I'm reading the same page, booker.:-)

I'll settle for ANY minority. The idea of a strong majority government in these crazy ideological times scares the bejesus outta me.

Will the top five members of the Liberal Cabinet be called the Dion Quintuplets?

I am reporting in to say that I am feeling ok and doing fine.

Have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

Yeah, because the Harper minority government is so progressive and is getting things done... Right.

Considering the media nauseating never ending coverage of the Liberals leadership convention, this “mistake” comes as no surprise. The media misses the good old days when their buddies where in power. Now they have to look and act like regular reporters wearing out their shoes to get stories.

Colin:
Does that mean the media that called for Harper's election in January have come to their senses now?

I don't think so. I think you'll find most of your friends in the media will be plumping for the old neocon when election 2007 comes round.

But, in the sense that both Liberal neocons and Conservative neocons are really two sides of the same coin, it's not going to matter.

Start supporting real electoral reform or get used to more of the same - just corrupt Conservatives instead of corrupt Liberals. People are such idiots!

G West
As people, we resemble that last remark haha

sadly true - we 'resemble' a lot of other things too I guess. Enlightened self-interest often ends up being mostly self and not much light.
Have a good holiday.

As an idealist, I will continue to hope for real change in Canada by supporting democratic socialsim, which clearly benefits the public good over private greed. As a realist, however, I would far rather see Stephan Dion as our PM over Harper. It doesn't mean I will vote Liberal. But Harper has been truly awful for Canadian democracy. As a perennial optimist, I will hope that some of Quebec's successful socialism will rub off on Dion, and that he will apply it to the Liberal party policies.

Great article as usual.

Richard Warnica said" To his credit, Prime Minister Dion (emphasis mine) has not repeated the mistakes of Mr. Martin, whose first acts as a Liberal leader were to punish opponents in the party, perpetuating internecine fighting and contributing to his eventual political failing.Â*"
The Federal Liberals never had a chance in the last federal election. Too many scandals upset too many people. Even I (or you) would have been PM if I was head of the Conservatives. People in this country generally vote Liberal or Conservative and the other parties didn't have a chance. Martin tried to distance himself from the previous administration, a difficult task when he was a major part of it. If the electorate believes in Dion, that he is not part of the old regime then he has a very good chance to become the next PM.

North of Hope

I wish the electorate - especially those parts of it who seem to think Stephane Dion is the next 'great' Canadian Liberal leader - were a little more cognizant of the way he won the leadership.

Both Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff declined to agree to certain quid pro quo arrangements with small cohesive (and dubious) groups of single interest voters from Ontario and British Columbia.

This information was published in the Globe and Mail immediately after the convention

You can't get the whole article on line from the Globe, but here's most of it:

Race and religion at the Liberal Party convention
TAREK FATAH
December 06, 2006
Want my people's votes? De-list Tamil terrorists

And other pernicious aspects of ethnic bloc politics (full text not officially online):

Rev. Francis Xavier is the father figure of Toronto's vibrant Tamil community. His question to Bob Rae at a meeting with Canadian Tamils a few days before the Liberal Party convention was typical of the role played by the leaders of some minority racial and religious groups in blatant efforts to wield political muscle.

The diminutive Father Xavier did not mince his words in laying out the price for the support of the 45 Tamil Canadian delegates to the Liberal convention: "Mr. Rae, I am great fan of yours and you have done a lot for the Tamil community as premier of Ontario, but will you promise to delist the Tamil Tigers from Canada's list of terrorist organizations, if you become leader of the Liberal Party and prime minister of Canada?"

Mr. Rae replied that if Tamil Canadians wanted the Tigers to be delisted, they should pressure the LTTE to do what Yasser Arafat did with the PLO and Nelson Mandela did with the ANC. "Firstly, there can be no military solution to the war in Sri Lanka and, second, if any politician promises you that he will help delist the LTTE as a terrorist organization, he is not telling the truth," he said. His response did not go down well -- and nary a Bob Rae button was to be found on the 45 Tamil Canadian delegates at the convention...

... the most influential of these groups would turn out to be the Khalistani Sikh Canadians, many from areas west of Toronto, who voted en masse for Gerard Kennedy in the convention's first and second ballots.

Bob Rae had advised the Liberal government on the public interest in an inquiry into the 1985 Air-India bombing. It would come back to haunt him. The bombing featured in some of the exchanges when Mr. Rae addressed a South Asian event in Montreal on Friday. When Mr. Rae slammed the terrorists responsible for Canada's worst act of terrorism, he found little support in the room. "He is referring to all Sikhs as terrorists," one delegate said to a B.C. senator campaigning for Mr. Rae. "Not true," the Senator said, but the delegate simply walked away.

Another religious group, the Canadian Islamic Congress, organized by Mohamed Elmasry, sent out a mass e-mail to its members with the subject line: "More Canadian Muslims than ever before will help determine Liberal Leadership Outcome." A religiously observant breakfast was arranged for Muslim delegates to the convention, and one Kennedy delegate organizing among the Muslim community sent out a letter to the country's mosques, asking for Muslims to vote "en masse" for one candidate. The Islamic Congress had given Mr. Kennedy an A grade, while listing other hopefuls on a scale from a B to an F. This led to a spirited response from Ignatieff delegate Salma Siddiqui, who is a vice-president of the secular Muslim Canadian Congress. "Muslims are not a herd of cattle to be sold to the highest bidder," she responded...

Two rookie MPs, Omar Alghabra, a Muslim, and, Navdeep Bains, a Sikh, held the strings of as many as 400 delegates in the Kennedy camp. When the time came, these delegates moved as a bloc to Mr. Dion...

Now that Mark Marissen is in charge of the federal Liberal campaign, the links between the Martinites in BC and the new Dion regime-to-be can't be mistaken or excused as incidental. David Basi and Aneal Virk were also Martin-camp backroomers; if not for their current charges we have to assume that they might have been part of Marissen's campaign team.

Ledgegate doesn't matter shit east of the Rockies, and it barely matters shit here thanks to the collusion of CanWestGlobal/CTV/CBC, but there's got to be some reckoning on the reality of federal political meddlings (Grit or Tory) in BC provincial politics, and in this case in what is probably the biggest political-morals scandal since Fantasy Gardens (or before) - as opposed to simple-stupidity scandals like FastFerries. Marissen was a player in a lot of strange backroom shenanigans here in BC; but we all know a "teflon cocoon" has been erected around him because of his campaign-director position now.

The other side of his involvement is his corrdination of the movement of radical Islamists, Tamil Tigers and Khalistani Sikhs who were delegates in the Kennedy camp to bail for Dion during the convention. i.e. the deals that Marissen or another Dion insider cut with these groups should be the subject of public inquiry/debate during the campaign. Not that I want to see Harper re-elected; I just want Dion and Marissen to be called to the carpet for their game of footsie with groups whose agenda have nothing to do with Canada, but with violent/extremist causes overseas.

stephane 'the fart' dion as prime minister! the andrew petter of the liberal party of canada. now there's something to laugh about. will he collude with the used-car salesman? how about with gilles duceppe? will he hand out truckloads of money to the maritimes and blatantly snub the west like chretien the idiot did? this should be interesting. never a dull moment in canadian i.e. eastern, politics.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

laughed me arse off on that one, elliot.

not even I have been that blunt!

Steve Dion -the puppet of central canada!

If he gets elected and the Liberals come to power, western canada may as well bend over, we'll be taking it from behind again!

hope the maritimes enjoys the buckets of money they'll be getting -they should, Steve Dion and the gang will rape western canada and give it to those shiftless layabouts in the maritimes that we're supposed to feel sorry for!

Long Live The Republic Of British Columbia!

Elliot: Meet Acadian driftwood---->

HAHAHAHAHAHA

laughed me arse off on that one, elliot.

not even I have been that blunt!

Steve Dion -the puppet of central canada!

If he gets elected and the Liberals come to power, western canada may as well bend over, we'll be taking it from behind again!

Hope you'll be happy together boys. You make such a lovely couple.