a perfectly lovely cultural heritage of their own?

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This bears repeating. (Could use all caps and colour, too.)

Ha! Are we doing the Mr. Canada 'Stepehen Harper is our benevolent father' routine now? That's just one more thing on an exceedingly long list of things I disagree with Mr. Harper about, that make me believe that he is an opportunitst who is cavalierly destructive to the very nuts and bolts of my country.

I was born here. I see English 'institutions' in Ontario, and on Vancouver Island, and in the projects of a few smug remittance men and crooks with old world connections. English is a language of convenience. 'English Canada' is... is a non-definition. It means nothing at all-- certainly not culture, and when it comes down to it, not even language, because it applies equally to my Polish, Norwegian and German-speaking neighbours as it does to actual speakers of English, or people of English ancestry. I find it unfortunate that you would buy into such a misleading insulting and fundamentally false self-label.

I've moved from Saskatchewan to Ontario. Anyone who thinks those two have any cultural similarity is ..... unencumbered by reality. Those two are different planets. As easy as it is for Benz to dismiss all of Canada outside Quebec as being blandly uniformly 'other', someone from the west looks east and sees a single shade of foreign beige; folks from Newfoundland shake heads at mainlanders; folks from the north see the ignorant monolithic south... Beige is the colour of our own insularity.

OJ was found innocent, too.

That's every bit as offensive to me as Benz's two nations definition. My forebears were not English, nor French, nor Aboriginal and neither am I, but I'm every bloody bit as Canadian as anyone who happens to be any or all of those things. Moreso, because my nationality- my loyalty- isn't hyphenated or conditional. You guys don't get to tell me that your greater loyalty to some other 'nation' makes you more valuable to this one. I say that it makes you less valuable.

Speculating in an odd sort of unison than never leads to a punitive bubble-burst, as they have done for quite some time, and to great profit....

The chopping block, though.... This thread is an attempt to anticipate the national piolicies that we have pre-endorsed. I point to two items in the morning news: The first is the NB farmer being held Lebanon on an Interpol warrant originating in Algeria. Even while Lebanon wonders why the Canadian government is making no move to take this prisoner off their hands, our own government is wringing hands and claiming that there's just nothing they can do. http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/newstoday/article/1404994 The other is the record-setting price of gas, even as the value of a barrel of oil is down, and falling. The 'c' word, 'collusion', appears to be the likliest explanation. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/05/10/gasoline-price.html This is going to be an interesting 4 years... we have chosen to 'live in interesting times'.

It is disingenuous to suggest that 'those who can cough up $1000 without it causing hardship' are not, overall, more well-to-do than others (most). In our area, unemployment remains very close to 9% even now that so many have run out of ei benefits and been removed from the lists of employables, and even though so many who do have a job have not recovered the wage cuts from our most excellect buy opportunity of a couple of years ago. The number who can come up with money for a political donation is much reduced from that few years ago, and the number who get the benefit of an extremely, extremely generous tax deduction for making such a donation is even smaller. While yes, the Conservatives are very good at passing the hat, they are also panhnadling from an interest group with the greatest capacity to throw something in it, and who, in return, recieve the maximum refund.

That played a heavy role in the utter destruction of the 'old Tory' Progressive Conservative Party. A reprise by the new Tory, non-progressive Conservatives could do the same for them.

And selected individuals have been denying it ever since.

I have not been carefully following this thread, so I have to ask.. four regions? Was that discussed here? Benz, you spoke of 5 regions instead of a presumption of 4... Did I miss that chunk of this discussion? 4 seems like an unlikely number- one I've never seen proposed before (or rather, it sounds like the number that would have been proposed in 1867- four or 3.), so I'm wondering where that number came from, and what those 4 regions would be.

He's still the one I'm betting on being the first 'Idiot of the Week'.

Then there's stuff like this one: http://bcinto.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-is-julian-fantino-in-conservative.html "Why is Julian Fantino in the Conservative Candidate Protection Program?"

100%, Punked. Reminds me of a guy picked up to complete a foursome for a small town bonspiel, who insisted, "I've never done this before, so I'll shoot last."... Where does one even begin the correction and explanation?

You ask me 'why', so start here: http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=pol&dir=can/bck&document=index〈=e You will note for a start that yes, your nominators must be eligible to vote in the riding for which you are being nominated. Next, West end Montreal, NDG/Cote-St.Luc/Montreal West is not a federal riding. Cote-St. Luc is mostly in Mount Royal; Montreal West is in Lachine; could be Westmount; could be Lasalle; could be....(None of them, by the way, were won by a 19-year-old, male NDP candidate, so that bit is either a mistake, or a lie. ) Soooo... we've established that you know sweet nothing about the organizational structure, processes or personel of the NDP party, and shockingly little about the federal structure of Canada.. certainly nothing at all about basic party function.... Soooo what were your superlative qualifications again? You are a volunteer for an unnamed charity and you have passed through that riding recently? Me, too. I have the additional qualification of being able to find the Elections Canada site on my computer, and reading it. Now, I know I'm being more than a little rude here, but let that be some hint about how offensive I find your sense of entitlement. Who do you think you are, marching in with no facts and no grasp, no perspective and no background, magnanimously offering yourself for the endorsement of starngers? Trust and respect must be earned, and you've done so little of it that you don't even know that it must be done at all. AND... then we get to the qualifications of the folks who were given those endorsements. This young woman is not a teen-ager, and she's not 'a barmaid'. She is three years older than Ralph Goodale was when he was elected for the first time. She has been self-supporting outside of partisan circles (ie has held down a real job) for, I believe, more years than Stephen Harper has done. She manages- not slings beer for, but manages- a successful pub. She is a parent. And she has been involved with (not just 'votes for' or even 'held a membership in' the NDP party for 'years'. (That's that 'earned trust' thing.) So perhaps you should tell me again how you are more qualified than she is... or for that matter, more qualified than any of the new NDP MPs?

......'aspiring candidate' = Pegasus ..... who claims to have gotten 100+ signatures, presumeably endorsements of his nomination ......while living in Quebec City ..... but hoping to be a candidate in (best guess, Mount Royal in) Montreal.

Did you perhaps wonder whose signatures our aspiring candidate lined up, and what riding they might reside in?

It sounds as though she is conducting herself with remarkable poise.. which further suggests that she is not such an outlandish choice after all. Good for her.

Riding associations. For a few years, I was working on a provincial, not constituency level, and had a hand in nominations ranging from winnable/hotly sought-after to 'Are we going to have to float someone in just to have a name on the ballot?', a la Quebec NDP. Every party has their own rules, and NDP is one party I have never worked with or for, so you can ask Punked, maybe, what their peculiarities are... but in general terms: The more lead time you can give a candidate, the better. Yes, a year is marvellous. A week or more into the campaign is a disaster. The constituency level seal of approval is critically improtant, 'cause those are the folks who are going to have to provide the financial wherewithall, and do the work. And, you absolutely want to get all the speachifying/rally-the-troops/rah-rah noise you can possible milk a nomination for (advertizing) ... so the more formal/official /stratified you can make it, the better. Having to book a rink to hold the people, check everyones membership credentials with a magnifying glass, use a secret ballot and automatic recounts, have nominators and three seconders per candidate, start it with a parade and end it with fireworks etc. etc. etc.. the more the better... or it can be reduced to the 5 folks who have carried the party banner through no man's land forever, flipping coins in the pub for 'odd-man-out and buy a round' to determine which of them loses, and must let his name be placed on the ballot. Whatever extreme might be the conditions du jour, yes, yes, yes it is a very organized process with hoops to jump and conditions to be met. Least desireable of all possible options is to have the leader appoint candidates from wherever just to fill in that blank space. Vetting is largely done by way of the formal nomination process, as in lots of dogs will offer to run, but the locals generally know them, and refuse to nominate them. If there is no such local expertise guiding that decision, then 'who you know' does definitely stand, because anyone recommending you is sticking their neck out and putting all of their own work and credibility at risk. You establish who and what you are through time and performance. It is better to nominate your sweet old Mama than someone you don't know/ or who can't be vouched for.

Speaking as someone who's done more constituency work than an awful lot of people, and who has had the unfortunate task of helping to recruit a sacrificial lamb candidate for an unwinnable seat..... if someone wandered into the committee rooms I was tending a few days after a couple of days after an election was called, resume and nomination papers in hand to apply for the position of 'candidate', I'd probably tell them as politely as I could possibly muster that they were 'not qualified', too.

Let me get this right: A creationist is introducing fossil ants as evidence of climate change having occurred in the early part of the eocene epoch ( hoping thereby to refute the human role in the current climate shift....) Excuse me while I just... back away... slowly...