Howard Kurtz;

The press seems downright excited at the prospect of the first female president. The idea of the first black president has journalists all but giddy. But the first Mormon president? Whoa! That’s a different matter.

Does the left hand know that the right hand is ruling?

It’s a CPAC drinking game.

Vision!
Experience!

Hansard Feb 12;

Hon. Marlene Jennings (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, this government is allowing an increasing number of judges’ positions to remain empty. Worse yet, while the Conservatives are going over their list of defeated candidates with a fine toothed comb, they are turning their noses up at qualified candidates. Apparently, it will be a Conservative or no one.
Will the minister put an end to favouritism and appoint qualified, independent members, who are respected by the Canadian legal community?
Hon. Peter Van Loan (Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform, CPC):
Mr. Speaker, as we have pointed out repeatedly, we are appointing the most qualified judges.
It is interesting that the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine would speak about the quality of the appointments being made by our government when her government, in which she was a minister, appointed somebody named Luciano Del Negro to the Immigration and Refugee Board*. I believe he is the husband of the member of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine.

(h/t reader Paul)

SES Research National Survey;

As you might remember, in the last federal election, the nightly CPAC-SES tracking included leadership measures (trust, competence and vision). One year later, SES and CPAC have completed a follow up leadership evaluation. […]
Most Trustworthy Leader
Harper – 35% (+14)
Dion – 20% (Martin – 18%)
Duceppe – 8% (-3)
Layton – 18% (-7)
May – 8% (Harris – 3%)
Most Competent Leader
Harper – 41% (+17)
Dion – 22% (Martin – 28%)
Duceppe – 8% (No change)
Layton – 13% (-4)
May – 4% (Harris – 2%)
Best Vision for Canada
Harper – 39% (+14)
Dion – 21% (Martin – 25%)
Duceppe – 5% (-1)
Layton – 16% (-2)
May – 7% (Harris – 3%)

The PDF is available on the SES Research website.

When you can manufacture it! “(Angus Reid Global Monitor) – The television spots released by the Conservative party to question the traits of Liberal leader Stéphane Dion had a negligible impact on the perceptions of Canadians, according to a poll by Angus Reid Strategies.”
Page 1

Page 4

PDF
h/t reader “tori”

“If they didn’t exist the Liberals would have to create them.”*
Only in Canada – a push poll based on 388 respondants merits national coverage.

So is Decima biased? One could certainly argue so. They have framed this poll as an embarrassment for the Conservatives, and put words in the mouths of their poll respondents in an attempt to damage a political party.

And they call blogs the “echo chamber”.
Greg Staples weighs in, too.

has joined the Liberals.
Or so I’m told in the comments. (I’ve been crawling around a concrete floor all morning laying out flames on an HHR.)
Open thread as I have to get back to work. I’m sure there’s lots in his archives explaining how deeply unethical it is for any member of parliament to switch parties without resigning his seat. You folks might start getting busy saving page sources.
CTV
Update – Now there’s video from Canada’s best known champion of the little me.
My reaction to the announcement? I’m torn between disinterest and pity. Of course, he jumped to the LIberals. It’s been three months since he saw his name in the paper. He needed a fix.
Now, why Dion took him? That’s the better question.
Update – Commentor “Boots” advises that “Garth Turner is getting ripped to pieces by Breckenridge tonight. (QR 77 archives 7:00pm) In fact I’ve never heard Rob B. so adversarial. He’s absolutely ripping Turner to pieces. It’s brilliant! Turner is stammering and stumbling and Rob B. is relentless. Turner has never experienced this kind of questioning and it shows. Click… he just hung up at the end of the interview.
Link to the audio vault is here, Tue Feb 6 … 7 pm. Turner starts the hour, callers for 20 mins, then Stephen Taylor to finish. The link requires free sign-up. I haven’t heard it yet, but it sounds like fun.

Rhymes with “statesmanship”;

“They walk into coffee shops … drag their knuckles a little bit and say they’re going to lower taxes,”

Then, like Rosie O’Donnell sweating through a Hepburn gown, he tries Churchill on for size.

One wonders why Liblogs aren’t leading the charge to bring the words of their new leader to a broader audience. So, you’ll have to go to BBS for the link and reporter reaction. (mp3 – 10 megs)
Update – The reviews continue to pour in;

the war in Afghanistan was caused by: “A LACK OF WATER”
Yup,
the Taliban weren’t fomenting the most virulent brand of Islamic extremism, thereby aligning themselves with Bin Ladin for the purpose of worldwide Jihad,
they were just thirsty.

Unfit to lead – Randall Denley, Ottawa Citizen

“All these workers living too fast for the easy money in the north,” said Dion during his speech, “It’s not good for the economy.” (link fixed)

“The car goes by, and bam, the dog. Now go to sleep.”

But freshly scrubbed, too!

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,”

Al Sharpton must be so pleased.

Last week I was invited (along with a list of others in both media and the blogosphere) to make my predictions about what issue might emerge in the upcoming parliamentary session. Susan Allan (of the Ottawa Citizen) sent the text of the article by email earlier today, and it’s reprinted in the extended entry. (If someone finds a link, let me know).
So here’s your chance! After reading ours, the comments are open for yours. Remember to be brief and to the point, please.

Continue reading →

The Vancouver Sun informs us that “Canadian Arabs, Muslims threaten to punish Tories in next election” because of what it “says is a continued pro-Israeli stand”;

“We also are telling people to make sure in the elections that they vote for candidates who will stand for truth and justice and that’s all we can do. We try to contact other groups, churches, unions … We have had some success,” said Khaled Mouammar, president of the Canadian Arab Federation, an umbrella group of Arab associations that boasts membership from Vancouver to Halifax.
Mouammar noted last summer’s decision by the Toronto branch of the United Church and the Canadian Union of Public Employees to boycott Israeli products to protest its treatment of Palestinians. “Hopefully people who have views like our prime minister will not be in the next Parliament,” he said.
Mouammar said even if MacKay had returned to Canada enlightened about the level of suffering on the ground in the Palestinian territories, it would have made no difference because he holds no sway with his boss, Harper. “The prime minister is really running the foreign affairs,” said Mouammar.

Via reader email, who notes;

Khaled Mouammar gets his quotes front and centre…….again. He, (perhaps members of his family?) were suspected of circulating flyers, at the Liberal convention,denouncing Bob Ray for supporting the “daily massacre in Palestine” and having a Jewish wife.

In August of 2005, Steve Janke wrote a lengthy post exploring the activities of Mouammar and his family, titled “Khaled Mouammar: Palestinian Activism and the Immigration Board”
Another example here.
One wonders why asomeone so closely associated with the Liberal party – and implicated in convention dirty tricks – was quoted by Mike Blanchfield as an authority on Canadian Arab/Muslim opinion without disclosure of his history and anti-Israel activism?

Vote!
Because there’s no such thing as “too early” to start forecasting the 2008 Presidential election.

In more ways than one;

It was a boy’s paradise. When young Stéphane wasn’t catching toads and snakes, he was usually caught up in an imaginary world inhabited by more daunting creatures.
“My first interest was for the society of animals, not of man,” he recalls. “We had a neighbour named Gaston Moisan, a biologist who was a deputy minister of natural resources. He set traps for the rabbits, to band them, and used to take me with him. He was 5-foot-7, but he was a giant for me.”
A charming childhood anecdote — except, according to Mr. Moisan, it never happened.
“I don’t know how he could have imagined that,” the retired bureaucrat and university professor says. “I had nothing to do with Stéphane. And I never sensed any interest on his part for my work.”

“His father is Kenyan, his mother was white – a charismatic fresh face breaks the race barrier as America’s first African-American presidential candidate”! Or so one would think, based on media coverage. Al Sharpton * must be so pleased.
Ed Morrissey provides a few problematic details omitted from this gushing CTV report;

It’s early in the season, so we’ll cut him some slack, but it isn’t the job of the President to work on eliminating the partisan bitterness in politics. Most of that revolves around Congress anyway, and Obama would have more impact working on that goal from his current position — which to be fair, he has. The President’s job is to run the executive branch — and for that task, we generally don’t find a lack of experience to be an asset.
Obama has little choice but to latch onto the “change the tone” banner for this election. What else could he campaign on? He has served two years of his first term in the Senate, which is also his first two years in Congress at all. He hasn’t served in any other national capacity. In fact, he has done little in foreign affairs at all except to demand a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, and considering that foreign policy is one of the areas under the full purview of the White House, that lack of experience seems much less an asset than a liability.
Granted, the Democrats want to find a candidate who can capture the imagination of the American electorate, but one would hope that they wouldn’t run an imaginary executive in order to do so. Unfortunately, it looks like we’ll get two, the other being John Edwards, who almost served one full term in public office before running for President in 2004. Neither man has any executive experience, not even in the private sector, and between them they have eight years in national office. And yet, they rank #2 and #3 in straw polling for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

Nothing a fawning press can’t overcome. Hillary must be so pleased.

Heh;

The federal NDP leader left agricultural producers at Manitoba Ag Days in Brandon looking at each other in wide-eyed wonder Wednesday morning after a speech about farm issues in which he repeatedly referred to the “SARS” crisis that affected the Manitoba cattle industry.
“Another important issue is SARS. I was just talking to a cattle producer today who said the situation is worse now than when we were in the middle of SARS,” Layton said.
As Layton continued his speech, and kept saying “SARS” Manitoba Agriculture Minister Rosann Wowchuk loudly whispered “It’s BSE, not SARS… it’s BSE not SARS,” from her seat at the front of the audience.

Jack Layton Youtube