Category: Politics

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Canada’s (New) New Government

The Liberals and New Democrats signed an agreement Monday to form a coalition government, ousting Prime Minister Stephen Harper from power. If they are successful in forming their coalition, they have a pledge of support from the Bloc Québécois for the next 18 months.

A friend of mine wrote his entire contact list with this plea:

Putting Partisan politics aside for a moment. This coalition is not what we voted for 6 weeks ago. Please consider for a minute and think if you could be happy with a coalition that has to be supported by the Separatists Bloc Quebecois in order to survive. What is their price? I think that it could end up costing us our great nation. That is too high of a price. Even if you hate the Conservatives sign this petition and then go down to www.rallyforcanada.ca in your various locations on Saturday. We need to put partisan politics aside for the sake of our country. This is one of the most dangerous times since the 1995 referendum in my opinion.

A few points I’d like to make. First, when was the last time you heard the Bloc talk about separating? They are a mainstream party now, no longer focused on separating, but as being a uniquely Québécois party.

Honestly, I’m not sure a coalition government really is THAT bad. It worked here in Canada during the hard times of World War I and it will work during the hard times today.

Don’t fall for Harper’s fear mongering. The world isn’t going to end with Dion leading the way. And come May we’ll likely have Ignatieff leading the party, someone whom I’m much more comfortable with as a leader—mostly because Dion stumbles on his English, but the same can be said of Harper’s French.

I’m mad at the conservatives because they refused to tell the people their plans until a week before the election. Silly voters that don’t pay much attention to politics didn’t punish the conservatives sneaky methods instead they just voted for the status quo.

But pulling funding from the other parties is truly a sneaky, unjust, power hungry move that needs to be punished; you can bet Conservatives would be outraged if the shoe were on the other foot.

Harper’s made his bed, now he’s going to have to sleep in it. I don’t think we’re in danger at all, in fact I think Canadians should be excited at the prospect of getting leadership by a majority of MPs. They may not be from the same party, but they are MPs that a MAJORITY voted for.

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Polling the World of Warcraft

I suppose there are going to be selection bias issues when polling players in the World of Warcraft, but nevertheless, the results are interesting and as election day is upon us, let’s hope that the election polls match all of the other polls we’ve been hearing about.

Hit play or watch Election Duel! at Youtube.

Oh and if you’re an eligible voter in the US elections, and have not voted today, STOP READING THIS WEBSITE AND GO VOTE!
(via)

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Joe McCain’s 911 Call

While it shouldn’t affect anyone’s vote anyway, it must be extremely embarrassing for John McCain’s already faltering campaign.

On October 18th, at about 1:30am, John McCain’s brother was stuck in traffic. Instead of chilling out and just waiting to get through, he called 911. When told that 911 was only for emergencies, he dropped an f-bomb and hung up.

Here’s a snippet of the transcript:

Operator: Alexandria 911, state your emergency

Caller: Well, it’s not an emergency but do you know why on one side at the damn drawbridge of 95 traffic is stopped for 15 minutes and yet traffic’s coming the other way across the drawbridge?

Operator: Sir, are you calling 911 to complain about traffic? (pause)

Caller: [Expletive] you. (caller hangs up)

The operator called the caller back and received this message: “Hi this is Joe McCain I can’t take this message now because I’m involved in a very important family political project. I hope on Nov. 4th we have elected John.

Then Joe decides to call back to complain about getting told off and then gets told off AGAIN for calling 911 for non-emergencies.

Hit play or watch Joe McCain calls 911 about a traffic jam on YouTube.

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A Brighter Day

The Vote for Hope video was created at Ursa Minor Arts and Media in San Rafael, CA with chief animator James Curtis, using designs and direction from M.C. Yogi. It’s is an extremely well crafted video funded and supported by grassroots donations.

MC Yogi – Vote For Hope from MC YOGI on Vimeo.

Hit play or watch Vote for Hope on Vimeo.

About the video:

With the 2008 presidential election, Americans face a pivotal choice between not just two candidates, but two paradigms. We need someone who understands the complexity of our time. Someone who believes in investing in renewable energy, in education, in women’s rights, in civil rights, in healthcare for Americans. Someone who believes in dealing with global issues with diplomacy so we can restore our respect in the world. Barack Obama represents the change we need and can lead us into a brighter future.

Vote For Hope was written to encourage and inspire the hip hop generation and everyone to get involved, and contribute their time, energy, creativity, and other resources to be the change they want to see in the world. We have been inspired by the artistic and musical contributions that have been pouring out across the nation in support of Barack Obama’s campaign. Vote for Hope is our offering to this creative movement. It is our way of adding our small voice to the collective voice of millions of Americans calling for a change.

(via)

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The Canadian Election 2008

I went to the Environment & Education Forum at the Lethbridge College yesterday evening for the “last chance to grill [my] federal election candidates”.

I was unimpressed with the fact that only three parties showed up to debate (how does the green party expect to be taken seriously, when their candidate doesn’t show up).

The NDP’s Mark Sandilands was clearly the top candidate, with his well considered responses and comprehensive knowledge of the issues.

Incumbent candidate Rick Casson on the other hand, did not fair so well. The other candidates, specifically Mark Sandilands, poignant questions had him stumbling time after time. I can’t believe the polls indicate that Casson is going to be re-elected, his campaign basically consisted of admitting that his party has made lots of mistakes and that, “that’s something we should do better at”. It’s like he’s not even trying because he knows that running in a conservative stronghold means it doesn’t matter what he says.

The Conservative Party is destroying our environment, wants to reduce funding to the arts, gives tax cuts to the rich, and they refuse to support the Kelowna Accord which was intended to improve the lives of aboriginal people.

And they don’t want to let the Canadian people know their plans, refusing to publish their platform until a week before the election. Local candidate Rick Casson told us last night, a week is plenty of time to talk about the plan, and besides, it’s basically like our previous plan anyway. He didn’t notice any changes worth mentioning. As I mentioned, tonight was THE LAST PUBLIC FORUM WITH THEM BEFORE THE ELECTION.

Why would the people of Lethbridge vote for such a callous uncaring party?

One more thing that bothers me is their desire to introduce copyright legislation that is harmful to everyday citizens making the copyright system here more like the one in the US—even though the US law is seriously out of touch. The new law would, among other things, bring into action a fine of up to $500 for copying legally purchased CD’s onto MP3 players, not to mention it would make it illegal to try and circumvent anti-copyright software, making it illegal to engage in the practise of Fair Dealing (Fair Use in the USA).

The conservatives want to remain in Afghanistan. In 2006 they made it a campaign promise to be out by 2009—I learned last night that they’re now planning to wait until at least 2012, even though the Senlis report on Canadian development in Afghanistan has stated that we are “making no headway. On the ground in Kandahar… CIDA’s efforts are non-existent.”

I could go on!

But I won’t. I’ll just hope that when Canada goes to the polls on Tuesday that we vote for the party most likely to beat out the conservatives.

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Obama / McCain Wordle

I downloaded the transcripts of all of Obama and McCain’s speeches from their respective official websites from March 25th, 2008 to the present and then put them each into Wordle.

Obama / McCain Wordle

Wordle gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

I used 51 speeches by McCain and 61 by Obama.

McCain’s site only had transcripts from March 25th to the present and I figured that was plenty of data for my purposes.