Hope you guys are watching the debate - it's classic. Frankly - Dion's catchy French accent reminds me of the French knights in Monty Python's Holy Grail. The one who handily whaps the silly English keeeee-nigits!

"You bring out this rosy, mini-budget? I told them, I already got one!" LOL!


RK

 

yeah, Harper is looking a little pissed and is coming off as overly defensive imho.

 

"You're going to have real problems in countries that are food short"

First line:
"THE world is only ten weeks away from running out of wheat"
Date of the article is February 2008.

Fear mongering and sensationalism. Food is NOT going to disappear from our grocery stores. Food shortages in third world countries are quite possible, as they have occurred in many countries for years. Harper is NOT the man to be dealing with that. For all his failings, Chretien addressed this better than anyone.

The ethanol issue is indeed a scam - couldn't agree more. It's ridiculous that we're burning our food when people in the world are hungry. It's bad science, bad social policy, bad everything. The only thing good about it is the abilities of the lobbyists.

 

BTW, listening to the debate on radio - it's hard to follow sometimes when you can't see them. Harper definitely seems to be on the defensive, which is good, but I am concerned about splitting the left vote.

 

"the soul of a nation". What a beautiful quote. I never thought I'd be in agreement with Gilles Duceppe about anything!

 

I like Layton's quote - to Harper - "You either don't care or you're incompetent - which is it?"

Classic.

This has turned into four on one - hardly fair actually. Tee hee. Four essentially sound, rational, tuned-in and compassionate Canadians beating on an American. Loving it.

And I'm digging that many of the issues we've raised are getting discussed and in a forum where slick, one-sided attack ads aren't allowed - Harper's back on his heals and faltering badly.

I just hope some Canadians are watching!

RK

 

Okay - who is that guy pretending to be Stephane Dion? This guy is sharp, aggressive, concise and well-spoken. Has the REAL Stephane Dion finally shown up?

And his responses in the press scrum after? Even better! Impressive. Can't believe I'm using that word - but's it true.

RK

 

And gentlemanly - not bullying, not interrupting, but still not being a wuss.

It's hard to be objective and not to look at your guy favourably, but I do think Dion did quite well.

 

Well - I think Layton laid the best zingers on Harper. "Where's your platform, in you sweater?" LOL.

May was great too - she had the guts to call Harper out when he was factually incorrect or deceptive.

Duceppe was even funny when he said, "Well, I won't ever BE prime minister..."

I'm just so stoked it was so much fun - great TV.

RK

 

Todays news ...

Jaak

*********************************************************
Canadian PM won second debate: poll
52 minutes ago

MONTREAL (AFP) - Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper won this week's second televised election debate despite coming under fierce fire from his opponents, a poll showed Friday.

The Ipsos Reid survey for Canwest said 31 percent believed Harper won the second debate on Thursday ahead of October 14 elections.

The poll of 2,512 people gave a second-place finish to New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton who was on the attack, while Green Party chief Elizabeth May trailed in third place.

Ipsos Reid president Darrell Bricker called May, a fresh face in the Canadian debates, a new star.

Harper, whose Conservative Party has a wide lead in the polls, was criticised by the leaders of four opposition parties for underestimating the seriousness of the international financial crisis.

They accused him of lacking a plan to handle it.

The prime minister responded saying his top rival Liberal Stephane Dion of panicking, arguing that Canada's economic and political policy were not the same as the disastrous situation next door in the United States.

 

Um ... from National Post. http://www.canadiancrc.com/Youth_Crime_in_Canada.aspx

Youth Crime in Canada - Youth Criminals

National Post logo
Youth crime down: Stats Can

National Post, Global TV network, various Canwest newspapers, CanWest News Service, Meagan Fitzpatrick, Wednesday, September 20, 2006

OTTAWA - For the second year in a row, the number of youths aged 12 to 17 behind bars or on probation has gone down, according to an analysis from Statistics Canada.

The report suggests that the implementation of the Youth Criminal Justice Act in 2003 is having an effect in driving the numbers down.

In 2004 to 2005, an average of 1,300 young people in sentenced custody on any given day, down about 16 per cent from 2003 to 2004 and down 50 per cent since the YCJA went into effect. About 700 of these individuals were in secure custody, down 14 per cent, while 600 were in open custody, a 20 per cent drop. More ..
Statistics Canada - Homicides for the year 2003

About 4 in 10 youth accused of homicide also had a criminal record.

Slightly more than 15% of youth victims had a criminal record.

Increase in homicides committed by youth
There were 57 youths aged 12 to 17 years accused of homicide in 2003, 15 more than in 2002 and 8 more than the previous 10-year average. The youth homicide rate had generally been declining between 1995 and 2001.

As in previous years, youth were more likely than adults to kill other youth and young adults. Of the solved homicides committed by youth in 2003, about half (54%) of the victims were between 12 and 24 years old compared with about one-quarter of victims killed by adults.

There were 33 homicides committed against children under the age of 12 in 2003, the lowest number in over 25 years. Of these victims, 14 (or 42%) were under one year of age.

Of the 27 solved homicides against children, 23 were killed by a parent: 9 by a father, 4 by a step-father, 10 by a mother and 1 by a step-mother (in one incident, both parents were accused). In addition, 2 children were killed by their day-care provider and 2 by a stranger.

 

Let's look into this further:

-Going into the debate 40% thought Harper would win, coming out 31% thought he did win
-Post debate 47% thought Harper sounded most like a PM, down from 53% prior, whereas Dion went up 6 points, prior to post
-Pre- to post-debate, Harper lost 6 points in opinions of policy (37% pre-debate felt he had the best, 31% post)
-Overall opinions as to who improved and who worsened with the debate:
Harper: improved 30%, worsened 40%
Dion: improved 42%, worsened 31%
Layton: improved 49%, worsened 21%

So yes, according to less than 1/3 of people polled, Harper won the debate, which is more than thought Dion won. However looking a little more closely at the numbers we see the debate hammered Harper's popularity - it would seem to indicate a shifting tide away from Harper.

And here, ladies and gentleman, is how spin works. Both Jaak and I are right - the data clearly shows that Harper won the debate, yet at the same time is losing popularity. It all depends on what numbers you want to look at and how you want to present the data.

The data is available here, straight from Ipsos-Reid:
http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=4106

 

What's becoming so clear to me is how much bias the media imposes on these topics. It's fascinating - I cannot begin to fathom how anyone who actuallly watched the whole debate (as I did) could truly conclude that Harper "won" it. Ending up in the gutter, barely still breathing after a savage virtual beating of every policy you trot out is not "winning". At best - if might be "surviving". Harper did manage to keep his cool and and made forceful rebuttles at times. But more often than not - he answered a question with a question, or an attack on another candidate instead of stating a policy.

So - I went to bed after in a pretty good mood - thinking - "excellent, there will be extensive coverage in the AM - saying Harper was pummelled, policies were laid bare as dated, ineffectual and out of touch."
But what did I hear in the morning? Harper "won" the debate?? Because he looked composed and didn't crack?

The inability of Canadians to look past the facial expressions of the candidates and examine the issues continues to dismay me to no end.

Grrrrrr. People - PLEASE look info the ISSUES! Where you CAN find a Harper policy (they're rarely expressed) - dig into them - they've been soundly disected and found to dangerous and ineffectual.

RK

 

Here is an article that is worth looking at. Be carefull of what one wishes for ....

Jaak

***********************************************************

U.S. mess started with Carter

By SALIM MANSUR

Last Updated: 4th October 2008, 2:46am


The story of man's fall is in part the history of unintended effects of his initial actions.

Paris of Troy falls in love with Helen of Sparta that puts to sea a thousand Greek ships, and the Trojan War is unleashed. Gavrilo Princip, driven by his Serbian nationalist fervour, assassinates the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and it ignites the First World War. Neither Paris nor Princip calculated the unintended effects of his initial actions.

As the United States is rocked by the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and a deep recession or worse looms on the horizon threatening the global economy, politicians -- Democrats and Republicans -- have scrambled to work out a rescue package for the collapsing capital market.

But how could the U.S. government be unaware of the capital and liquidity crunch of such dimension building up over time so that a taxpayer bailout of Wall Street to the tune of a trillion dollars was urgently needed? How did this tsunami of bad loans come about in the first place?

The story is one of unintended effects. And politicians who unleashed it have remained in full throttle of denying responsibility.

The origin of the crisis goes back to 1977 when then president Jimmy Carter signed into law the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress.

MORTGAGES FOR ALL

The CRA required, as the U.S. Federal Reserve Board notes, "depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low and moderate income neighbourhoods, consistent with safe and sound operations."

In other words, by law lending institutions were instructed to provide money as mortgages and commercial loans to underserved communities of mostly low income Afro-Americans and underprivileged minorities with poor credit history.

The reasoning behind CRA was to make housing affordable for that segment of the American population that could not meet credit tests of the financial industry. The CRA was civil rights action with roots going back to the Great Society push of president Lyndon Johnson's administration a decade earlier.

The CRA requirement brought loosening of underwriting standards by lending institutions, and the beginning of bad loans or the "sub-prime" mortgages. The two government-sponsored lending institutions -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- aggressively pushed sub-prime mortgages to high risk borrowers, and then covered the questionable mortgages by access to government-backed credit legislatively available from the U.S. Treasury.

In 1995 during Bill Clinton's administration, amendments to the CRA increased lending for home purchases and the bad loans piled up while a frenzy of buying led to a real estate bubble.

In 2003 President George W. Bush's administration sought a corrective overhaul of the lending practices and in 2005 Sen. John McCain pushed for reform oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

BUSH FIX DERAILED

On both occasions corrective measures were derailed in the Congress subcommittee hearings by the Democratic leadership led by Sen. Christopher Dodd in the Senate Committee on Banking and Congressman Barney Frank in the House Financial Services Committee.

The politics of affirmative action for affordable housing twisted sound financial practices, and over time it created a heated housing market that could not be sustained indefinitely.

A mountain of bad loans eventually crashed, and the U.S. capital market was frontally assaulted by the unintended effects of the CRA.

 

This article requires some thoughtful comment - but it'll have to wait, In breaking news, anti-liberal ideology appears to have driven some wing-nuts to cut brake lines of parked cars.

What kind of platform attracts the kind of people that would wantonly endanger the lives of anonymous people because of thier support for a particular party?

Did they think that those people would somehow change thier minds and hop on board with a band of terrorists?

Did they think for a second what sort of shadow thier actions cast upon thier cause? Who wants to align themselves with an ideology that attracts people capable of committing such crimes?

I'm not painting all conservatives with a terrorist brush - that's over-reacting and unfair. I think the vast majority of all Canadians with voice non-partinsan condemnation of these crimes.

And to date, there's no proof its a neo-con act - but the NDP are too peace loving, the Greens couldn't stomach the spilled brake fluid, and the Bloc aren't local.

And frankly - based on the illogical, reactionary, senseless written vigilantiasm I've seen expressed by Harperites (on other boards - never here) - I can only suspect these ******** are neo-cons.

Heartbreaking and terrifying. Let's hope all of Canada unites to condemn these idiots and send a clear message that we won't tolerate such intimidating tactics.

Rk

RK