Hard hit by the voter imposed ban on paper bags;

Six MPs who ran for the Liberal leadership in 2006 — including eventual winner Stéphane Dion — have missed the year-end deadline to repay loans made to their campaigns, the party says.
Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand in 2008 granted the candidates 18-month extensions to pay off debts, but the party admits tough economic times and the recurring possibility of another election meant they couldn’t meet the date.
Dion and MPs Gerard Kennedy, Martha Hall-Findlay, Maurizio Bevilacqua, Joe Volpe and Hedy Fry were all given extensions that expired on New Year’s Eve.

Century XIII Quatrain 1
His time is up.
Ballots, debates, wild smoke,
Rage and fury throughout every province.
Tears, cries, never times so bitter.
Century XIII Quatrain 2
The czarist prince near the Lakeshore of Etobicoke
Will return in true patriot love.
Going beyond the thoughful ones will draw up a plan.
Rae, LeBlanc, Trudeau, a man in a mask. Others.
Century XIII Quatrain 3
Natural governors prevail:
The brown bag holds the secret.
Banquets offered by day,
Granaries plundered at night.
Century XIII Quatrain 4
The angry barbarian King will be driven west, vanquished.
The people tried by frost,
Women and youth weeping.
The cabinet remains a mystery.
Century XIII Quatrain 5
From the top of the Hill a voice heard,
Be gone, be gone all of you on both sides.
The anger will be appeased by the blood of the blue ones:
From Abbott to Zarac, necks burning in sun, expelled.
Century XIII Quatrain 6
The King and his court in the place of cunning tongue,
Within the temple facing the palace:
In the garden the Dukes of Charest and Dumont dagger tongue.
The scribes rejoice.
Century XIII Quatrain 7
True patriot will sound the trumpet.
Ten ships nearby will turn to drive it back.
Great war ends, the united ones to join in faith.
Through peace he will attain to the empire.
Century XIII Quatrain 8
Near the end of two centuries and eight, governed to its greatest detriment, plundered:
The barbarians may evade the executioner.
Consumed by vapours, great enemy of the entire human race: crazy shithouse rats.
Never were the people so wronged.
Century XIII Quatrain 9
The Gardens at Stanley and Halifax harbours will flood so high
That they will believe the Goracle reborn.
Into the colossal storms the Baird will flee,
Great white ones drowning enrage the people.
Century XIII Quatrain 10
For the war room one, walls will be converted from brick to marble.
Seven and fifty pacific years,
Joy to mortals, the aquaduct renewed,
Health, abundance of fruits, joy and mellifluous times.
From The Quatrains: December 31, 2008

“Ignatieff’s Liberals sink to a new low”

Looks like someone forgot to cleanse thoroughly.
h/t Maz2

I bet Boston is looking better by the day.

Now this was an odd thing for an aspiring “Canadian” prime minister to say…

“We are American”: that single sentence was a lesson in political obligation. Black or white, rich or poor, Americans are not supposed to be strangers to one another. Having been abandoned, the people in the convention center were reduced to reminding their fellow citizens, through the medium of television, that they were not refugees in a foreign country. Citizenship ties are not humanitarian, abstract or discretionary. They are not ties of charity. In America, a citizen has a claim of right on the resources of her government when she cannot – simply cannot – help herself.
It may be astonishing that American citizens should have had to remind their fellow Americans of this, but let us not pretend we do not know the reason. They were black, and for all that poor blacks have experienced and endured in this country, they had good reason to be surprised that they were treated not as citizens but as garbage.

h/t

Reason #359,435 to keep government out of “health” care.

Via Stephen Taylor
Related: “Dear Liberal boss: You’re an idiot”.

In related news, Hedy Fry spent the evening alone with her computer.

And by The Star – this has to sting;

“Ignatieff gets his facts wrong in Arar case”

To be fair, he was out of the country at the time.

The Star requested an interview to discuss Ignatieff’s statement, but his spokeswoman, Jill Fairbrother, declined the request.
“It’s clear and I don’t think he’ll have much to add if the subject is torture.”
When told that Ignatieff was wrong and asked if she could verify the quote, Fairbrother said she no longer had a tape recording of the interview.

Related – famed Ignatieff strategist relieved of total blame… developing….
Update from Montreal today…

(Photo courtesy Ezra Levant.)

Money quote:

…”the party’s spin-machine, Warren Kinsella, camped outside the door”.

Advice for Mr.Ignatieff – don’t bring a failed restaurant critic to a communications fight.
Related ass kicking developments! “It’s not all my fault!” Sheesh.

If ever there was a photo that cried out for it….

(photo credit Thunder Bay Newswatch)
For those of you with nothing better to do this weekend. I’ll post the best family-friendly efforts.

That Michael Ignatieff screensaver is watching you…

The copyright lobby’s interest in the bill has been simmering since its introduction, with lobbyists attending the committee hearings and working with Liberal and Bloc MPs to secure changes. The two core concerns arise from fears that the bill could prevent surreptitious use of DRM and block enforcement initiatives that might involve accessing users’ personal computers without their permission.
The DRM concern arises from a requirement in the bill to obtain consent before installing software programs on users’ computers. This anti-spyware provision applies broadly, setting an appropriate standard of protection for computer users. Yet the copyright lobby fears it could inhibit installation of DRM-type software without full knowledge and consent. Sources say that the Liberals have introduced a motion that would take these practices outside of the bill. In its place, they would define computer program as, among other things, “a program that has as its primary function…inducing a user to install software by intentionally misrepresenting that installing that software is necessary to safeguard security or privacy or to open or play content of a computer program.” This sets such a high bar – primary function, intentional mispresentation – that music and software industry can plausibly argue that surreptitious DRM installations fall outside of C-27.
Even more troubling are proposed changes that would allow copyright owners to secretly access information on users’ computers…

Emphasis mine.

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Via an obscure ethnic restaurant critic’s archives;

OTTAWA – The Liberals are complaining to the federal ethics commissioner over the Harper government’s use of taxpayer cheques bearing the Conservative party logo or Tory MPs signatures.
Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson is being asked to investigate dozens of examples of promotional government cheques that Tory MPs used to tout stimulus spending for partisan gain.

Via Jean Chretien.net archives;

OTTAWA; QUEBEC CITY – Jean Chretien, the Prime Minister, yesterday said his government had nothing to apologize for in seeking to reap maximum partisan political benefit from disbursing $1-billion worth of federal job grants across Canada each year.
He had always made sure since taking power in October, 1993, that voters were left in no doubt that it was his Liberals who were distributing such grants, he said.
“Listen,” he added, “we are the government … I don’t see why we can’t try to get credit for what we do. I hope we do so. There is nothing to be ashamed in that.”

Great sleuthing, courtesy of Manny

It’s like deja turkey all over again.

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Michael Ignatieff, September – “Mr Harper, your time is up. The Liberal Party cannot support this government any further. We will hold it to account. We will oppose it in Parliament.”
Michael Ignatieff, October – “What I’ve said consistently for a month is in those cases where the government brings forth legislation we can support or approve or amend, we’ll do so. My strategy is not to make parliamentary government impossible.”
From the Toronto Sun

h/t bluetech

CTV:

Nicholson has called on Ignatieff to intervene and force the Liberal senators to drop the amendments.
“He should impose some discipline down there,” he said.
Ignatieff supports the tough-on-crime bill. The move by Liberal senators only enhances the perception that the Liberal party is not fully behind its leader.

Related: watch here for your latest developments in Ontario Peewee hockey ….

Michael Geist;

At yesterday’s hearing, it was discouraging to see lobbyists for Canadian Chamber of Commerce and Canadian Intellectual Property Council huddling with Liberal MPs before the start of the hearing. It was even more incredible to see lobbyists for the Canadian Real Estate Association draft a series of questions about the bill, hand them to a Bloc MP, and have them posed to the witnesses moments later.

In today’s Star – Canadian media’s foremost Liberal cheerleader notes that the natural governing party has progressed from hiding excrement, to eating it.

Heh.

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
The Hill Times, 2009 – “Warren Kinsella, a former senior Liberal Cabinet staffer who played a key role in the 1993, 1997 and 2000 federal election campaigns, will head the war room…”
Warren Kinsella, 2006 – “I objected to the manner in which his supporters trampled on democracy in a Toronto riding – literally locking out opponents. I objected to his support of George W. Bush’s illegal war in Iraq. I objected to the fact that he mocked Canada (Link dead) during the three decades he was abroad, and that he likened Israeli policy to the fascism of apartheid. I objected to what I perceived to be breathtaking arrogance – calling Canada a “herbivorian boy scout” one day, then jetting up here to run it the next.”
h/t EBD

*