Category: Canada

Another day, another link (or two). With only three weeks left to go, you’d think that things would be heating up a little bit more than they have been but things seem to have been relatively calm, at least in London North Centre. Everyone seems to be just chugging along with nary a peep. It’s enough to make you wonder when it’s gonna hit the fan (because you can’t help but think that it will, sooner or later). Well, on the other hand, the announcememt that the Canadian Action Party has decided to hop into the pool should make things a little… er… shall we say “interesting?” 🙄

The Freeps
May looks to make history

viveleCanada.ca
CAP leaps into Action for two by-elections!

Still more fiddleyfriggery from the MSM. But, hey; what else have we come to expect from them? The latest eekings and shreikings from the leftist lapdogs in the national media return, like a dog to its own vomit, to the recent Chicken Little proclaimations that the Tories are actually encouraging each other to support their candidates in the byelections. Sure this is something that all parties have done, pretty much since forever, but when has the media ever placed it in such ominous (“One of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s most senior political operatives is urging taxpayer-funded staff in the Parliament Hill offices of Conservative MPs to get involved in two federal byelection campaigns“) terms? Never, as far as I can remember. Of course they do a lame about-face (“Finley’s memo never explicitly states that Hill staff should use their parliamentary office resources or taxpayer-funded time“) just enough not to get sued, but it really doesn’t take a whole hell of a lot to guess what party membership cards these bozos have in their pockets now, does it?

Yeah, so the Tories are encouraging their staff to help out in the byelections. But then again, most of their staff are Tories, too. And before you have yourself a big, bad, Machiavellian meltdown over that, ask yourself this: how many conservatives do you think were working there when the Lieberals were running the show?

It seems that at least one old adage is holding as fast and true as ever: believe half of what you see and none of what you read. Except for here, of course. I’m a paragon of honesty, dontcha know?

Canada.com
Top Conservative urges staff in MPs’ offices to wade into byelection campaigns*

CTV
Memo urges Tory MPs’ staff to help in byelections

The Freeps
Candidates descend on mall

[* Sure, I could have listed all dozen or so of these stories that I found (from the Montreal Gazette to the Winterpeg Freeps to MacLeans), except for one thing: they were all exactly the same story, word for word. Interesting, non?]

From the London Parachute Club to the ‘burbs of Montreal, the hooting seems to have begun in ernest. I seem to be living in the only riding that I can ever remember that has all six electoral candidates stuck with the “parachute” label (the front page of today’s Freeps kind of sums it up nicely). Does anybody else out there remember anything even remotely like that? I sure don’t. Sure, Haskett has a lease here now, but before the byelection was called, not a damned one of ’em lived here.

But you sure hear the P-word popping out of all their pieholes, don’t you? Face it, kids, each of them has some connection or other to the riding (hell, Haskett’s family roots here go back two centuries), so can we please get on to the real issues now? All this parachute prattle is gettin’ on my nerves.

The Freeps
Byelection Battle
Do drop in
Campaign notebook
Haskett touted as prudent

And, here we go yet again. Pretty scant stuff this time, I must confess. Where the heck is all the excitement, anyway? Things should be getting all ugly by now, accusations should be flying, somebody should have been caught with a dimebag/hooker/gerbil or some damn thing by now, and where the hell are the attack ads!?!??

[Memo to me: STOP watching so much American television. That stuff has a creepy way of seeping into the skull after a while…]

Okay, okay; here we go with today’s stuff (all two of ’em so far):

Freeps
Fact Check
Byelection war heats up

Damn. First Bruce Cockburn grows a brain, and now this. And here I thought all the fancypants types in the entertainment industry were supposed to be all anti-military up the wazoo.

That doesn’t seem to be the case here, though. Canadian-born Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels seems to be the latest in a lengthening line of the supposedly exclusively-left showbiz crowd to yank his cranium out of his colon and say what most of us have known all along:

OTTAWA (CP) – “Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels applauded Canada’s participation in the Afghan mission Thursday, saying he’s glad his native country is “back in the world.”

But the Toronto-born Michaels, one of six Canadians being honoured this week with a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for lifetime achievement, had some sharp criticism for the previous Liberal government’s reaction to the September 11 attacks.

It’s almost enough to make you want to have faith in celebrities again.

It continues. As some of you will remember, Sun Media had themselves a little experiment a few days ago. They plopped one reporter on the street in several Canadian cities (Ottawa, TO, Edmonton, Calgary, London) for two days, carrying a different sign each day. On the first day, a sign would be displayed either in support of or against the deployment of Canadian troops in Afghanistan. The next day, the opposite message would be displayed.

Well, as Thane Burnette at the TO sun tells it, they seem to have opened up the floodgates of public opinion (and not leaning as we’ve been led to believe):

While those who approached me on the street seemed to match the polls of support for Canada’s mission in Afghanistan — about six out of 10 wanting us to stay — those opposing the war were vastly outnumbered in my e-mail in-box.