I’ll give credit where it’s due – hats off to Mansbridge for this.

Don’t be surprised to see Dion hit the ground in Kandahar as early as Tuesday – just to put as much distance between himself and Outremont as humanly possible.
More… Debacle… disaster.
STOP THE PRESSES: It’s sabotage!
Star Power: Dion, Dryden, Trudeau rally before 50 chanting party supporters!
h/t

Outremont:
38% NDP, 32% Lib, 14% BQ
Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot:
49% BQ, 32% CPC, 6% NDP, 5% Lib
Roberval-Lake-Saint-Jean:
43% CPC, 37% BQ, 12% Lib, 4% NDP
Source
Chantal Hebert – “a disaster-in-the-making..”

I’m following this story for the same reason everyone else is – the gratuitous punnitry!

Mr. Hsu’s past, illuminated by documents fished out of storage at various courts and interviews with former partners and friends, is full of failed businesses, a kidnapping, lawsuits and bouts of financial ruin followed by hard-to-explain recovery.
[…]
Just how or why he got involved in politics is unclear. In 2004, Mr. Hsu donated $2,000, the most then allowed, to the presidential campaign of Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry.
Mr. Hsu began contributing generously to an array of Democrats, including California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu. He donated $5,000 to Bob Hertzberg, who was running for mayor of Los Angeles. When Bill Richardson ran for governor of New Mexico, Mr. Hsu was among the top contributors, donating $37,000 in all. Mr. Richardson, like most other recipients, now says he’ll donate it to charity.
In 2004, Mr. Hsu began giving to federal candidates, including Mrs. Clinton and Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama. He also donated checks from others.
And he frequently threw parties. To celebrate the Democrats’ victories in Congress, the Senate and gubernatorial races, he rented a New York club called Buddakan. With several governors and others in the audience, Mr. Hsu grabbed the microphone, according to someone who was there, and ordered anyone who wasn’t supporting Hillary Clinton to “get out!”
[…]
Mr. Hsu also is listed on the roster of members for the Clinton Global Initiative — an effort by Mrs. Clinton’s husband, the former president, to recruit people to tackle problems like poverty and disease — in 2005 and 2006. Members are required to donate $15,000 a year.

The story details a trail of shakey ventures and burned investors. “Mr. Woo met Mr. Hsu” – It’s like the Wall Street Journal meets Dr. Seuss!
Related: A Boy Named Hsu.
Update – Beltway Blogroll: A Man Of Many Puns

Long gone;

Disgraced Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu was a wanted man again after he failed to show up for a court date Wednesday and a judge issued a new warrant for his arrest.
Hsu, whose criminal past has roiled the campaigns of top presidential candidates, was scheduled to ask a judge to cut in half the $2 million bail he posted last week when he turned himself in after spending 15 years on the lam from a felony theft conviction.
[…]
Federal Election Commission records show Hsu donated $260,000 to Democratic Party groups and federal candidates since 2004. Though a top fundraiser for Clinton, he also donated to Obama’s Senate campaign in 2004 and to his political action committee. He also contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to state and municipal candidates.

Clinton must be thanking her lucky stars that she doesn’t receive “Hillraiser” contributions in airport bathrooms.
More – A visit to 160 Wooster Street,
Previous – Who’s Hsu In Democratic Fund-raising?
Update: Here’s Hsu!

“Liberal strategist Susan Smith wonders who’s buying the Conservatives lunch and dinner if they’re not claiming it themselves.”

The original post is good;

When all the facts about Hsu came to light recently they shocked, positively shocked, the fundraisers for Hillary Clinton, who never suspected anything might be amiss. As the NYT article went on to say,. “The fund-raiser also said Mr. Hsu was seen as a point of access to Asian supporters and money and that many in Democratic fund-raising circles are surprised by his legal problems.”
Despite Hsu’s remarkably light footprint on the visible world he was nevertheless able to embark upon a fashion, garment or high-technology business, whichever it is, or maybe it was the latex glove trade; able to make a fortune in Hong Kong after he was a fugitive and return to California to invest in Silicon Valley while he was a wanted man. He was able to maintain himself as a ” point of access to Asian supporters” of the Democratic party; able to appear at public functions and have his picture taken with national political figures with approximately the same ease you or I could have ourselves photographed with a clown at the local shopping mall.

…but this comment is better;

I do think you’re onto something, but for a bit more fun, who do you think actually broke the story?
I seriously DOUBT the WSJ reporters diligently pored over the lists of FEC reports looking for “spot the bagman” in the Hillary campaign.
THAT’s WORK. Reporters avoid that like the plague. They might actually have to do something that’s different from rewriting press releases and work up a sweat. THAT would never do.
I also seriously doubt that their Psychic Friend rang them up with the news. Dionne Warwick gave that up long ago.
My guess is that a campaign, a seriously run, well organized, disciplined to the point of having people pore over FEC lists to find embarrassing donors, and well-funded enough to assign what would appear to be several staffers to this task, is responsible.
[…]
If I had to put a finger on someone, I’d put it on the Goreacle. He’s got money coming out of his ears, has half the WSJ on speed-dial, and has nothing to do with his life but live down his defeat. Unless … a “crusader in shining armor comes … to rescue the party from the evil sleaze of Hillary, and save the planet!” Of course the danger of that play is that he was enmeshed in the Clinton era sleaze but he might be gambling that the tide of sewage won’t touch HIM.

h/t Maz2, in the comments.

“We wish nothing more, but we will accept nothing less. Masters in our own house we must be, but our house is the whole of Canada.” – Pierre Trudeau
“Of all our dreams today there is none more important – or so hard to realise – than that of peace in the world. May we never lose our faith in it or our resolve to do everything that can be done to convert it one day into reality.” – Lester B. Pearson
“They lay one egg. They put their excrement in one place. They hide their excrement. … They flap their wings very hard and they work like hell. This seems to me a symbol for what our party should be.” – Michael Ignatieff

I’ve met Brad Wall and listened to him speak, and detected no trace of any speech impediment.
Apparently, the Saskatchewan NDP think differently.

Apparently, they think that it’s appropriate to reference an established physical disability to ridicule a political opponent on their official party website.
Quite the little inside joke, that.
Or at least, it used to be.
Update: 5:50pm In an uncharacteristic mea culpa, the NDP has changed the photo and acknowledged their shame. The file name on the new one is “380_ashamedbradnews.jpg”
SDA gets results!

WSJ; Six members of the Paw family, each listing the house at 41 Shelbourne Ave. as their residence, have donated a combined $45,000 to the Democratic senator from New York since 2005, for her presidential campaign, her Senate re-election last year and her political action committee. In all, the six Paws have donated a total of $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005, election records show.

More – Where there’s a Clinton, can shady financers be far away?

*

Steve Janke;

No-Gun-No-Funeral is a group dedicated to having handguns banned outright in Canada. The group will apply pressure to the federal government.
It implies that it is a grassroots organization.
If so, why is it that the only information I can find out about this group points to the Liberal Party, both the federal and Ontario wings of the party. Very interesting is the fact that the phone number for the site goes to the riding association for Michael Bryant, Attorney General of Ontario, who has promised to lobby for a handgun ban.

That’s just the teaser. Steve will be on Corus radio with Roy Green later today. Details at the link.
A link to the site was mailed to me earlier in the week, with the suggestion that our usual readers get in on the petition fun.
Heh. (Saddam – you still out there?)

Can “shop-worn women” be far away?
Except this time, they’re not Bill’s.
Yet.

101 People Who Are Screwing Up Canada: 4… 3 …. 2 ….

Details here. – “Prentice to Industry, Oda to CIDA, Strahl to Indian Affairs, O’Connor to Revenue, Bernier to Foreign Affairs, Verner to Heritage, Ablonczy now Secretary of State for Small Business, Ritz to Agriculture, MacKay to Defence.”
Update: http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/cabinet.asp
Comments are open for reaction.

Sunday afternoon as I was heading out the gate, a small car pulled up and a friend jumped out to chat for a few minutes. She’s looking forward to a career change and (I hope) some well-earned down time after years of hard work in the trenches. She was making the rounds to pay her regards.
I’m sure that she had better things to do and more important people to see, but I was touched (as was Lance whom she’d stopped to see earlier) that Canada’s Minister of National Revenue would take the time to drive out “to the middle of nowhere” to thank a couple of lowly bloggers for their support.
It was a pleasure, Carol, to be of whatever small assistance we could in helping out. You deserved it, you earned it, and you’ll be missed.

The Prime Minister’s statement.

From a WSJ report that can’t decide whether it’s news or editorial;

Mr. Rove, who has held a senior post in the White House since President Bush took office in January 2001, told Mr. Gigot he first floated the idea of leaving a year ago. But he delayed his departure as, first, Democrats took Congress, and then as the White House tackled debates on immigration and Iraq, he said. He said he decided to leave after White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten told senior aides that if they stayed past Labor Day they would be obliged to remain through the end of the president’s term in January 2009.
“I just think it’s time,” Mr. Rove said in the interview. “There’s always something that can keep you here, and as much as I’d like to be here, I’ve got to do this for the sake of my family.” Mr. Rove and his wife have a home in Ingram, Texas, and a son who attends college in nearby San Antonio.

(This passage of John D. McKinnon’s piece borders on the bizarre – “Mr. Rove established himself as the political genius behind the rise of George W. Bush and the brief period of united Republican rule. But he did it largely through highly divisive policies and campaign tactics, such as the attacks on Democratic rival John Kerry the 2004 campaign. That strategy appears to have backfired, as seen in the Republican loss of Congress in 2006, and Mr. Bush’s low poll numbers.” Since when is it off limits to “attack” one’s political opponent?)
Update: Looks like I’m not alone;

…in the minds of the MSM, it is George Bush who is the “divider,” not the Democrats and the left who have been vilifying him for over six years now as an election stealer, a warmonger, a chimpanzee, a torturer, a war criminal–despite his acquiescing to (in partnership with Ted Kennedy) much of the liberal political agenda, with an expansion of Medicare, federal control over education, a new amnesty for illegal immigrants, and a general expansion of government on almost all fronts. All of which was pushed by the evil mastermind, Karl Rove.

The Corner is your best bet for reaction from the American right. The American left will remain its usual bipolar self.

“Because having seen what Hussein had done the Kurds the correct reaction was to further enable to Hussein regime?”

Heh – “You know that’s what I was thinking , what we need in politics in Canaduh is a politician that spent 30 years in the US teaching “human rights” who’s honest enough to admit “that upon serious reconsideration, and a house in Toronto, they’ve discovered they’re perfectly OK with gassing minorities.”

The Canadian left believes the Democrats are the “Canada friendly” party.
I know. Hard to fathom.

A little speculation from Stephen Taylor.
Related: Contrary to comments attributed to Dr. Strangelove, Stephen Harper is not being promoted to the Presidency.

I don’t know what this relates to.

And I’m not entirely certain I want to.
Via Bourque, according to the comments.
UPDATE – Ted reports the following: “This is a photo from the United Jewish Appeal’s Walk With Israel, which is the largest pro-Israel event in Canada on May 27.”
While I have nothing but the utmost respect for Ted, I hesitate to accept his information as accurate, for as everyone who follows the Canadian progressive blogosphere knows, Israel walks like this:

And now another photo mystery solved…