Saturday, September 18, 2021

Election Follies and Funnies #27: Endorsement-paloosa

First Trudeau gets two high-profile endorsements: Then Singh gets one as well: And even O'Toole gets the pardonned felon nod: Some reactions: The Beaverton gets it again: Except for the Manitoba chiefs endorsing Liberal candidate Shirley Robinson (in front of Singh, at that priceless press conference!) I think Canada's First Nations leadership has been walking a fine line, I think to avoid problems with provincial issues across the country. Former AFN chief Phil Fontaine does endorse Trudeau today: Work is continuing on lifting the boil water orders as the most intractable problems are getting resolved one by one: Here are some priorities that Canadian Aboriginal organizations want to discuss with the next government. New AFN chief RoseAnne Archibald tweeted this priorities document on its priorities for the next government: And the BC chiefs are sending this Open Letter: Here's a few more tweets from today: Canadians are starting to try to evaluate this whole election experience, to figure out what it all means, too: Late news tonight -- from Frank Graves at EKOS - A call to arms: Here's a thread for strategic voting:
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Friday, September 17, 2021

Election Follies and Funnies #26: Did Kenney and O'Toole make a deal?

Tonight's question is whether O'Toole and Kenney had a deal that Kenney would delay imposing yesterday's Covid health measures until after the Monday vote. 
In other words, did Conservative electioneering cost Albertans their lives? I don't know whether we will ever know for sure, but certainly O'Toole wasn't able to answer reporters' questions today. But of course, Singh still thinks his job is to figure out a way to blame Alberta on Trudeau: Here are some of today's poll results - and these won't even include the Alberta and Saskatchewan health announcements: The Covid situation here on the Prairies is getting more terrible by the day. 
Hundreds of new cases every day, hospitalizations rising, ICU beds filled -- we're now talking about "ethical triage" AKA denying someone an ICU bed or a ventilator if their chances of living aren't very good anyway. 
I looked up the terminology for abandoning the elderly on an ice floe and its called Senicide. If worst comes to worst, I would be OK with that. I'm starting to think about what is going to happen after Monday, if the Liberals cannot get enough seats to form a majority government. 
It seems clear now that the Liberals would win one or two dozen more seats than the CPC anyway, but the NDP and/or the Bloc could again hold the balance of power. 
This campaign has shown that Jagmeet Singh has both a vitriolic dislike of Trudeau and a naΓ―ve belief that he could work with O'Toole - to the point where I really wonder if Singh would try to get his NDP MPs to agree to tell the Governor-General that it is the Conservatives, not the Liberals, that would have enough support in the Commons to form the government.. 
And if that's what he tries to do, then it will really hit the fan - NDP leadership and voters across Canada would be absolutely furious and would not tolerate an attempt by Singh to make an alliance with a party that will not ever support any NDP priorities - which would, in fact, actively dismantle progressive initiatives.  But Singh is a stubborn man, and a brand-new Governor-General might feel she had no choice except to let the Conservatives try to form a government. And then we would be in for months of chaos.
Now, I have no idea whether such a thing might happen, but I'm beginning to be concerned.
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Thursday, September 16, 2021

Election Follies and Funnies #25: Mulroney's turn

Chretien was at a Liberal event last night, so they got Mulroney at one tonight, and he started talking about O'Toole making "deep structural changes" in Canada - maybe so Conservatives will win elections more easily in the future? Oh but nothing to see here, folks, move along, move along: O'Toole is having a lot of trouble maintaining any kind of consistency in his policies - gun control, abortion, vaccinations, carbon pricing, pick anything and O'Toole will flip it around as he tries to appeal to everyone all the time. But things are catching up to him and he can't duck and weave forever The Beaverton gets it about right: And The Globe and Mail seems to be going full frontal fascist about those supposedly awful "non-European immigrants" who are giving the PPC the vapours: But O'Toole is trying his best to keep on pandering: So today, after cancelled surgeries and patients being airlifted out, Jason Kenney finally apologized to Alberta for getting Covid so wrong. Sounds like it took a caucus revolt before Kenney would act: Saskatchewan had another 450 cases today. Again. I expect sometime tomorrow or Friday Scott Moe will finally be dragged kicking and screaming into the same types of restrictions Alberta is implementing. We really should be trying to do a better job in managing Covid than Alabama. When thinking about the importance of maintaining gun control in Canada here's something to consider: And the Marijuana Party is still toking:
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Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Election Follies and Funnies #24: Chretien is back!

Rosemary Barton at the CBC has been doing lengthy interviews with the leaders - O'Toole on Monday night, Trudeau on Tuesday night, and now Singh tonight - worth listening to, I think. But here's one of the funniest takes: Liberals are entering majority territory, though who knows if it will hold up: This is why the former Green leader is endorsing the Liberals climate plan now: Another outstanding video: Remembering O'Toole's greatest hits: And here's one we need to get trending:
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Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Election Follies and Funnies #23: some of the good stuff

The polls continue to look positive for the Liberals. But for tonight, I wanted to lead off with this: There were stupid protests today at hospitals across the country, and my only hope for these people is that somehow they will realize how ridiculous they are. Twitter is back to doing what it does best: Back to the campaign:
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Monday, September 13, 2021

Election Follies and Funnies #22: Trudeau's remarkable speech

So here they are - first, Trudeau's remarkable speech: Singh's egotistical tweet: A reminder -- Pierre Trudeau said this when he was implementing the War Measures Act during the October Crisis, one of the most terrifying times in the history of the country. 
Singh is repeating the phrase to flex at Justin Trudeau about raising tax revenues.  
And O'Toole's word salad:
Latest polling: On Monday, a bunch of all-Canadian jerks are going to protest vaccines at hospitals. Again. The mayor of Ottawa says "I won't have it!" and I don't doubt that every other mayor feels the same way. I'm seeing tweets from some of the people who have voted in the Advance Polls this weekend: Some lane-switching also going on: And here's another one: Canadian right-wing pundits are salivating over the Jody Wilson-Raybould book:
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Sunday, September 12, 2021

Election Follies and Funnies #21: Trudeau rising

Here's an odd one: And here they are again taking credit for the Liberal's work: I am getting the feeling that the Conservative campaign is just out of gas right now. They haven't managed to body-slam Trudeau and their bread and circuses promises aren't engaging people and we're seeing more and more cartoons like this one: And Postmedia can pound the "deficits" message all they want, but people aren't focused on it: Lots of tweets about Jody Wilson-Raybould's new book and her "feeling" that Trudeau asked her to lie. Sigh. I don't think The JWR show will convince anyone to dislike Trudeau now if they didn't already dislike him. And the more people remember what she was like as a Justice minister, the worse she will look in comparison to some of the truely outstanding women in Trudeau's cabinet now: And this has nothing to do with our election, but I wanted to share it anyway:
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Saturday, September 11, 2021

Election Follies and Funnies #20: "But her emails"

Does anyone else see it this way too? Does anyone else remember our dysfunctional parliament this spring? Today's good news: More about the English debate: Canadian politics can turn on a dime sometimes. 
 When the English debate moderator -Vancouverite Shachi Kurl- called Quebecers discriminatory due to Bills 21 and 96, it was both inaccurate and uncalled-for. So today there was a huge reaction in Quebec, and also Legault said he wanted the CPC to win the election so they would give him unrestricted money for Quebec's daycare program and health care transfers. 
 In the end, the Liberals may come out ahead, if the Bloc and the CPC end up splitting their votes: And as the Advance Polls open, here is this good take:
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Friday, September 10, 2021

Election Follies and Funnies #19: That was a debate???

Twitter is concluding that the Leaders Debate Thursday evening was possibly the worst moderated debate ever seen in the history of the nation. 
And that's really too bad -- Trudeau needed some momentum from a positive and upbeat debate performance and he's likely not going to get any. Then again, neither will O'Toole or Singh.  
The moderator, Shachi Kurl from Angus Reid, appeared to be under the impression that she was running for office too. She acted like Canadians had tuned in to watch her as she interrupted and stopped leaders from answering questions, while she preened.
The only leader who came out of this looking OK was Green leader Annamie Paul and who cares, because Paul isn't even going to win her own seat much less give help to any other Green candidates so in the end it doesn't matter what Canadians thought of her. 
Blanchet did OK too - and again, who cares, because it doesn't matter to him or to anyone else what Canadians outside Quebec think of him. Though of course it might affect Liberal performance in Quebec, if anyone there was watching,.
The only real question I had about Blanchette or Singh is how they would decide whether to endorse a minority Liberal or Conservative outcome.  Nobody bothered to ask.


And let the pollster wars begin: And this is the way the media summed up the debate:
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Thursday, September 09, 2021

Election Follies and Funnies #18: I am a Quebecois

Wednesday night was the French leaders debate: The vitriol is jarring - Singh, in particular, appears to have such a personal dislike for Trudeau, even though in terms of policy directions I think there should be much that Liberals and NDP would be able to agree on. I was surprised at the lack of attention paid to Indigenous issues, except for glancing comments about boil-water advisories and Indigenous languages. Though more than 100 boil-water advisories have been lifted under the Liberal government, there are still 32 communities with boil-water advisories in place, and COVID limited the amount of work that could be done in 2020 And this is from the post-debate media discussion: I think the Conservative consensus was that O'Toole didn't do as well as they wanted him to: The restaurant coupon idea that the CPC announced earlier today isn't going to create any voting momentum either: The elephant in the room, tonight and tomorrow, is the surging People's Party of Canada. Mainly I think, they are attracting anti-vaxxers from the CPC, but maybe some are also coming from the other parties as well. 
I thought this was an interesting observation too: And an update on today's polling news:
Today's funny:
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