ChuckerCanuck 2.0

Stephane Dion, Pheonix Rising

2009-11-23T20:00:00.003-05:00

Yup, Stephane Dion has pledged his unwavering support to Michael Ignatieff. But wait! Stephane Dion doesn't go out and pledge his unwavering support, Miohael Ignatieff goes out to tell us Stephane Dion has pledged his unwavering support. There are no more powerful pledges of loyalty a leader can receive than the one he must announce himself.

In Michael Ignatieff's self-pledge of Stephane Dion's loyalty, he adds, "Stephane is a colleague and friend..." Such good friends, Stephane Dion said to him over the phone, "sure, Mike, sure, you can go out and tell people how loyal I am to you." ("Ah, jeez, that's just swell," says Iggy back.)

Forget the disastrous substance of Iggy's announcement, it is Iggy himself who decided to keep the Krieber Affair alive for another day. Peter Donolo is a communications guru and I guess at communications guru school they teach you that the best way to bury an embarassment is to keep talking it up. Instead of publicly announcing other people's loyalties, a not-dumb communications strategy would have been to not talk.

Even John McCallum seemed to know the color of his car when he said, "I don’t think she’s an opinion leader within the Liberal party and therefore I don’t think the story is going to last." She isn't, but Iggy is. He'll be the big pooh-bah at the big Thinkers Conference struggling to come up with big ideas like wind powered cars and changing the national anthem to the Parachute Club's Rise Up. And he wanted the story to go on.

Stop smiling, Jack Layton! Michael Ignatieff may very well be your dream Liberal opponent - foremost in Quebec but elsewhere too. But Stephane Dion is back. And he wants to gobble you and Elizabeth May up.

When a Dion spokesperson was finally required to confirm Iggy's loyalty announcement, he said, "he’s always been loyal to his leaders and his party and he’ll always be." That is Stephane Dion but it is also a lesson he wants to teach the insolent stumble-bums who ankle bit him to defeat: their disloyalty and covetness killed the Liberal party. Not him. And he's right.

If he could nab that kind of loyalty of a splinter group of Liberals, swallow up Elizabeth May with a promise of being deputy something, then he's only a hop skip and jump away from swallowing up the NDP. Stephane Dion is a fighter and he could put together a very potent political movement in Iggy's fast-coming wake.

As Goes Global Warming, So Goes Gritdom

2009-11-23T12:38:00.002-05:00

Imagine a spooky alternate universe in which, by hook or crook (mostly crook), Team Dion eeked out a win and Canada was mid-implementation of a massive Green Shift. The recession would snowball into a depression as consumers struggled with a new carbon tax and what foreign investment is available scurries away from Canada where even a cow fart gets taxed.

Then, as Joanne has terrifically catalogued, little cracks in the Global Warming Movement appeared. For a decade now, the planet hasn't warmed up an inch. Emissions continue, even accelerate, but the temperature stubbornly refuses to follow the road map set out for it by the vaunted climate models. The climate is a tad more complicated than a simple greenhouse. And maybe the sun's output isn't the only thing in the universe that is perfectly constant.

I'd say we'd be in trouble. With a capital "T" that rhymes with "B" that stands for boondoggle! Nothing in Canada's history would parallel the extent to which Canadians would feel scammed by the planet-lovers.

Well, it didn't happen but Canadians are coming to learn how close to the biggest scam in our history we were. And still are: the Liberals, science-lovers to the last drop, cannot be moved away from their post-modern animism no matter what evidence is placed before them.

And this kills them. The high-priests of a defunct faith don't get a short-cut to the high-priestdom of the latest cult. Liberals told us we were minutes away from planetary explosion. Liberals told us they could engineer the planet's climate to suit our requirements to the last decimal place. Liberals told us that dissent from their dogma was a betrayal of Canada and humanity. Liberals cannot step away from these commitments without stepping away from themselves.

Their only hope is calamity. They cross their fingers and hope for a flue to wipe out small cities worth of Canadians. They cross their fingers and hope for armies of starving jobless citizens. They cross their fingers and hope half the Afghan countryside was tortured under Stephen Harper's direction. They cross their fingers hope Polynesia plunges into the Pacific. Oh, they want to bring hope back to Canada alright.

"U.S. Republican-Style Tactics"

2009-11-23T10:27:00.002-05:00

Even Santa's sleigh couldn't hold all the reasons to keep Liberals away from power. But today, we have another one:

Their horrid ignorance of US politics, current and historical.

Today, they are crying about "U.S. Republican-Style Tactics" and smear campaigns. Do Liberals think that only Republicans run nasty campaigns in the United States? Democrats stand around saying, "please, let's keep things nice." While nasty Republicans hit below the belt since they can't win any other way?

Let's see. Obama on McCain. Hillary on Obama at 3 am. Here's one from 2006 that has the fun feel of a Tory ad. Oh, here's a little attack ad of Democrat on Democrat. Let's go look a a Democratic primary fight in Kentucky - ouch!

Now that's all recent history (and I could link you plenty more if you don't get the point). Let's think back to the most famous attack ad in political history, so famous, that Liberal Stlawart Warren Kinsella named his hackery firm after it:

The Daisy Ad. In it, LBJ suggested that Barry Goldwater would end humanity.

I began with the presumption that Liberals are so insular (as in, nothing outside their Toronto clique gets their attention) that they don't actually know much about U.S. political culture. I think that's the charitable view.

The uncharitable view is that they know full well that there is no such distinction between Republican and Democratic "smear campaigns". They know that Democrats can tear each other up as bad as they tear up the opposition. But if they know this, then why would they portray it as a lop-sided battle of the noble Democrat versus the ignoble Republican?

Because they think Canadians can be outwitted by a bag of nails. In the Liberal view, Canadians are so utterly clueless about life beyond their local Tim Horton's, we can be fed any line they give us, so long as we see a red maple leaf embroidered on their backpacks.

Either way, unfit to govern is the only conclusion to draw.

Should He Stay or Should He Go?

2009-11-22T22:04:00.002-05:00

As we know, Michael Ignatieff requires loyalty pledges at caucus meetings. Some months back, it was Ruby Dhalla forced to grovel her fielty at his feet in front of Liberal MPs. This time, it will be former party leader, Stephane Dion.

I agree with Chantal Hebert's comments that Mr. Dion has been placed in a very awkward position by his wife's vicious attack on the Liberal party and its leader. Granted, he may not share his wife's devastating apparaisal, but he can hardly slink about the shadows, expecting us to make that distinction. He has to come out and disown his wife's remarks as soon as possible. He has to tell us why he thinks his wife's read of the current political situation is way off-base and why Michael Ignatieff is not the featherweight she alleges.

Afterall, this is Stephane Dion's legacy at stake. If he agrees with his wife that the Liberal party is doomed and Michael Ignatieff is its valium overdose, he will end up spending the last part of his political career supporting a situation he knows to be unproductive at best, toxic at worst, for Canada. And Stephane Dion is generally understood to be Canadian first above all. How sad if he ended his career as a lazy opportunist who kept on the Liberal road because it was easy.

If he thinks his wife is on to something, he should leave the Liberal caucus. Tomorrow. Even Tories would appreciate this dramatic but principled gesture in Canada's best interest.

If he doesn't, he should scrum with reporters and divorce himself from his wife's loose lips.

If I Were A Liberal, Here's What I Would Say

2009-11-21T21:44:00.003-05:00

Polls go up and down, you can't steer a ship based on quick glances up at the stars to figure out where you are. Okay, that's exactly how you steer ships but politics is not like sailing.

We all know why we are down in the polls. We've had to make some changes to our OLO and we knew we would take a small hit because of the perceived instability the move creates.

Some fools think this means the Liberal party is doomed. Some folks think we don't have a raison d'etre anymore. Ridiculous, I say. Canada craves Liberal leadership and I look forward to the coming Thinker's Conference to prove it.

The Liberal Party of Canada is still the only party that understands the balance between the market and the people. We are the only ones who want a prosperous Canada and a clean, carbon neutral Canada. We are also the party that kills deficits while finding room to make Canadians dream of big projects.

In short, we are the party that lets you eat cake and keep cake at the same time. Everywhere else in the world, that's impossible. The Liberal party is the party that makes the impossible happen.

We are the only party in Canada, nay the world, capable of bringing about world peace.

We are the only party in Canada, nay the world, capable of saving the planet from exploding.

We are the only party in Canada, nay the world, capable of making you feel better by taxing you more.

We are smarter than you. You know that, that's why you trust us. We are more moral than you. You know that, that's why you defer to us. We see a bigger picture than you. You know that, that's why you leave us all the crayons.

The Conservatives offer death. The Dippers offer us collective poverty. The Bloc Quebecois offers us the end of Canada. Only we Liberals offer prosperity, happiness and unity. Canadians have a choice: death or life; poverty or prosperity; unity or chaos. The choice is obvious and even Canadians, who are dumber than us Liberals, will figure it out.

Today is the first day of our long march back to a majority. Courage!

23%

2009-11-20T20:04:00.005-05:00

What can be said?

Is it a death spiral? I know if the Liberal party was a stock, we'd be talking about it testing historic lows. For a generation, the floor was 25%. I can't recall a situation as bad as it is today for the Grits.

I wonder if all those ambitious wankers who sign up to their campus Liberal club have started wetting their khaki dockers over their life commitment to the Big Dreamers. What once looked like a meal ticket now's a chump's dead end.

So why ia this happening? Well, Warren Kinsella's semi-departure from Team Iggy seams to suggest it was just a matter of a some goof-balls screwing things up for his Iggyness. And no doubt, the weak performance of so many of Iggy's closest has a part.

But I'd suggest the problem is much simpler and more fundamental:

Liberals have invested entirely in an irrational hatred of Stephen Harper. While all of us Canadians have come to admire and appreciate our hometown hero; Grits have convinced themselves he is Balzebub. Because they can't divorce themselves from this hatred, because they have made this hatred so central to their political motivations and purpose, that they cannot join the rest of Canada in grudging love for the PM.

Granted, Liberals will read that last paragraph and sneer, snicker; but that's just fine by me. They are sneering and snickering past the graveyard.

Yes, Iggy, We're All A Bunch of Stupid Yokels

2009-11-19T21:55:00.003-05:00

Buried in Iggy's mea culpe on his own terrible performance, he makes a staggering observation:

"But let's also be realistic here. We always knew this was going to be a tough go. We're up against the most determined and ruthless ... political machine we've seen in Canada for a long time."

Let's be realistic for a second, Iggy: you are just about the last person in Canada qualified to judge the relative ruthlessness of past and current political machines. Maybe no one in the new or old OLO remembers this but, you haven't been around to watch and make that kind of observation.

So let's give you a little history lesson, Iggy. Chuckercanuck, when he turned 18 and got to vote, voted for ..... ugh, I am so embarassed .... the Liberal party. What did I know? It was my federalist Quebecker duty to vote for Team Canada and in those days, from my silly perspective, that was the Liberal party. Then I got wise. Then I learned that being a Liberal meant I had to demonize anyone who dared disagree with Liberal policy. Non-Liberals were simply un-Canadian. We could laugh at those western rednecks because they thought we walked with dinosaurs and they hated anyone who wasn't white. This I believed.

Until I got myself on the wrong side of Liberal orthodoxy. Until I started thinking that victimizing everyone was sick and that social justice was a social disease. The day I left the Liberal fold fully, I understood how thuggish and uncivil Team Grit was.

The height of this thuggishness, of course, was the sponsorship scandal where the Liberal party funnelled tax-payer cash to its operatives all over Quebec to win seats the way the Democratic party did in the 1800s.

That Liberals would compare, unfavorably, the Tory political machine to the Liberal one in the 1990s is the height of sissiness.

So either Iggy is ignorant of Canadian political history and thinks we are just as blind dumb as him or he is a sissy of gargantuan proportions. Or Both. Any way you slice it, I wissh he would quit messing with us.

Grits walk like ducks... they quack like ducks...

2009-11-18T22:01:00.002-05:00

Apparently, Liberals are concluding that, on the basis of plain facts, they are anti-semitic. No one is accusing them of it except themselves. All the Tories are doing is reminding voters of the record:

1. Yes, Liberals participated in Durban 1. In whatever capacity, they showed up to an anti-Israel festival.

2. Yes, Liberals marched with Hizbullah supporters. In fact, the star of the show is a wannabe near-future leader of the Liberal party: Denis Coderre.

3. Yes, Michael Ignatieff said, on a television program in Quebec that I watched myself, that using his life-long expertise in war crimes, he was convinced that Israel had committed war crimes.

Now, on the latter, Iggy might have apologized for making the comment, but that's not the same thing as saying, "actually, my years of academic experience in war crimes led me to the wrong conclusion". He was just sorry he said it. Chalk that up to the long list of things he is sorry he's ever said.

No 10% I am aware of, I might add, reminds people of how Bob Rae's leadership campaign hit a turbulent patch in the final hours when Liberal delegates were worrying about his wife's jewishness. That would have been an ugly thing to remember - it would also be a fact.

Joe Volpe might be stunned that anyone would dare remind voters of the facts of Liberal actions and statements, but in an era where the Liberal dream team accuses the government of killing people - either through EI or H1N1 - none of this hardly amounts to a new low in Canadian politics. The only new low coming soon to Canadian politics is Liberal polling numbers.

Meanwhile, back in Abstainistan

2009-11-16T21:20:00.002-05:00

Where they mess with you until they are done.

A couple of giggles:

H1N1 Hysteria is getting hysterical. Even Liberal cheerleaders are red-faced about the whole thing. Right now, Liberals are only so desperate as to exagerate the mortalities due to H1N1. But what would happen if they started polling under 25%? My unsaid joke is just a joke, of course....

Warren Kinsella often uses this line:

"Governments, ultimately, are not defeated by the media or the Opposition. They are defeated by themselves."

But in the context of today's political environment, doesn't this sound like a plea to his new boss, Peter Donolo?

Watching our Wicked Cool Prime Minister... from Texas

2009-11-16T19:39:00.002-05:00

Oy, this week from Fort Worth, Texas. (Those of us in the knowledge economy don't get bail-outs, we've got to work our asses off to earn maybe 2/3rds of what we used to earn!)

I don't have much to say to you folks except: ain't he just the coolest?

Damn straight, we're coming to steal the immigrant vote from Liberals. They've done nothing to earn that vote. They've done nothing but shove a bunch of social justicisms down everybody's throat and called any and all dissenters "un-Canadian".

The Conservative Party is not just a big tent party: it is the only big tent party in Canada. It is the only party that offers Canadians, new and not so new, the opportunity to define life as they see fit. We aren't forcing big projects on you. We aren't thinking up ways to tax you to death. We just want to provide you with peace, order and good government. You do the rest!

That, my friends, is the most life affirming message Canada has ever had. And if I were surrounded by Bollywood babes right now, I'd be doing the macarena.

Liberal Lobotomies, False Dichotomies

2009-11-14T10:00:00.004-05:00

Sup? Now, I haven't been involved in the mining industry for more than a decade but them's my roots and I'll always be rootin' for them. One thing I find way not cool is the dichotomy Liberals always set up between natural resources and the knowledge economy. They's mutually exclusive propositions and Iggy says we should drop the old stuff in favor of the new. And all the clever thinkers - economists, political scientists, sociologists, poets, etc. - tell us this is some deep, deep thinking. Where was the rain to get you thinking such deep thoughts, Iggy?

So like, here's what we mining engineers know: the mining industry is one of the most technologically sophisticated industries in the world. And, in Canada, we are not only miners, we are mine financers, mine software writers, mine designers, mineral process inventors, etc. That is the knowledge economy and we owe it to our natural resources.

And it is no accident of nature that makes the discovery and development of our own mineral extraction industry thrive. Canada, by necessity, has to constantly advance in the technologies that make increasingly lower quality deposits profitable to mine under ever-increasing environmental regulations (properly so).

When you think about what Iggy means: to compete against the world, we should try to be like countries who don't have our natural and infrastructural advantages: we should try and take advantage of other countries advantages. It isn't capitalism, it isn't socialism, it is shoot-own-footism.

Mining is a high-tech endeavour. Few to no other economic activities match the technical sophistication and intellectual rigour of the mining industry. We have competitors (Sweden, Finland, Australia and the United States come to mind) in the mining knowledge economy. And they'll be kicking our ass while we leap into the deeply-thought up Big Dream market into which Iggy'll have us leap.

Job Interview Questions for the OLO

2009-11-12T23:53:00.003-05:00

For all of you hot to replace Liberal apparatchicks in the OLO, my Liberal mole friend has forwarded to me the interview questions prepared to test the suitability of candidates. So get practicing and you might have the sweetest 6-month job in Canada! And who knows, if the Grits get to sneak in EI-360, you'll qualify as soon as Iggy tosses you under the bus for his own incompetence!

Q1. Give an example of a time when you encountered a difficulty and pretended it didn't actually exist?

Q2. On a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 is Hitler and 5 is Satan himself, where would you put Stephen Harper?

Q3. How many people do you believe the Tories have killed from gross incompetence, american-style neo-conservatism or both?

Q4. Like Michael Ignatieff, you believe Canada sucks and needs to be a better country by 2017. Which countries, other than Sweden, do you think suck less than Canada?

Q5. If the Liberal party required that you donote a kidney - well, actually, sell your kidney on the black market - would you do it?

Q6. We all agree that Canadians should pay more taxes, how much would you hike the GST?

Q7. What part of Toronto do you live in?

Life After Iggy

2009-11-12T08:51:00.002-05:00

"Tories for Coderre" is the hottest new political movement in Canada. Okay, actually it is just a half-baked idea but its internal temperature is rising rapidly. Denis Coderre comes out swinging just two days after the by-elections on Monday which proved a disaster for Liberals.

Like Bob Rae and the whole Liberal caucus, Coderre is careful to pledge his loyalty to Michael Ignatieff and his vision of making Canada suck a little less by 2017. But... but... but... He wants to be the next leader of the Liberal party. And pardon him if he points this out: his dramatic resignation as Quebec lieutenant and the overhaul of his leader's office that resulted is the best thing to happen to the Liberals in, like, forever.

Imagine then how much better off the Liberals would be if Denis Coderre wasn't just a squeaky wheel but fully captain of the good ship Liberal. Are we really going to let some ex-Dipper from Toronto replace Iggy only to rumpify that once great party even more than Iggy has?

No! Save democracy! Save Canada! Vote Coderre.

God Bless the Oil Sands

2009-11-11T23:39:00.002-05:00

Damn straight the world needs Canada's oil sands.

This morning, I had the unique pleasure of driving the Sunrise Highway through the Cleveland Forest National Park outside San Diego. As I climbed from beaches of San Diego to 5,000 feet, I enjoyed listening to the Danish environment minister worble on about climate change. It was the usual fare: do nothing now and we face extinction. But then she said that going green would produce megatonnes of money. She warned American business that China was going to become the biggest consumer and exporter of clean technologies. So they had better get with the program our lose out to China.

Myself, I was thinking: terrific, problem solved. China is going to save the planet with massive exports of clean technology. Being an economic simpleton, I do not understand how switching to a more expensive input, in this case energy source, ends up creating wealth. But it isn't my problem and besides, China has the solution. I wonder, of course, why China isn't pushing the hardest for huge carbon emission cuts if it stands to be the beneficiary of such cuts as the Danish environment minister suggests.

Afterall, that is how we think in Quebec. We are big on carbon emission cuts because a) we don't have to make any and b) it makes our energy exports more attractive to our neighbours west, east and south of us. Hey folks, stop with the coal burning. Buy hydroelectricity from us and feel a whole lot better about it!

Meanwhile, until the Chinese clean energy industry gets into full swing, the world need's our oil sands. To celebrate this fact, I encourage all of you to resurrect an old favorite this weekend, the Green Goddess salad dressing.

Green Goddess Cole Slaw

Shred cabbage and carrots in equal measure.

In a blender:

Equal parts mayo, sour cream, green onion and parsley.
1 garlic clove, salt and pepper.
Red wine vinegar to taste (or sherry vinegar).

Blitz then dress the cole slaw. Dress yourself in bellbottoms and velour tops. Put the BeeGees in the CD player and enjoy.

From the Department of Lame Assed Excuses

2009-11-11T10:26:00.002-05:00

Here's Glles Duceppe explaining why his party lost a seat on Monday:

"'What is clear is that the party has been paying the price for its MPs quitting in mid-mandate because voters do not appreciate it, he added. 'I think all politicians should think over the idea that, once they win a mandate, they should complete it..."

Nothing to see here, folks. It is just an aberration based on some cranky voters casting a protest vote against the personal ambitions of a single MP. Certainly, it has nothing to do with the Conservatives. As Duceppe later asks:

"If the Conservatives are such a hot commodity, why did they score a mere 10 per cent in the other Quebec riding that voted Monday, Hochelaga?"

Let me try to answer that one: there are not two more dissimilar ridings in all of Quebec. The priorities and interests of the citizens of these two ridings are different. If the values and priorities of these two ridings were remotely similar, then you' expect the protest on the lower St-Lawrence to have yielded a Dipper win, not a Tory win. Afterall, no two parties are more ideologically similar than the Dippers and the Bloc Quebecois.

The real aberration, Gilles, was the 2008 election. It was four parties against one. It was Tory messaging on crime and arts. It was Jean Charest saying just enough to make Quebeckers feel that all Quebeckers didn't like Tory culture policies.

Things change however. It can't be four against one the next time or the Bloc will have its left flank exposed to Dipper advances. Jean Charest won't be dissing culture policies, he'll be lauding stimulus spending. Crime has turned to a Tory advantage since the Bloc foolishly sided with pedophiles on minimum sentences.

And, as for the arts, Stephen Harper has created an entirely new dynamic by performing alongside Yo-Yo Ma in Ottawa. We might not be the bestest at creating a myriad of junk programs that pays people to pile rocks on museum floors, but we know the importance of the individual citizen as creator and consumer of art. Everybody should be able to play a Beatles tune on the piano. Not just the precious pet of the Hochelaga set.

Last Night's By-Elections... from San Diego

2009-11-10T18:08:00.004-05:00

Oh yeah, by-elections don't matter. They are just little aberrations that can't be stretched to tell a bigger story. Except.... except....

Well, except that one thing comes out of last night's by-elections: Liberals don't matter. My friends across La Belle Province should take note of this. Except for a clutch of ridings in Toronto and Montreal with a small rump out east, Liberals do not figure in the national political debate. They could cycle through a hundred more academics and the exercise would be academic - the results won't change.

Remember, my dear friends in Quebec, not only are they insignificant in most regions of the country, they are not particularly reliable when it comes to national unity. Sure, Chretien was. Trudeau was. Laurier and St-Laurent. But the day the entire caucus signed over veto power to the separatist Bloc Quebecois in exchange for cabinet seats, they handed over their Captain Canada power rings.

By-elections don't matter. Except that the only party to pick up a seat yesterday was Stephen Harper's Tories. They gained that seat here in Quebec, the land lost to Tories forever. A while back, I suggested, to quite a bit of derision, that Tories can scoop up 30 seats in the next election here in Quebec. Last night should have convinced my right-wing friends that it is worth the effort. Especially when you consider that none of the classic "pandering" (to use the Westerner expression) was required to secure the seat. Get the right candidate and show off the record.

And if Tories don't smell the opportunity, rest assured that last night's second biggest loser, Gilles Duceppe, did. Oh sure, he'll spend himself a few days cursing the people of the lower St-Lawrence, calling them bad Quebeckers for not supporting him. But once he puts on a Zamphyr CD and pours himself a glass of 2004 Chateau Collectiviste, he'll adjust. Let's make sure it is too late.

Even the Bloc Quebecois are more Pan-Canadian than the Liberals

2009-11-09T22:45:00.002-05:00

Gosh darn it. Team Blue is going to end the night either with good news or great news. At least one seat - a thorough trouncing and a really good showing in the seat in the lower St-Lawrence. Winning two seats would be tremendous but already, Tories should feel good.

Especially set against Team Red. They will end the night in third place everywhere and pretty damned close to forth place at that. I know they would like to brush the results off but this is going to stick like skunk spray. Nowhere are they relevant to the contest except as an oddity or spoiler. A few well placed high speed trains are not going to wipe that fact out.

That's Iggy messing with the Prime Minister until Iggy is done.

!0 Ways to Dip into Dipper Voting Pools

2009-11-09T11:37:00.002-05:00

Like Nic Nanos, I strongly urge Michael Ignatieff to re-invent himself as something attractive to Dippers. The only hope the Liberals have of surviving the next election cycle is to steal NDP support away from them. In order to help Mr. Ignatieff with this extreme makeover, I have ten surefire ways to leftify himself.

10. Wear Hemp. Nothing gets lefties more excited than a wardrobe made of a durable, all natural fibre - nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

9. Buy a Bus that Runs on used deep-fryer oil. Paint it Liberal Red with a big white L emblazoned on the sides. Everyone will cheer your environmentalism.

8. Dreadlock the eyebrows. Like Chuckercanuck, Iggy's eyebrows grow about half an inch a day. Tired of trimming? Do what Bob Marley only dreamed of doing.

7. At the Calgary Stampede, don't have a pancake breakfast, have a falafel lunch. Those deep-fried chickpea fritters get all the neighbourhood commies a-twitter.

6. Make Hedy Fry your deputy leader.

5. Pick on Israel. It did you some good in 2006 when you told Quebec that Israel had committed war crimes. Wrap yourself in a kefifa and go march in a Hizbullah rally with Denis Corderre.

4. Make up with Ian Davey. Then marry him. Some politicians pay lip service to same-sex marriage. But you could ignite the country's imagination by being the first same-sex married national power couple.

3. Buy a GWB doll on ebay. Stomp on it at every public appearance.

2. Invite Jimmy Hoffa Junior to your coming Thinker's Conference. Off a keynote address slot to Hugo Chavez.

1. Bash free markets. Liberals know that markets are only as good as the government's that regulate them. You've started on this path already but got distracted by the many different ways Tories are killing people (EI, H1N1). If you want Canadians to be excited by your leadership, promise to lead them out of the economic freedom that has so crippled us this past year.

Do this and the keys to 24 sussex are yours.

Great Expectations

2009-11-08T22:50:00.002-05:00

Four by-elections tomorrow. Two in Quebec, one in Nova Scotia and one in British Columbia. Two parties are in the top two contnders in three ridings each. One party is competitive in two ridings. Another party is competitive in none.

It is pretty reasonable, based on the above, to assume:

Since the Bloc is a regional player and focuses message and resources solely on that region, therefore it is the party competitive in two Quebec seats. So, while more popular in total, the thinness of the vote means the NDP are competitive in none. Meanwhile, the two national parties, the Tories and Liberals, are the parties competitive in three ridings each.

Except it is the Dippers competitive in three ridings and the Liberals are competitive in none.

In the midst of the worst economic conditions in decades, active combat and military cuasualties in Afghanistan, a planet-exploding climate problem and a shrinking part of the mystic Chinese market, the only credible alternative to the Tory government is not competitive in any of the four diverse ridings across the country. A coincidence that can be remedied by letting Canadians get to know the real Michael Ignatieff. Then they'll realize its time to throw the bums out.

Purging, en famille

2009-11-07T11:51:00.003-05:00

Iggy's penchant for ruthlessness continues as he sheds the barnicles clinging to leadership office. Curious about how this news would be received, I asked a few random people on the street for their input:

"I am stunned that it took Iggy this long to figure out how inept these guys were." -- Guy Giorno

"Why did he pick these guys in the first place? His instincts are just terrible. Maybe it is because he's never managed anything in his life." -- Sandra Buckler

"Phew. At least I'm still around. It pays not to get paid." -- Warren Kinsella

"And guess who's next?" -- Bob Rae

(I know, I know. What a crazy street to be walking down and find such a collection of random Canadians to accost. I guess that weekend seminar I attended called 'Journalism 101', hosted by the CBC, really paid off.)

I don't know the Koran, But I do Know Krazy

2009-11-06T13:42:00.004-05:00

Unsurprisingly, the yanks are trying to figure what motivated the massacre at Ft. Hood, Texas.

So, I thought I'd give you my prejudice.

Some people are crazy. They are psychotics with mis-wired brains that make their propensity for violence very dangerous. Rare as they may be, we have all met them once or twice in life. We might have joked nervously that so-and-so is the kind of guy who walks into the office with a gun and starts shooting everybody. We know who they are.

I get that he was muslim and didn't like the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. I get that he wanted out of the military.

But folks, lots of people find themselves in that situation and don't decide to slaughter a baker's dozen of innocent people. Sometimes, they just suck it up and survive. Sometimes, they kill themselves. Never have they started mass murdering.

In other words: the guy is crazy evil. Would be if he converted to Christianity or Climate-changism or hated women or sex or his job on the assembly line.

I guess I say all this because some folks will distract us by talking up a tangent (religion) which avoids the more serious talk we need to have in our society: there ain't no cure for crazy and we ain't got no good ways to protect ourselves from crazies. We just sit around, joking nervously behind their backs and wait for them to blow.

Jack and Gilles, the latest chill

2009-11-06T08:54:00.003-05:00

Everybody loves a good commie-on-commie fight. And the by-election in Hochelaga is exactly that: Dipper versus Bloc Quebecois. (The third communist party, the Liberals, are relevant only insofar as they syphon votes away from the Dippers.)

Needless to say, Chuckercanuck endorse the NDP for noble and ignoble reasons.

The noble reason is simple: I prefer federalists to separatists 10 times out of 10. It is why, despite my frequent mocking of the Liberal Peter Pan, I still endorsed Justin Trudeau last time out.

The ignoble reason is pretty easy too: the more competitive the NDP are on the island of Montreal, the less competitive everybody else is. If the NDP competes with the Bloc for the deep-urban, recklessly irresponsible vote in the commie parts of the city while at the same time Tories are providing heat to the Bloc Quebecois in the small-town sensible parts of the province, then the Bloc's biggest weakness gets highlighted for all to see.

There are left wing separatists and right wing separatists. Those two camps co-exist uneasily in the Bloc Quebecois. It creates lots of problems for them. F'rinstance, the Bloc was big earlier this year in defending pedophiles from minimum sentences. That plays well in downtown Montreal where we would jail victims and free convicts. But outside downtown Montreal, the Bloc was totally off-side majority opinion.

Provincially, the cleavage between left wing separatist and right wing separatists took root when downtown Montreal put a commie-lunatic from Quebec Solidaire into the provincial legislature. The PQ was rejected by the dread-locked, shower on thursdays set. The BQ could face the same rejection unless it focuses heavily on winning that demographic from the NDP. The more focus there, the more annoyed right wing separatists in small-town Quebec become. If that dynamic can be created in the next election, neither Jack nor Gilles end up the big winners.

Channelling Cherniak

2009-11-05T13:14:00.002-05:00

Peter Donolo has been running the show for a week now and the Liberals continue their unrelenting goofballery. Today's installment: Warren Kinsella pulls a Cherniak that would make even Cherniak blush.

Again with this silly concept of pairing. But here's what's interesting (and obvious): Warren and Peter had 8 Liberal MPs they could have paired with the Bloc MPs bubble boy. It would have been a snap to save lives, which is all Peter and Warren care to do, to save bubble boy from having to leave his bar stool and go vote.

Call it a missed opportunity. Imagine instead of the ridiculous hyperbole in which Warren and Peter have invested so heavily, they had managed a pairing. What a coup! They could make their point gracefully without resorting to undue panic-mongering. It wouldn't have been so much about health and safety, rather it would be about parlimentary collegiality. Instead, we get a dose of panic-mongering that underlines how rusty Warren and Peter really are.

Quit Horsin' Around or You May End Up in the Slammer

2009-11-05T09:33:00.005-05:00

Unless sumpin' big comes along, let's take a break from politics, shall we? I don't really want to slog through tedious Olympic politics or whatever today's outrage happens to be.

Instead, I would like to talk about bestiality. Specifically, giving a man a three year sentence for making love to a horse. Since the article comes from the august New York Times, I am still being way classy for putting the issue before us.

I realize that I am likely to raise the hackles of my right-wing brethren AND upset the busybodies at PETA but maybe it is time to decriminalize bestiality. Not because it is an acceptable social practice; in the age of swine flu, none of us would encourage a heavy swapping of bodily fluids between species. But what exactly is the crime here?

Answer 1. It is a gross perversion and we should outlaw perversions. Ah, but one man's perversions is another man's pleasures. Personally, I have heard of many practices that I would consider perverse, the Dirty Sanchez comes to mind, but rumors are that some folks in my suburban corner would vociferously oppose my attempts to ban the practice. (Incidentally, the rumors are about Liberal voters, of course.)

Answer 2. The horse got raped, so it is rape. This might be Brigit Bardot's line of argument but that puts, pun intended, the horse before the court. Can we say the horse expressed consent to the inter-special coitus? One imagines that the horse didn't enjoy the affair: Sugar would be accustomed to the offerings of a male horse which are vastly more substantial than what the "rapist" could deliver. Did Sugar even notice? If Sugar was not receptive to the amorous advances of this chap, why didn't she just buck and kick a hole in his guts? Without a clear sign of dissent, any good defense lawyer could raise reasonable doubt that the acts amounted to rape.

Answer 3. It is a violation of someone else's property. Sugar belongs to someone. And here, to my mind, is where the law has teeth. It seems to me that the appropriate course would be damages plus psychological therapy / chemical treatment. But this guy is a repeat offender. He and Sugar have carried on in a carnal way on multiple occasions. So he is obviously not able to overcome his burning desire for the backside of a mare.

So maybe jail time is the only thing that'll set him straight; or at least, he'll get a sense of what it feels like to be Sugar.

From Cheesecloth Hats to Surgical Masks

2009-11-04T20:25:00.004-05:00

Politics 101: the only political props that ever work are giant, novelty cheques.

Our friends in the Bloc Quebecois, wily warts comfortably rooted in our body politic, have a propensity for buffoonery that pops up semi-regularly. Today's installment, one of the Bloc's nobody MPs wears a surgical mask to vote because he feared he was getting sick with "swine flu".

He wanted to skip the vote but only if a Tory paired with him.

The spin is supposed to be: Tories are so evil and insensitive to Canadians health, they wouldn't pair when this thought he might be introducing the plague to parliament.

Pairing, in itself, is a bone-headed concept; demonstrated clearly by history. And on an issue as important as the long-gun registry, it is completely ridiculous to think any Tory MP would want to miss that vote. It is no one's fault that this MP fears he is getting the swine flu, including the Tories. If instead, an unfortunate MP croaked, no one would be saying, "well, he would have voted X so the Tories have to sit one MP out until a byelection elects a replacement." Liberals - oops, I mean - the Bloc should suck it up and be glad the MP will be back at work soon.

There's no good reason for him to show up and vote if he really thinks he's a carrier of H1N1. And if Mr. Surgical Mask was really not about the photo op and really all about public health, he should be wearing latex gloves, freshly applied from his last encounter with his fluids and twenty second hand-washing? Just to be safer than the incompetent, uncaring Tories would have us be? You ask me, his colleagues should be just as scared of those big separatist hands and everything they touch.

It may be fun to team up with Team Ignatieff and score cheap points by panic-mongering on what is a historical first in Canada. But maybe not so bright in the bigger picture. In their criticism, they are giving credence to the vision of a vibrant, vital role of the federal government in delivering health care to Quebeckers. I'd bet Jean Chretien is having a laugh tonight.