Monday, October 28, 2019

Great tweet of the day

"Popular" vote? Not so much

Here is the vote result in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta:
Liberals: 500,000 votes - 4 seats
NDP: 466,000 votes - 4 seats
Conservatives: 2 million votes - 54 seats
So don't talk to me about the "popular vote"! On that basis, the Cons are extremely over-represented in western Canada.
 And here's some info about the rest of the country:

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Rats behind the wheel!

Check this out, and don't miss the comments:


Great tweet of the day

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

When you come to the end of a perfect day

I didn't hear it myself, but I guess Singh was taking too long with his concession speech and Scheer started his concession speech before Singh finished,  then Trudeau started HIS victory speech before Scheer finished. 
And the Canadian media were just thrilled.
Nobody ever seems to turn down an opportunity to inflate a controversy out of nothing, issue twitter tut-tuts, clutch pearls, come down with the vapours, and chatter about how PMJT was behaving so RUDELY!
I rather liked Jason Cherniak's reaction:





One Canadian who does NOT sound pissed off is Ontario Premier Doug Ford :
Ford issued a statement Tuesday morning congratulating Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on his victory and applauding all federal leaders for a “hard fought campaign.”
He says he looks forward to working with Ottawa to address “shared priorities,” including infrastructure, internal trade and mental health
And the Toronto Sun adds:
Ford’s statement stands out for its conciliatory tone
Yeah, I'll say.  The Conservative Brain Trust behind Scheer convinced Ford to spend the entire campaign at an Undisclosed Location, but it didn't help Scheer do better in Ontario, so I would think that this morning Ford is furious at Scheer.

Russia moves in to the Middle East

So Russia is moving in to the Middle East, now that Trump has abandoned the field:
The negotiations ended in a victory for Mr. Putin: Russian and Turkish troops will take joint control over a vast swath of formerly Kurdish-held territory in northern Syria, in a move that cements the rapid expansion of Russian influence in Syria at the expense of the United States and its Kurdish former allies. Under terms of the agreement, Syrian Kurdish forces have six days to retreat more than 20 miles from the border, abandoning land that they had controlled uncontested until earlier this month — when their protectors, the American military, suddenly began to withdraw from the region.
This is, I think, the first time this has ever happened to the United States. But with Trump, likely not the last time.  What an embarrassment.



Sunday, October 20, 2019

Dueling crowd sizes

So CBC's Katie Simpson was impressed that Andrew Scheer's speech in Richmond Hill Ontario last night attracted 1,500 people, she calls it his biggest crowd so far:

Well, Justin Trudeau attracted 1,500 people yesterday too. In Calgary.  At midnight:

When the story of this campaign is written, it must include the number of times federal leaders were thrown off their message by the hurly-burly of news and events -- for Trudeau, it was the blackface scandal three weeks ago; now for Scheer it is the Kinsella secret smear scandal, which couldn't have some at a worse time for him.
But the measure of leadership is not whether such scandals happen, but how a real leader handles it. 
For Trudeau, he immediately admitted he had done it, apologized profusely, and also volunteered that there had been other times he had worn blackface when in high school. This all immediately tooe the wind out of any follow-up stories, and ended any "gotcha" questions from reporters. Everybody moved on.
While over several days now Scheer has been robotically repeating stupid war room talking points about how some mythical CPC "rules" prevent him from talking about "vendors" at all -- thereby creating the #ScheerVendors hashtag trending this morning, extending the scandal right into election day itself, making it the only thing reporters are asking him about (except for a few questions about why in the world he would tell such a stupid lie about the Liberals raising the GST). And all at a time in the campaign when there is no time for moving on at all.
I hope Canadians are making note of who is handling problems well, and who is not.

Great tweet of the day

Saturday, October 19, 2019

Wow - tonight Ekos predicts a Liberal govt

NOTE: I just edited this post title to clarify that EKOS is predicting a Liberal government, but isn't yet predicting a Liberal MAJORITY - depends on how some of the close seats go.

Here's the latest tweet from EKOS:
I was hoping for this kind of news today, because attendance at Trudeau rallies is getting large and enthusiastic:



Friday, October 18, 2019

Worst tweet of the day

Two days to go, and we may well have a winner for worst media tweet of this election.  
Here it is, from CBC's Rosemary Barton, along with my somewhat snarky reply:
For one thing, these issues are not comparable in the least. Accusing the Liberals of wanting to raise the GST is a completely baseless and out-of-the-blue lie of desperation from Andrew Scheer.  Accusing Conservatives of wanting to criminalize abortion recognizes that this is exactly what thousands of Canadian "right to life" activists want Scheer to do.  While Harper didn't knuckle under to these elements, I believe it is now a serious risk considering Scheer's base of support and the types of CPC candidates he has recruited.  He doesn't even need to pass an abortion law at the federal level as such; rather, he could just pass a private members bill permitting provincial legislatures to decide whether to allow abortions and under what conditions, thus creating a patchwork mess across the country.
It surprises me that Barton doesn't appear to understand the difference at all.  But the hundreds of comments about this tweet show that Canadians understand it very well.

Edmonton ❤ Greta

Here are some photos of  Climate Change/Greta Thunberg rally in Edmonton.  
Climate Justice Edmonton says there were 10,000 at the rally.
I guess United We Roll was there too with counter-protestors in trucks, but they aren't visible in these photos:



I don't think the counter-protestors are playing a winning hand.  Here's a tweet that sort of sums it up:
And apparently Kenny's office blocked his windows so he didn't have to see what is going on.  Sorta prophetic, don't you think -- climate change deniers don't want to see what is going on in the world.  There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Meghan Markle and the racist British press

I knew the British tabloids were racist, but I had no idea how cruel they had been throughout Meghan Markle's pregnancy.  I guess there is a documentary being done about it, and here is an excerpt:


#WeLoveYouMeghan is trending today on Twitter. And its about time. Here is some of the garbage that has been selling newspapers in Britain. It reminds me of some of the crap that Michelle Obama had to put up with:

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And for comparison purposes, here is how they covered Kate Middleton or other celebrities, compared to exactly the same stories about Meghan Markle.

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Thursday, October 17, 2019

Liberal minority govt predicted

Forum Research predicts Liberal minority govt -- Liberal 133 seats, Conservative 121, NDP 46, BQ 37, Green 1.
FYI, Forum was the only pollster 2015 to correctly predict the Lib Majority, so I am going to hope that their prediction is good this time, too.
What is will come down to, as it always does, is whether the Liberals can get their vote out.
 Here's two threads from Ed the Sock - one about Trudeau, and one about Scheer. Iits worthwhile reading the whole thing:


Just a little funny stuff

Make sure you watch to the end:
And this one:

And now for something completely different:

Monday, October 14, 2019

Great Tweet of the Day

Via the inimitable Dick King-Smith - you owe it to yourself to follow his tweets.  Make sure to have the sound on for this one: