With the release of polling data that shows an abrupt return of support for the Liberals, people are taking a look at the “new pollster on the block”.
Conservative Life has damning information on previous work. Canuckistan Chronicles (who should remember that etiquette requires that you not ping sites you’ve not actually mentioned in your post) writes that the pollster has “provided stats for the botched gun registry and is loaded with ” former premiers, cabinet ministers, senior bureaucrats and political advisors.”.
Now perhaps these polls are legit, and Paul Martin’s simpering really did turn hearts and minds. And maybe the Liberals and Liberal-friendly media outlets who commissioned them are borrowing from the US Democrats playbook, and using deliberately skewed polls to throw cold water on the election fires burning.
It isn’t hard to skew a poll without deliberately falsifying the results – by polling during certain times of day, or first asking a series of questions designed to influence the respondant in one direction or the other. The early exit polls in the 2004 US presidential elections are an example – with initial “leaked” results showing a blowout for John Kerry, it’s suspected that both the polling and the leaking were deliberate attempts by the Democratic Party to dissuade Bush supporters from voting at all – a repeat of events in 2000, when CNN actually declared Al Gore elected a few minutes after Florida closed.
update – Occam’s Carbuncle has been running the Liberal donation numbers on these pollsters….
By the way – If you are interested in some fascinating discussion on polling, and examples of how data can be skewed, through deliberate efforts or simple sloppiness, bookmark Mystery Pollster.
Oops
I had a draft post sitting open in my browser with a handful of new blogs that wanted a little publicity… and accidentally nuked it. Please drop them in the comments today, and I’ll promise to get it up tomorrow. (Besides, a couple of you were on your first day, and it’s better to wait until you have.. eh.. something to read, before I send traffic your way.)
Chuck Cadman
John Gormley is interviewing Chuck Cadman – first health: He’s still on chemo, but not feeling too badly, and trying to rebuild his strength.
It’s been a “wild week” for him. He’s paying attention to the calls and emails, and the situation is volatile. Reserves his right to change position. Philosophically, with the Conservatives.
He’s closely monitoring the views of constituents on this, to reflect their views in parliament.
His Conservative nomination was hijacked by someone who employed a “mass sign-up” of 1.500 members who haven’t renewed. He doesn’t blame Harper for not intervening, because he wasn’t leader at the time. Party heirarchy was responsible. (Amen – see Grant Devine’s nomination battle, which might have resulted in resulted in a Liberal coming up the middle had the riding not been so heavily Conservative in philosophy.)
Are the Conservatives making a mistake if they pull the plug? “Hard to say – it’s volatile.. everything is so fluid it’s hard to tell one day to the next.” Mentions Guite, and what might happen when the publication ban is lifted on his testimony. Maybe wait until Gomery works out, at least until all the evidence is in. … will hold off to make a decision until he’s sure he’s making the responsible one for Surrey North…. “I’ll have to make up my mind sometime before the moment of voting” … and there is an expectation of everyone being in the house – that may not happen, and with a day’s notice, he may not be able to get to Ottawa from Vancouver. He also mentions the other two Conservatives who are ill.
He didn’t tip his hand, which means he really hasn’t decided, but I get the impression that it won’t take much to convince him to vote alongside the Conservatives – revelations from Guite or the upcoming auditors report, for example.
Liberating Conservative Voices
Daniel Henninger on the rise of conservative media in the US in the wake of Ronald Reagan’s dismantling of the “Fairness Doctrine” in media.
Ronald Reagan tore down this wall in 1987 (maybe as spring training for Berlin) and Rush Limbaugh was the first man to proclaim himself liberated from the East Germany of liberal media domination.
It wasn’t obvious that conservatives soon would dominate talk radio. Radio programming has always been a soulless decision based on ratings. If programmers thought they could win the drive-time slots with Don Imus reading “Das Kapital,” that would be on the air and advertisers would support it. But it’s not.
What worked after speech became free in the spectrum ozone was hyper-articulate conservative hosts opening their microphones to millions of hyper-angry conservative voters–not least in such liberal bastions as New York, Boston, and Los Angeles.
In 1994, Newt Gingrich, his Contract With America and the Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1952–the years in which the Fairness Doctrine largely kept politics off the air. This didn’t happen because the Gingrich candidates were getting their message out in the Los Angeles Times or Boston Globe.
Boo Ho
Bono fans boo Paul Martin. He’s working hard to make up for that, though. Today he’s in Winnipeg and Regina, making spending announcements #80 and #81 – of the week. About 6.3 billion worth, when you tack on Buzz Hargroves budget amendment.
BTW – if you want to track how quickly Paul Martin, Jack Layton and friends are shovelling your money away, bookmark this page… today’s entries:
756m plus… stay tuned
Cold, Steely Grip
Kofi Annan is acting suspiciously like a man preoccupied with the hand that is firmly wrapped around the family jewels.
Secretary General Kofi Annan said Thursday that he had decided there were no grounds for disciplining his former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, who was criticized by the independent committee investigating the oil-for-food program for ordering the shredding of three years of files.
“While those actions were careless, I do not believe they can be construed as deliberate attempts to impede the work of the independent inquiry committee,” Mr. Annan said April 19 in a letter to Mr. Riza that was released Thursday. His reference was to the panel headed by Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman. “I accept your apology and assure you that I still have great faith in your professionalism and well- known integrity,” the letter continued.
I wonder what Riza has on him.
update – Strong World has more evidence.
Rethinking Mendel
Challenging a scientific law of inheritance that has stood for 150 years, scientists say plants sometimes select better bits of DNA in order to develop normally even when their predecessors carried genetic flaws.
The conclusion by Purdue University molecular biologists contradicts at least some basic rules of plant evolution that were believed to be absolute since the mid-1800s, when Austrian monk Gregor Mendel experimented with peas and saw that traits are passed on from one generation to the next. Mendelian genetics has been the foundation of both crop hybridization and the understanding of basic cell mutations and trait inheritance.
In the Purdue experiment, researchers found that a watercress plant sometimes corrects the genetic code it inherited from its flawed parents and grows normally like its grandparents and other ancestors.
Scientists said the discovery raises questions of whether humans also have the potential for avoiding genetic flaws or even repairing them, although they said the actual proteins responsible for making these fixes probably would be different in plants.
Details of the experiments appear in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.
“This means that inheritance can happen more flexibly than we thought,” said Robert Pruitt, the paper’s senior author.
In the experiment, the Purdue researchers found that 10 percent of watercress plants with two copies of a mutant gene called “hothead” didn’t always blossom with deformed flowers like their parents, which carried the mutant genes. Instead, those plants had normal white flowers like their grandparents, which didn’t carry the hothead gene and the deformity appeared only for a single generation.
The normal watercress plants with hothead genes appear to have kept a copy of the genetic coding from the grandparent plants and used it as a template to grow normally.
However, Pruitt’s team didn’t find the template in the plants’ DNA or chromosomes where genetic information is stored and they did not determine whether a particular gene is encoded to carry out the recovery of the normal DNA.
Where the normal genetic template is stored and how it is triggered will take additional research and probably involve more genes, Pruitt said.
Humans and other animals do not carry the hothead gene, so if this process occurs in higher organisms it must use a different trigger, he said.
Other scientists described the results as “spectacular.”
Detlef Weigel and Gerds Jurgen of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Germany wrote in an accompanying commentary in Nature that the mechanism for recovering the normal DNA in the watercress plants might be lurking in the plant’s RNA, which carries out genetic orders in cells.
Not Notoriously Offensive Racial Epithet Day
Khemosabi! Khemosabi! Khemosabi!
That’s for you, Raskolnikov*.
Revisiting Friendly Fire: Night Vision Devices
A week or so ago I recieved an item in the mail with the following questions attached, and a link to a site called “Out Of The Dark”.
The writer also included a National Post item from April 16th, titled Friendly Fire’s Pain Endures”, about the incident that claimed 4 Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. There was a hand written note that asked;
The photos in the paper are not the greatest, either. One can’t see any glowing, shining, light of any kind. So did the government forget to buy the right equipment again??
warrior “glolatce” [sp??] IR chem lights phoenix ir strobes battle reference marking system thermal identification panels
This is way over my head (and not within my time constraints to follow up) …. if nothing else, perhaps some of our military readers can help shed light on this question for a reader.
All A-Buzz
Is this what we’ve come to? The Prime Minister of Canada skulking around in hotel rooms taking orders from union leaders?
And while on the topic of the NDP – Jack Layton is currently on John Gormley Live taking questions. The first two callers just ripped him a new one – especially the guy who pointed out that he was a hypocrite for accusing the Conservatives of “being in bed with the separatists”, when he is so eager to crawl into the arms of the corrupt.
There will be NDP party workers frantically pushing the redial buttons right now, trying to undo the damage.
Third caller just kneecapped him. “You’re going down hard.”
“We’re not in bed with a corrupt government.. we’re against the Liberals… we want the liberals to put the dirty money in an account…. ”
A supporter snuck in to push the “the conservatives will cause the breakup of the country” meme… Jack is relieved. He’s pushing the notion of “just trying to get the budget done” canard, and not mentioning that he’s already suggested the NDP will vote against all the non-confidence motions.
The suggestion that the NDP are too broke to run an election campaign right now may have merit.
Craig – “I know you got your way with the new programs, but now that Martin is going ahead with the tax cuts anyway, are you going to support that?”
“Well we’ll see what he’s got… he doesn’t want to commit on that. Wanders back to the student tuition, pension protection, environment…blah blah blah…. ”
and then he was gone… had a person come to the door, so missed the followup callers.
And the show continues with Peter MacKay, also by phone from the Maritimes.
They’re talking about “FlapJack Layton”, who “voted against the budget a few weeks ago”. He’s doing a good job our explaining the scope of the scandal. First caller is supportive.
Glen asks: “Why Canadians should trust Conservative party?” Brings up David Orchard..
Get an explanation of the events, etc. of the merger. He assures the next caller that Gomery will go ahead whether there’s an election or not. Reminds him of the previous Liberal pattern of shutting down inquiries.
Gormley brings up the “getting into bed with sovereignists”. Rightfully points out that the Liberals attempts to buy Quebecers with their own money is the impetus for increase in separation.
Liberals who brought Jean LaPierre[sp?] into the fold – former founder of the Bloc. Liberals have voted with the Bloc far more often than the Conservatives have.
MacKay wraps up with election style stuff. Cadman is on tomorrow. That should be interesting.
Lorne Calvert Pardons Devine Government
In a statement Thursday, Saskatchewan NDP premier Lorne Calvert acknowledged that the criminal prosecution of former members of the government of Grant Devine was politically motivated. He said his government is going to issue a full pardon, and an apology to the members of the now defunct Progressive Conservative party who were prosecuted, some of whom served jail time.
(The massive scandal of the 1990’s centered on abuse of members communications allowances and involved thousands of dollars – the misappropriation of funds included such outrages as the purchase of computer software and speakers podiums for constituency offices.)
“It was never about the money they stole,” Calvert acknowledged. “We really don’t have any problems at all with corruption in government. None at all, actually. It’s just the cost of doing business, as far as the New Democratic Party is concerned.”
Calvert added, “it’s about what’s good for the party. In our case, it was good for the NDP to prosecute the Progressive Conservatives, good for our political fortunes in the province. As the years have passed, we’ve turned that old dead horse into a political drum skin.”
“Bottom line – corruption and misuse of public funds isn’t really an issue with our government. A hundred thousand, a hundred million – the figures really don’t mean much. What matters is the optics and how the corruption can be leveraged to the advantage of the party. In the case of the Martin Liberals, we may be able to wrangle a better deal on equalization, so obviously, we’ve given our full support to Jack Layton’s deal to prop up the Martin government.”
“Official Squeamishness”
[T]omorrow night in the city of brotherly love, Mr. Chr�tien — accompanied by two RCMP officers decked out in their red serge dress uniforms — will receive an award as a global role model from a gay and lesbian activist group, the Equality Forum, for his support of same-sex marriage.
On Sunday, the two Mounties — one male, one female on assignment with the government-supported Canadian Tourism Commission — will accompany Kevin Bourassa and Joe Varnell, the first gay couple to be married in Canada, as they receive a “hero award” from the forum.
This is a job for juxtapose!
The United States wants to give two teams of Canadian snipers the Bronze Star, a decoration for bravery, for their work in rooting out Taliban and al-Qaeda holdouts in eastern Afghanistan, but Canadian defence officials put the medals on hold, the National Post has learned.
The five snipers spent 19 days fighting alongside the scout platoon of the United States Army’s 187th “Rakkasan” brigade last month, clearing out diehard fighters from the mountains near Gardez in eastern Afghanistan.
The Americans were so impressed by the Canadian snipers that they recommended them for medals after the battle.
Sources told the Post that U.S. General Warren Edwards had already signed the recommendation for five Bronze Stars for the sniper teams, drawn from 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, last month.
Gen. Edwards, deputy commanding general of coalition land forces in Afghanistan, had recommended three Canadians for a Bronze Star and two for a Bronze Star with distinction.
The night before the troops were to be awarded the medals, about three weeks ago, Canadian military officials in Ottawa put the decorations on hold, according to a U.S. Army source in Afghanistan.
The Canadian military told their U.S. counterparts to wait before awarding the medals for reasons of “Canadian protocol.”
Spokesmen for the Department of National Defence would not comment on the award last night, but a source within the department said the medals are on hold while the military decides whether or not to award the men a similar Canadian decoration.
However, Dr. David Bercuson, director of the Centre of Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary, said the real reason for the delay was likely official squeamishness.
What a pathetic excuse for a country we live in.
Those Crazy Jews
Whatever would they need these for… ?
Related: See Belmont Club, too.
Via CS&W
The Cult Of Minds Eye
I recieved an email yesterday in response to this post about $600,000 being shovelled into Minds Eye Pictures to ensure filming of a Tommy Douglas mini-series is done in Saskatchewan. I’ve recieved permission to share it.
I worked in “the media” in Regina… oh… over a decade ago now. There was this bizzare cult of not saying anything bad about Mind’s Eye ever – and it was essentially forbidden to perform an act of actual journalism and question the public money they were ciphoning from anywhere they could get.
There was this mantra that because they were local they were entitled to my tax money. WTF is that about??
It was ridiculous… especially since they’ve never produced anything you could sit down and watch without wanting to gouge your eyes out…if it ever got to production… they’d do these big-deal “shoots” and whomp around doing all the publicity… and we would go like sheep and cover it… and then they’d never get the film into actual production. Endless activity with no product. All my buddies in film think the point is to get the thing seen. By people. Not Mind’s eye!!
They should be burned to the ground.
Citizen Journalist Radio
I’ll be the guest … or fodder …. for citizen journalists, Jeff Goldstein and Bill Ardolino. on Right Talk Radio tomorrow around 3:25pm EST. (The show begins at 3:00 and can be heard live over the net.) Other guests include Ed Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters
call-in number for guests: 1-866-884-8255
The only information I’ve been given is that they need a Canadian to make fun of.
We’ll see about that.
BNP Paribas on Oil-For-Food Hotseat
Claudia Rosett is, as usual, at the forefront on UNScam reporting;
At the United Nations itself, heads have already been rolling, as one scandal after another has bubbled up from the oil-for-food morass. Several high-ranking U.N. officials close to Secretary-General Annan have been forced to “step aside” – as U.N. lingo has it. Federal prosecutors are investigating allegations that Saddam sent millions in bribes to two as-yet-unnamed high-ranking U.N. officials to help shape the program in his favor. But all the investigating so far has barely begun to expose the full extent of the corruption and mismanagement involved in oil for food, under which Saddam grafted billions out of more than $110 billion in U.N.-approved oil sales and relief purchases meant to help the people of Iraq.
“Follow the money,” says Mr. Rohrabacher, who adds, “Sometimes it’s easy to miss the fact that the bank is right in the middle of it.”
That bank is the New York branch of the French bank, BNP Paribas (formerly the Banque Nationale de Paris). Asked to answer questions related to BNP’s role in oil for food and its handling of such matters as letters of credit and banking fees, BNP officials responded via a public relations firm, saying they “really don’t want to talk to anybody before the hearing.”
Among questions the subcommittee is likely to pursue is why BNP, straying outside its contract with the United Nations, reassigned letters of credit – meaning that payments from the Iraq escrow account guaranteed to one contractor approved by the United Nations for a given deal were instead sent to an unapproved third party. Under a U.N. sanctions regime, in which the basic aim of oil for food was to monitor Saddam’s deals, such rogue payments, running right through the bank entrusted with the account, should have raised red flags. But the United Nations made no complaint. According to the U.N.-authorized inquiry led by Paul Volcker, the world body did not even bother to review BNP’s handling of the letters of credit. And, like most of the more telling details of oil for food, the specifics of BNP’s activities under the program were kept secret by the United Nations.
Three instances of reassigned oil-for-food letters of credit have already come to light, disclosed last November at a hearing of the House International Relations Committee, where members questioned BNP’s chief executive officer for North America, Everett Schenk, who did not provide an explanation. In all three cases, the letters of credit – totaling millions – guaranteed funds from the Iraq account meant to pay one of Saddam’s U.N.-approved suppliers of relief, the Saudi Arabia-based firm Al Riyadh International Flowers. Instead, BNP reassigned the letters of credit to a Malaysia-based firm, East Star Trading Company. Why?
Information from reader “Brightleaf” about East Star Trading Company reveals it’s registered in the Cayman Islands.
BNP was picked in 1996 for the role of chief oil-for-food banker by the former U.N. secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The U.N. inquiry into oil for food led by Mr. Volcker has reported that in choosing BNP, Mr. Boutros-Ghali bypassed U.N. procedure for competitive bidding. Mr. Boutros-Ghali has also been described in a recent Associated Press dispatch as “the subject of speculation” regarding likely targets of the federal bribery investigation. The AP further described him as “good friends” with the accused bagman for Saddam, South Korean Tongsun Park.
Mr. Park has also been revealed to be an associate of Canadian businessman and Kyoto architect, Maurice Strong. BNP Paribas on Oil-For-Food HotseatParibas is controlled by Canadian Power Corporation, of which Strong (and his star pupil, Paul Martin) is an alumni of sorts.
Coffin Ban Lifted
Over local radio a few minutes ago. I’ll update this post as I find links (or see them posted in the comments)…
National Post;
An advertising executive told the Gomery inquiry much of his $2.7 million in sponsorship income was based in part on false bills requested by program boss Chuck Guite. Paul Coffin’s scathing indictment of the one-time bureaucrat emerged on Wednesday as Justice John Gomery lifted a publication ban on some of Coffin’s testimony at the sponsorship hearings.
Gomery’s ruling helped shed light on a lengthy trail of falsified paperwork and inflated bills for several files, including Jean Chretien’s Clarity Act on Quebec separation.
Coffin singled out Guite and the bureaucrat’s assistant, Huguette Tremblay, in a scheme to bill taxpayers for maximum, pre-set production fees that were paid regardless of whether his firm did any work.
He said Guite asked him to bill for hours worked even though Coffin’s firm didn’t keep time sheets.
Coffin, who has been charged with 18 fraud-related counts arising from the sponsorship program, testified that Tremblay’s role was to press him to send in bills at the end of each fiscal year to meet his production budget. But he said the decision to create fake bills was his alone.
“I billed this way from Day One, unfortunately,” Coffin told inquiry counsel Marie Cossette, referring to the date of his first sponsorship contracts in 1997.
Communication Coffin earned nearly $86,500 in commissions for a Clarity Act publicity campaign even though Coffin said he did little more than transfer bills to the government from subcontractors.
He said the stream of bogus bills began to flow from the first day his firm was chosen as part of a select group of Montreal ad agencies charged with managing sponsorship files in 1997.
[..]
Coffin’s testimony is consistent with financial statements indicating sponsorship middlemen nearly always billed the maximum under the catch-all category “production costs and professional honorariums.”
Coffin and fellow ad man Jean Lafleur have both said Public Works officials approved, and even encouraged, the massive fees each agency took for managing $250 million in sponsorship deals from 1997 to 2003.
In many cases the middlemen couldn’t say what they did to earn the fees. Sometimes they billed for entertaining clients at hockey games or simply passing along paperwork and cheques. Coffin himself admitted he sometimes billed taxpayers for work done by his wife, who was not on his payroll.
Documents also show Coffin’s production fees were sometimes up to three times the value of his sponsorship contracts.
Coyne has a post revealing that“the funny business in federal advertising contracts wasn’t restricted to Quebec-based agencies, or national unity”. Nope – it was for a campaign to promote an agreement for increased spending for health care.
Half Million Visits
By the time I post this, SDA will have crossed the 500,000 visit threshold.
Thanks, everyone!
How Does Warren Know?
Warren Kinsella made quite the assertion yesterday.
“This is true. He is correct. Thank you.”
What was he confirming to be the truth?
WINDSOR, Ont. (CP) – Prime Minister Paul Martin says anyone found culpable in the sponsorship scandal should be punished severely but he doesn’t believe his predecessor, Jean Chretien, knew anything about it.
“I don’t believe that the former prime minister was knowledgeable,” Martin said Tuesday.
Paul Martin states that he doesn’t “believe” Jean Chretien “knew anything” about the corruption in the sponsorship program.
Warren Kinsella, staunch Chretien ally – the same Warren Kinsella who, as chief of staff for Public Works Minister David Dingwall, sent a memo advising the deputy minister to hire Chuck Guite – goes a significant distance further, by declaring that belief to be “correct”.
Now, think about that for a moment.
As close as he was to his former Prime Minister, Warren Kinsella has never claimed psychic abilities. Nor has was he at Chretien’s side 24 hours a day, listening in to every telephone call made and taken. No facts have been brought into evidence via Gomery or anyone else that have exonerated Jean Chretien. Quite the opposite – as the testimony continues, the scandal edges ever closer to the PMO.
At this stage of the investigation, the ability to state without qualification what Jean Chretien knew or didn’t remains the domain of a privilaged few – those who had a unique perspective on the money laundering scheme.
I’ll leave it to the reader to ponder what that perspective might be.
Martin Distances Himself From Promise To NDP
Paul Martin was on John Gormley Live this morning – briefly. He’s learned to fill airtime with drawn out repetition to put off speaking to callers or facing new questions.
Early in the interview, he acknowledged that even with the support of Jack Layton, his government’s fate rests on the independants in parliament. Gormley did pin him down on one question, though – if the NDP demands for $4.6 billion in spending on social programs and the environment were valid, why wasn’t the spending in the budget in the first place?
Martin replied that the NDP extortion was “simply an acceleration of the existing liberal government agenda” that adding it to the budget now was just “bringing it forward”…
Then – he added that the $4.6 billion “won’t be spent unless we can be assured that at least 2 billion in debt can be brought down”.
I wonder if Jack Layton knows this?