Reader Tips

Reader Tips 73 Comments

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Sunday night classical music show, and since it’s that time of year and we won’t have a chance to get to this on the solstice because we’ll be in the middle of our Twelve Days of Christmas shows, here are the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra performing the fourth concerto from Antonio Lucio Vivaldi‘s The Four Seasons: Winter, with violin soloist Anne-Sophie Mutter, and one of my favourites, Herbert von Karajan conducting (9:15).

I have updated my Vitruvius’s Experimental Election Predictor essay to include the data from the most recent Ipsos, Ekos, Strategic, and COMPAS polls. The current value of ΣVe/n, based on those four polls, is 14.85, which historically translates into 207 seats. Clearly, the Right Honourable Steven Harper, Prime Minister, and the Conservative Party of Canada, have not lost the confidence of the Canadian electorate, ergo there is no reason to replace him as Prime Minister or as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

73 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. Max Boot, Pirates, Terrorism and Failed States
    Ever since the end of the Cold War, there has been much chatter about the problem of failed states. Now we are seeing some of the terrible consequences of state failure on the periphery of the broader Middle East.
    In Pakistan, terrorist groups such as the Taliban, al Qaeda, and Lashkar-e-Taiba have established themselves as a state within a state…
    Across the Indian Ocean, pirates are terrorizing passing ships…

  2. Not sure if this has been posted yet..
    “Coalition opponents, backers joust at rally in Saskatoon”
    http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=1046922
    “I hope to be witness to the day that marked the eventual destruction of the Liberal party in Canada,” said Conservative supporter Kate McMillan.
    Ha ha ha!! Awesome Kate. I think we have the new line for the top of the website!

  4. stephen – nice outline. Thanks.
    The basic conclusion is that legitimacy of governance rests with the people. Neither the Crown nor the MPs can assume the role of Ruler. The coalition ignored this requirement and put themselves, MPs in three distinct parties, in as Ruler.
    Their use of the Bloc to prevent their fall (in a confidence vote) meant that they had moved out of responsible government into the role of Rulers.
    Now, with regard to the Coalition; despite Rae’s desperate attempts to keep it alive, I think it’s dead and gone. The Liberals now have to remove the taint.
    They seem rather skilled at such tasks, for they have slithered past their last abuse of the people, when they stole millions from the taxpayer to fund their election campaigns in Adscam/Sponsorship. Their current agenda, of stealing the election from the people and depriving the people of a further election – well, they’ll slither past that as well.
    But their first task in such a whitewash is to throw poor Dion overboard. One has to pity the guy; he lives in a delusional bubble-world with no connections to reality, filled with images of his and his supporter’s making. At any rate, they can’t keep him on while parliament sits. He’s gone.
    I don’t see how they can put in Ignatieff as interim leader; that would be an unfair competitive edge on Rae who is his opponent for leadership. So – do they have someone else as interim for a few weeks, while they somehow cobble together some mechanism to legitimately elect a new leader? Heh, the Liberals are now talking about the requirement for elections in order for results to be legitimate..hahhah..
    How does Ignatieff divest himself of the coalition? Sure, he’s not campaigning for it, but he SIGNED in favour of it. The Conservatives will use that against him…but, I suspect that Ignatieff and the Liberals will set themselves up as victims..ie, ‘we had to do it; Harper wasn’t presenting a proper bail-out for auto industries’..
    And, I suspect that the Liberals won’t go for a budget election; it’s too soon, and they need time to regroup and paint themselves all white.

  5. “One thing is always certain…You can count on maz2 to be so far off topic as anyone can be…”
    Hey not stirred, how can anything be off topic in Reader’s Tips? Just askin’
    (Retired pigeon, btw, I remember when we had Chinooks)

  6. I love how they are scrambling around now for a new leader & trying to expedite the process. After the horrible pick last time around, you would think they would want to pick a leader (carefully).

  7. Melissa,
    They got a Kate and a Lance byte in there. Either SDA contributors are great at sound bytes or journalists are lazy. Likely it’s both 😉

  8. “One thing is always certain…You can count on maz2 to be so far off topic as anyone can be and always a link to some far away paranoid place.
    Posted by: not stirred”
    Topic? What topic?
    >>>>>> Reader Tips.
    …-
    “When will “movements of the world” like Islam for example stop menacing neighbors and filling vacuums? Well, according to the brilliant French philosopher Blaise Pascal as soon as they recognize that conquest and invasion are byproducts of discontent at home — not some mission ordained by God:
    “I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quiet in their own chamber. A man who has enough to live on, if he knew how to stay with pleasure at home, would not leave it to go to sea or to besiege a town.”
    For Aurobindo, until that day arrives — the day when we’re all content enough to “stay with pleasure at home” — a nation would be foolish to let its guard down in the name of “progress.”
    …-
    “When elites eschew defense: The case of India
    “Everybody’s got a plan until they get hit.” So said Mike Tyson some years ago in the most brilliant statement of political realism since Thucydides. Bharat Mata, or “Mother India,” the birthplace of the glorious Upanishads as well as Prince Siddhartha, has been sucker punched by 21st century monsters. The blood from the innocent victims was barely dry when journalists published articles, not about the vicious killers, but about the dangers of a “rightward tilt” in India. The rise of Hindu nationalism however began as a response to a perceived lack of “manliness” in the Hindu warrior the result of which was an open door to centuries of foreign persecution and terror in India.
    When explaining the “root” causes of the massacre in Mumbai we will hear plenty in the coming weeks about disaffected Muslims living in India, or about the menacing American war on terror, or about the situation in Kashmir. What the literati in the media will probably miss however is a profound and paradoxical thread stitched into the very fabric of Hindu culture: what does it means to be a “man?” In other words, is the true “male” the Kshatriya caste warrior or the Brahmin caste renunciant? Was it the Hindu patriot and warrior-hero Shivaji Bhosle, the 17th century equivalent to Scotland’s William Wallace, who organized the first successful guerilla campaign against Muslim rule in India? Or is the “real man” the gentle, transnational and priestly archetype embodied in figures such as Mohandas Gandhi, who renounces violence in the name of universal love?
    Simply put, Hinduism’s masculinity crisis is deeply embedded in its social structure, in its ancient texts, and in the language of modern Hindu nationalists such as Swami Vivekenanda and Lala Lajpat Rai. Both men would have identified the complexities of caste as the “root cause” of over 800 years of Muslim and then British rule in India. That is, when searching for the reasons why Hindus have been traditionally defenseless in the face of foreign invaders Hindu nationalists tend to see their own culture and traditions as the culprit. Beginning with British rule in the early 18th century, Hindu nationalists began some serious soul searching concerning their inability to protect Mother India from subjugation. Lala Lajpat Rai spoke for many Hindus when he speculated back in 1907:
    “A question that has often haunted us, asleep or awake, as to why is it that notwithstanding the presence among us of great, vigorous, and elevating truths, and of the very highest conception of morality, we Hindus have been a subject race, held down for so many centuries by sets of people who were neither physically nor spiritually nor even intellectually so superior to us as to demand our subjugation.”
    Trying to explain why a handful of foreigners coming from six thousand miles away in England could become India’s masters became the focus of an intense amount of scholarly activity among Hindu intellectuals. Profound thinkers like Aurobindo Ghose, India’s greatest 20th century philosopher, argued that the “ascetic ideal” etched into Hindu identity became oppressively “top heavy” in India and smothered the more warlike themes in Hindu tradition and culture. In his Foundations of Indian Culture Aurobindo claimed:
    “Still it is true that the ascetic ideal, which in the ancient vigor of our culture was the fine spire of life mounting into the eternal existence, became latterly its top-heavy dome and tended under the weight of its bare and imposing sublimity to crush the rest of the edifice.””
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2144606/posts

  11. Coalition lovers should realize something else. Even if Harper loses a confidence vote he does not necessarily have to resign as PM.
    And there is precedent for this. Lester Pearson lost a confidence vote when he was Liberal PM and did not resign.
    Opposition parties at the time kicked up a minor fuss, though not enough to force an election. Why? Because they did not want to face the electorate.
    I’m sure Liberals are well aware of this.

  12. Vitedious’ extrapolations decree that Dearest Pantload is the bestest Prime Minister ever in the history of creation. Maybe we should prorogue the House forever and dispense with those pesky irritants and trivialities that are attendant with what passes for democracy in our fair nation.

  13. Kate: Close to another million! They seem to be rolling around faster these days. It sure speaks volumes to how tired the people are of the MSM. We turn to your site for what is really going on. Thank you for all of your hard work that you do every single day.
    Also, link to video posted by “M” is me,(at 11:04am) pass should have been past… Guess I should clean my glasses or something.

  14. ET: **And, I suspect that the Liberals won’t go for a budget election; it’s too soon, and they need time to regroup and paint themselves all white.**
    Perhaps the buck-ninety-five provision should be reinserted. It’s popular with the [normal] people, and might push the Liberal loonies over the edge.

  15. “”One thing is always certain…You can count on maz2 to be so far off topic as anyone can be…”
    Hey not stirred, how can anything be off topic in Reader’s Tips? Just askin’
    (Retired pigeon, btw, I remember when we had Chinooks)
    Posted by: Texas Canuck at December 8, 2008 10:48 AM”
    Ok, good, I am not the only one that caught that. The only ones off topic are those of us posting without tips…../grin

  16. Jack Layton is getting off far too easy. While the focus has been on Dion and the Liberals, I think the real focus needs to be on Vladimir Layton and the Waffle Manifesto crowd. Layton and his Bolshevik brothers are almost certainly the architects of this beer hall putsch.
    Yet little Jackie is very quiet….my guess is that he is watching “Reds” one more time to see where he went wrong. Yet the little cretin deserves the worst that one can think of for him.

  17. another_anon – “Can any of SDA’s Photoshop wizards create a faux cheque for $1.95 … ”
    That would be fraud. I suggest $1.95 Carbon Credit certificates, you know, because they care so much.

  20. It’s been sweet watching the Liberals fighting each other on MDL (CTV) and Politics (CBC). Of course, whenever possible, they do an aside about how PMSH has instigated this political crisis, but they all look nervous and aren’t too happy with each other.
    Civil war. Yeah. Things aren’t looking too good at Librano Central.
    … later: ‘having trouble commenting on SDA …
    Neither Mike Duffy Live nor Politics SAID ONE WORD about the Rallies for Canada this weekend. NOT ONE WORD. All Liberal, all the time.
    You’d think that the only news Canadians want to hear is how the Librano$ are doing. Isn’t it fairly obvious from the polls this weekend that half of those polled much prefer the Conservative brand of politics in Canada?
    When’s the media going to get it? ‘Wish I could vote them off the island…heck, off the planet.

  21. The ordure of Canada.
    …-
    “Religious group to return Order of Canada honours to protest Morgentaler medal
    By THE CANADIAN PRESS
    TORONTO – A Roman Catholic group is returning Orders of Canada bestowed on two priests to protest a decision to award the honour to Dr. Henry Morgentaler.
    The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate says it is returning the honours given to Father Anthony Sylla of Edmonton in 1971 and to Father Michael Smith of Toronto in 1979.
    Sylla was honoured for his work as a missionary in Western Canada and Smith was honoured for his work in helping war refugees.
    The Roman Catholic group says it is astonished and outraged with the appointment of the abortion rights crusader and says awarding the honour to Morgentaler has damaged the award’s reputation.”
    http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/2008/12/08/7671171-cp.html
    …-
    “Governor General to invest 47 recipients into the Order of Canada
    December 8, 2008”
    http://news.gc.ca/web/view/en/index.jsp?articleid=427069

  22. Good ol’ Christie Blatchford. ‘Says it like it is. Why can’t the rest of the MSM be like her?
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081208.BLATCH08/TPStory/National/columnists
    the last three paragraphs of her article: “Harper not out of line for wanting to crush opposition”:
    [begin quote]
    Mr. Harper, as usual, is being criticized most for not appearing contrite and conciliatory, especially because in his televised speech, he actually suggested that a “coalition with the separatists cannot help Canada” and that, particularly at a time of global instability, Canada’s government “must stand unequivocally for keeping Canada together.”
    He was promptly accused of endangering national unity.
    That is simply ridiculous: The PM spoke only what most Canadians hold to be self-evident. If it is not bizarre enough that a party devoted to dividing the country already participates in the federal Parliament and the federal life of the nation, now that party would also be propping up the NDP-Liberal government, and yet the man who says only plainly that and nothing more is deemed to be inviting Quebec-bashing and disunity.
    As frail as the Canadian federation may be, it is not so frail as to tremble in the face of a couple of simple declarative sentences, and if it is, then it needs a good kick in the ass.
    [end quote]

  23. Another media dinosaur hits the dirt –
    “Media conglomerate Tribune Co. filed for bankruptcy protection Monday, as the owner of the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Cubs and other properties tries to deal with $13 billion in debt.”
    http://www.cnbc.com/id/28101527

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