There’s a graphical interpretation of swine flu’s impact to this point. It could get a lot worse quickly, but it’s been minor so far.
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Hat tip to Alec
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Civic election results in Regina. Not too surprising, and I was high in my prediction by 6%, for mayor.
Do you like to pack kids into schools as if they are sardines? If not, you might want to vote against the incumbent school board, who tried to close Dieppe school even as its enrollment rose significantly! And you have a chance to vote this Wednesday; what good luck!
You can follow the news on Twitter this time.
What worries me is how Conservative-like Mayor Fiacco’s campaign has been. Like the Conservative candidates in the last federal election he refused to participate in a free-to-attend debate. He only agreed to the $45/ticket Chamber of Commerce sponsored debate at the Centre of the Arts. On top of this anti-democratic policy of only speaking publicly for those who pay to hear, a small group of protesters at the Centre of the Arts were told to leave or they’d be charged with Trespassing! Yes, their Charter rights to peaceful protest were violated by someone at the Chamber of Commerce sponsored event.
The Centre of the Arts is on Wascana Centre Authority land, which is public land that even the Saskatchewan Legislature occupies. Can you imagine a legislature where protest outside of it is “against policy” or even illegal? It seems some people working at the Centre of the Arts want a country with a different constitution where protest of injustice is illegal.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is making use of his new sound card. Last year his motherboard malfunctioned, and hard drive lost data, and he forgot that he wasn’t supposed to call early elections or cut funding to “rich galas“.
The man does not have a non-calculating bone in his body. Yes, the Prime Minister is allowed to have fun, androids with emotion chips need to have fun. However, don’t let that cloud your mind when voting. In the next election, say no to robot Prime Ministers. He’s not Brian Mulroney with Ronald Reagan singing “When Irish Eyes are Smiling”, but wants desperately to be that sort of majority PM. And if he can distract us from the serious issues in this country for another evening, then all the better.
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Hat tip to Cenobyte facebook commentators for “sound card” joke.
Imagine you’re in Afghanistan, and the state-friendly radio station announces on the day of an election that voters can go to the polls and choose from 3 candidates/parties. If there were 4 candidates running, you might not be surprised that the fourth moderate candidate was ignored, and implied not to exist as a choice, even though they are on the ballot.
Now, would you accept that sort of biased reporting from a Canadian media station? If you would, you’re no friend to democracy. Sadly, there’s a station in my own city who acts no better than a puppet mouthpiece from a war-torn country.
620 CKRM has recently rebranded its radio station, calling it “The Source”. The first time I heard this, I laughed out loud, even though they’ve been saying “Your Source for Sports, News,” __ whatever for years. “The Source” to me was ‘the source of all evil’, in Charmed, a popular TV show about witches. This Monday morning, CKRM lived up to its alternate meaning, being either intentionally evil, or accidentally incompetent.
On the 8:00 AM CKRM news, they played a Canadian Press report that did not mention the Green Party or Saskatchewan Liberals running in the by-election today. They then followed up the story with a comment that the Saskatchewan Liberals did not run in either of the two by-elections today. Eileen would certainly disagree with their ability to count. One is not none.
Here’s their website blurb from this morning, also un-to-mis-informative:
Voters in two Saskatchewan constituencies will head to the polls today in provincial byelections. NDP leader Dwain Lingenfelter is running in Regina Douglas Park, where Harry Van Mulligen stepped aside. The Sask Party candidate is Regina lawyer Kathleen Peterson, and Victor Lau is running for the Green Party. Danielle Chartier will try to hold onto Saskatoon Riversdale for the NDP. It was held by former premier Lorne Calvert. The Sask party’s candidate is teacher Corey O’Soup. The Sask Party holds 38 of the 58 seats in the legislature, while the NDP has 18.
Do they have Leftdog as the news director or something?
The Canadian Press, and CBC who took their story from the wire, also failed to count the Green Party of Saskatchewan, and the Saskatchewan Liberals in the vote percentage totals given in the report, as if they didn’t exist.
This isn’t quite newsworthy, but is worth a laugh I suppose. Leftdog doesn’t like the Saskatchewan Liberal Party. Commenter foudroyaume sent this along to me, since there was[?]/is a delay in it being published in Leftdog’s moderated comments.
[The Sask Liberals] will be lucky to win one seat in 2011.
However, I’m not sure you’re following things, but the NDP’s membership is a quarter of the size it was ten years ago, and half the current membership vehemently hates the new leader. Meanwhile, their strange ideology of government-owned everything is losing currency around the globe. Even the Swedes are rethinking things.
I expect as many Dippers to move to the Greens as Cons are going to move to the Liberals over the next two elections. Also, since Calvert went against his ideology and lowered oil royalties, we have had a boom in SK that has brought back a lot of liberal-minded people who left because of the excessive governance here. That’s a demographic which will only grow with the province.
Add to this the oratorical skills and personal charisma of [Ryan] Bater. A lot of heads are going to turn as soon as he gets a chance to openly debate Wall & Lingenfelter.
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Something that is more newsworthy, pointed out by Buckdog Blog, is that the fanatical, war criminal torturer, George W. Bush, is coming to Saskatoon. If it were my city, I’d be out protesting the fact that the RCMP are failing to enforce Canada’s immigration law that prohibits people who have overthrown sovereign nations, from visiting our country.
Omar explains why the RCMP may be standing down, and failing to enforce Canada’s law. It could be because the USA essentially writes global law, including who it can unilaterally decide to invade, even the Netherlands if Bush were arrested and held for trial.
A Newstalkradio commenter notes that George Bush is a stand-in for Bozo the Clown. Fortunately Bozo is expected to make it to the event after all, so Bush can stay safe at home.
I’m soundly unimpressed by this opinion from a supposed journalist who thinks Canadians should be sheltered from alternative opinions about how our government should function.
The networks have to establish criteria about who should be invited to debate and why. It’s not an easy decision, because no precise tradeoff exists among fairness to all, representativeness of voice and effectiveness.
Last year’s debate showed that the addition of a fifth voice was not based on any sensible criteria, apart from Ms. May being a woman and therefore breaking into the boy’s club, which isn’t a criterion but an emotion. (The next party leader might be a man, and other party leaders might be female.)
Garbage in = garbage out. That’s the problem with this guy’s reasoning. There are many reasons why May should have been, and should again be, included in the debates.
Either Stephen Harper or Michael Ignatieff will be prime minister. Any pretensions from another leader about becoming prime minister are ridiculous.
Somehow – and there are a variety of ways – the debates have to resume their focus toward helping viewers/voters make their choice between the two with a chance to be prime minister, while not ignoring the voices of the other parties.
He’s part of the problem. May explains:
The cult of “leadership” has brainwashed so much of our Fox News wannabe media drones, that they’d gladly deny you the chance to hear the “top two” get torn to shreds again in a debate style like last year’s. The same debate where Stephen Harper cheated by having pre-printed notes on hand.
Anyway, with the bozos in the Main Stream Media and Media Consortium calling the shots, I guess it’s up to us citizens still concerned with democracy, to set up the Alternative Leaders’ Debate. It’s too bad that without controlling television, there’s almost no way to change the way society thinks.
Alternative Leaders’ Debate from Devin Johnston on Vimeo.
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Hat tip Hell Upside Down
I’ve had evidence of NDP spam sent to me by two people now, one from here in Regina, and the other from B.C.
This arrived a few days ago [Aug. 11 email was sent to Saskboy]. It’s sent in the member for Toronto-
Danforth’s stationery, but the inside handbill (that’s actually two
copies of the same slim bit of literature, which I assume was a
stuffing error; you can read the entirety of the text) is compliments
of Bill Siksay (Burnaby Douglas, I think). Our riding is currently
vacant and awaiting a by-election.
It will take years of the NDP sending out this garbage to catch up with the Conservatives for scummy use of taxpayer’s money to send out unwanted propaganda. The Liberals are also abusing taxpayer money in the same way, except they can abuse about twice as much money as the NDP (last year they were not abusing more than $1.4M while the NDP were no more than $1.1M), and the Conservatives again about twice as much as the Liberals.
Conservative twerp Randy Hoback, official mailbox spammer of the Conservative Party of Canada, sent my riding, Wascana, another batch of propaganda I helped pay for indirectly. I want my money back Randy, and your constituents deserve better representation than you’re providing if this is your idea of their money being well spent.
UPDATE: Cam has photos of the most disgusting Conservative propaganda so far. This Ten Percenter suggests that First Nations children don’t need a school that isn’t contaminated with fuel.
This was my first time taking part in a preferential ballot process. Here are the results. I have to admit I wasn’t confident in selecting any names besides my co-blogger Mark Taylor’s, but I did have a strategy.
As my other co-blogger, John O., mentions, apparently the GPC will be business as usual. I can only hope that practice makes perfect, and we elect someone this coming election. The Greens are getting restless.
Elections Canada is pushing ahead with its ill advised electronic voting scheme. They started dreaming of electronic voting in 1998, and more than a decade later have not realized that it’s inherently dangerous, and not the solution to falling voter turnout.
Offices are populated by people addicted to Crackberries, and their brains are wired to think that if something can’t be done online, then it’s not worth doing at all. Democracy doesn’t work like this. The Internet can be used as a tool for many things, but there are times when boots on the ground are a million times more powerful, and meaningful.
Let’s think carefully about what we have right now, before we start fooling ourselves that wires and websites are a panacea. In the U. S., each election features stories of interminable waits for results, failures of electronic voting machines, and dark grumbles about the system’s inability to prove the result is accurate.
Here, in one of the very few remaining acts of collective community reaffirmation, we meet and greet at polling stations, nodding at strangers, kibbitzing with acquaintances. Then, the votes are counted, often by friends or friends of friends who have volunteered to scrutinize and validate the process. Almost always a clear result is in within the hour, and if there must be a recount, those little pieces of paper still exist to be inspected one by one. – Edmonton Journal
There’s already too much electronic balloting in Canada, we don’t need to take another step in the wrong direction and add the Internet to the mix, eliminating paper entirely. I’m soundly unimpressed for instance that the Green Party is electing its council using the Internet and email, although there’s some difference in the level of importance compared to a by-election or general election.
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Notes from Vancouver
ADDED: Continue reading
A. in B.C. has been hit with more mailbox spam from the Conservatives, courtesy your tax money.
Paul in Regina has promised me photos of Layton-spam, another affliction on the post office, blight on the NDP, and waste of money from your pocket.
Last month, the Liberals admitted to using LibSpam to try and counter the effects of Conservaspam. Way to go Liberals — waste taxpayer money in a hope to catch up to the wasteful Conservatives. *clap… clap… stop*.
