Canadian Federal Election 2015

[Whiskey16]

I'm not interested in hearing what some guy on the internet says is the truth.

You run from discussion and resort to name calling and dismissal of discussion when ineptly frustrated. Cbrunny is moticated to abuse this forum as his personal bubble, and shield himself from relevant discussion.

I'm interested in having a conversation about what the issue actually is. There's a differencebetween preaching - as you are doing - and discussing to reach a consensus, or not reach a consensus.

Me preaching? No, I am discussing, recognizing, directly quoting, and responding with topical substance. Cbrunny, alone is guilty of "preaching" and stumping this thread by choosing a position to post without visible challenge in his blacklisting and filtering out the majority of advancing posts in this thread. In his enforced echo chamber, cbrunning has shat on his own thread.

You've pigeonholed anyone who disagrees with you, has a different perspective than you, or even PRIORITIZES issues differently than you do, as a damn fool. Think about that. Really. Think about it.

With substance, my positions are proving to be correct. Cbrunny can't handle a discussion where fault is found in arguments. Cbrunny is flat outwrong in his denial of this court case not having a bearing on this election "without criminal conviction upon Duffy".... He is in error to use the CPC line that this trial is effectively about Duffy rather than the greater concerns of trust in Harper and his great leader personality cult upon the yes men Conservative Party of Canada.

Cbrunny is in gross error to place me on an ignore list when he could not handle an analysis that small 'c' Conservatives are reacting in concern to the contradictions and lack of integrity by Harper and the PMO... I wrote:

This is an election where change in national support by a single percentage point can determine the next government. A portion of CPC supporters are on record for questioning Harper and of likely forgoing a vote for the CPC. Issues such as this have and can cost elections for the incumbent.

I already referred to small 'c' Conservatives, yet for whatever partisan stance you [cbrunny] have, you've dismissed a decent portion of the moderate Canadian electorate as inconsequential.

That concurs with polls and press analyses out today :

Poll Tracker: Conservative swing voters could drift because of Duffy trial

What is more ominous for the Tories is that a significant proportion of soft Conservative supporters — people who are currently considering voting for the party but have not yet committed — are looking at Harper's involvement in this affair with doubt.

According to Abacus Data, a quarter of soft Conservative supporters think Harper acted improperly, and one-fifth say the trial has made them less inclined to vote for the party. About one-quarter of these swing voters told Angus Reid they did not believe Harper's story (another 42 per cent said they did not know if they believed Harper or not), and just under one-third said it had worsened their opinion of him. In a tight three-way race, that represents a lot of votes the Conservatives can ill afford to lose.

The Conservatives' line on the scandal, that it is limited to Nigel Wright and Mike Duffy, does not carry water with most Canadians. Sixty-one per cent believe it points to a deeper scandal within the Prime Minister's Office, according to Angus Reid. Significantly for the Tories, 23 per cent of soft Conservative supporters believe the same thing.

cbrunny grossly errors in dismissing other members posts in his own thread upon the federal election, and he is in gross irrationality to discount analyses that are proving out to be accurate and correct.

 

[Whiskey16]

Oh wait, more support for my presented analyses and discredit to cbrunny's claim of the Duffy trial only about duffy and, without conviction, relatively inconsequential to rhe campaign. OOPS... Now to today's lead editorial from the conservative National Post:

John Ivison: Mike Duffy case matters to the Conservatives, like it or not

Conservatives claim that the Duffy trial is a spent force – that there’s nothing new to see and people have already made up their minds. “Nigel Wright’s testimony was a yawner,” said one MP.

It’s not as if it’s even a real scandal, Conservatives claim – certainly nothing on the scale of globs of taxpayers’ money being handed over in brown envelopes in darkened Italian restaurants, as happened in the sponsorship scandal. In short, no-one cares.

But, in light of Benjamin Perrin’s testimony this week, that’s not an explanation that carries any conviction.

..

Conservatives joke that Novak slept at the end of Harper’s bed, he was so close to the party leader. Campaign spokesman Kory Teneycke, in denying either man was aware of Wright’s role, said it would be “unfathomable” that Novak knew and didn’t tell Harper.

But it sounds very much like he did know — and polls suggest most voters don’t believe Harper’s claim that it was all news to him.

But again, does it matter? In a tight race, the answer must be yes. An Abacus Data poll suggests one in five voters is following the Duffy trial closely. Most of those people believe Harper behaved improperly, with one in four saying it will make a difference to the way they vote. It may not be everyone but it’s not “no-one”.

The details have become tangled for many people but it reminds them what they don’t like about this prime minister and this government – the obsessive message control, in which truth is often the first casualty; the terrible appointments, routinely made for political advantage; the constant subversion of national interest to partisan interest.

The Perrin testimony made clear that the solution to the problem that was Mike Duffy was not the product of a rogue operator. Rather, it evolved in an office where too many people have grown too comfortable with power and become used to harnessing it for unscrupulous ends. Nothing surprises anymore – if there was a significant cannibal vote in the country, the suspicion is the Conservatives would be supplying them with a tax break on missionaries.

This was a government elected on accountability but the buck does not appear to stop on the prime minister’s desk. He stands behind his podium, with its Strong Leadership banner, and gives a metaphoric shrug when asked what was happening in his own office.

..

Both anecdotal and polling evidence suggests there are growing numbers of small “c” conservatives who are considering voting for one of the opposition parties, or who may not bother voting at all. These are not the “political classes” — public servants, teachers, academics, journalists — so reviled (and ignored) by the Harper Conservatives. These are the people who delivered him his majority.

The trial certainly isn't so much about Duffy, but of lifting the curtain behind the discredited PMO anf of how Harper is so hell bent on power and control that corruption and lies are applied to maintain a false message.

Voters who can now see the manipulating truth can and are ready to not again throw a vote to Harper's Conservative Party of Canada.

 

[cbrunny]

Because I've ignored whiskey I can only assume whiskey has yet again grossly misinterpreted my comments. Pretty sure that I've been clear about my position on this election generally and I assume Duffy specifically.

Curious about what is to come from Duffy trial though.

 

[Whiskey16]

But even so, this is Duffy's trial, not Harper's. Gonna have to charge him with something if you want true proof that Harper lied.

Nope. Absolutely incorrect. This trial has long turned into a damning indictment of Harper and the PMO's credibility.

The criminally charging Harper isn't necessary as the misleading and non-creditable testimony is already damning his party's re-election charges, nor is it necessary to avoid the very true diminishment of votes from small 'c' conservatives:

You either trust Harper or you don't. And most people have already made up their minds on that one. So if you don't trust Harper, this is already a non-issue.
..
But that's still only the case if trust in leadership is salient to the individual voter, and for many it's not, regardless of if you want it to be.

Hone up to your words, cbrunny. I directly quote and respond to your statements. You, lie, spin, and in frustration, openly flaunt your choice to ignore relevant discussion.

Here's more reaffirmation for what I presented last week:

Andrew Coyne: If the Duffy affair was no big deal, why all the effort to hide it?

So here’s the latest from the Mike Duffy trial. Chris Woodcock, the prime minister’s director of issues management at the time — the guy responsible for putting out fires, whose job is to be on top of everything — testified he did not know about Nigel Wright’s $90,000 under-the-table payment to the senator until it was reported in the media in May of 2013.

This, despite being informed of it in an email by Wright in March — the one whose last line reads: “For you only: I am personally covering Duffy’s $90K.” His explanation, under oath: he didn’t read that far. The email, after all, is 82 words long. Who has time to read these days?

If this explanation sounds familiar, it is the same offered for Ray Novak, then the prime minister’s principal secretary, likewise wholly in the dark about what the prime minister’s chief of staff was up to, notwithstanding the latter’s repeated efforts to tell him: the unread email in this case (“I will send my cheque on Monday”) ran to all of 12 words.

..

News, in Lord Northcliffe’s famous formulation, is “what someone wants suppressed.” When people are going to great lengths to conceal something, chances are they have a good reason. The Duffy conspirators plainly thought so, and they were right.

First, there is the matter of the payment itself. The secrecy of it is indeed a large part of what makes it such a big deal. It was one of the conditions attached to the payment — at Wright’s explicit insistence — of the kind that mark the difference between a possible bribe and a gift; moreover the failure to disclose it is itself one of the things the law forbids.

It is important to bear in mind: Wright’s bank draft was not made out to the Receiver General, but to Duffy’s law firm. It may have ultimately gone to repay his expenses, but its first purpose was to relieve him of the obligation. Whether that was illegal or not is for a court to decide, but it clearly sailed very close to the line: if not under the Criminal Code, then under Sect. 16 of the Parliament of Canada Act (“no member of the Senate shall receive or agree to receive any compensation … in relation to any bill, proceeding, contract, claim, controversy, charge, accusation, arrest or other matter before the Senate…”) Put simply, you can’t make clandestine payments to sitting legislators, no matter what your reason.

..

So it mattered then because it was secret. And it matters now because it is no longer secret: because of all that it has revealed about the culture inside the Prime Minister’s Office. It is noteworthy that, almost without exception, no one at any point raises any objection to what is going on: not the public deception, not the attempts to tamper with the audit, not the whitewashing of the committee report. The lies are so habitual, so instinctive, so much a part of the normal run of things that no one seems to think them even unusual, let alone unacceptable. It matters, in the end, because the things that should have mattered to them, like honesty and integrity, didn’t.

Is it such a big deal? Don’t ask me. Ask Novak. Ask Woodcock. Like the dog that didn’t bark in the Sherlock Holmes story, the email that wasn’t read tells you more than any other clue.

 

[Grooveriding]

The thought of an NDP government is scaring the hell out of a lot of farmers here in southern Ontario.

Normally I wouldn't vote NPD, never Conservative, but the support for C51 from the Conservatives and Liberals has sealed the deal of neither getting my vote.

NDP promised to abolish it if elected, that is enough to get my vote this go around.

 

[KMFJD]

Normally I wouldn't vote NPD, never Conservative, but the support for C51 from the Conservatives and Liberals has sealed the deal of neither getting my vote.

NDP promised to abolish it if elected, that is enough to get my vote this go around.

I'm waiting for more information from both ndp and the libs about their economic plans, C51 lost the liberals a lot of votes that went to the ndp.

 

[cbrunny]

I agree. I want more info from the NDP. Now that Duffy is on hiatus until November, I'm hoping that we'll get more info from them.

 

[rommelrommel]

As much as I cannot vote for either, at least the NDP is relevant. The Liberals are just a bad joke coasting on warm and fuzzy feelings about being "the natural ruling party of Canada."

If the NDP would come out and support the hunting/sport shooting community they could help their rural popularity immensely.

 

[cbrunny]

http://www.lispop.ca/seat-projection/federal

NDP minority at the moment, with CPC as Opposition.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

The NDP also promised electoral reform (no more "first past the post" BS) and that they won't introduce any more omnibus bills.

That, along with their opposition to Bill C-51, is enough for me. Orange it is.

 

[desy]

I don't care that Duff gamed the system, pocket lining has been going on since confederation. I think its great there finally is enough transparency that these things bubble to the surface and are seen and stick as news.
I find it improbable that Harper didn't know what was going on, he had to give a sly nod to something but I'm not surprised it will never be admitted.
I will be voting differently this election from the last two.

 

[3chordcharlie]

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/edit...ng-debates-and-meet-with-media-editorial.html

I'm going to file this under "You have to be kidding me". Unreal that this party will still receive votes, and could conceivably win.

 

[Victorian Gray]

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/edit...ng-debates-and-meet-with-media-editorial.html

I'm going to file this under "You have to be kidding me". Unreal that this party will still receive votes, and could conceivably win.

No surprise, they did the same thing during the last election.

 

[cbrunny]

Yeah that's the one thing that makes me crazy about the CPC. Generally speaking, broad strokes, I tend to agree with their policy. But their behaviour is just unacceptable.

 

[cbrunny]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei50lM6ab1c

This is how Canadians protest.

 

[Victorian Gray]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei50lM6ab1c

This is how Canadians protest.

Damned radicals! :biggrin:

 

[desy]

pfft a Star editorial complaining about lack of access to conservative MPs
Duh, they have a track record you can vote against that, its smart to leave it to the opposition to try and sell their way into office and not shoot yourself in the foot with a misplaced comment, Dion, Ignatieff etc all went down with poorly timed or phrased commentary or defending some dumb backbencher instead of pressure on Harper.
Loose lips sink ships

 

[Victorian Gray]

Federal scientist put on leave over Harperman protest song

"A scientist with Environment Canada has been put on administrative leave with pay pending an investigation for creating a politically charged protest song about ousting Conservative Leader Stephen Harper.

Tony Turner, a physical scientist at Environment Canada and longtime singer-songwriter in Ottawa's folk music scene, wrote the controversial tune Harperman. Turner was sent home in mid-August, according to his union, over concerns that his song breached Environment Canada's value and ethics code."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/harperman-tony-turner-scientist-investigation-1.3207390

 

[Victorian Gray]

pfft a Star editorial complaining about lack of access to conservative MPs
Duh, they have a track record you can vote against that, its smart to leave it to the opposition to try and sell their way into office and not shoot yourself in the foot with a misplaced comment, Dion, Ignatieff etc all went down with poorly timed or phrased commentary or defending some dumb backbencher instead of pressure on Harper.
Loose lips sink ships

As far as I'm concerned, if you are running for public office then you damn well better be available for public debate/questioning. You have to be prepared to both defend your record and tell folks where you intend to go with future policies. If you're not prepared/willing to do that, you're not worth voting for.

 

[desy]

Then the media writes articles about how they are closed loop, unavailable, and not to be trusted.
The media is the real opposition IMO to both sides of the house as politicians collude frequently to present an image of Canada that differs from grassroot Canadians.
However even the media gets sucked into the bubble that pervades Ottawa

 

[Whiskey16]

Upon this Federal election's vote compass:



Rather consistently by polling, only roughly 23-31% of federal constituents fall in the bottom right quadrant with the Conservatives. Certainly demonstrating what an outlier Harper's Conservative Party of Canada is within the political landscape and for why election reform (preferential rather than proportional is my choice) is democratically necessary to present the formation of a government that is more representational for the majority of Canadians.

Remove Harper government and the betterment of Canadian democracy is possible through election reform. Retain the CPC in power, and the status quo of first-past-the-post system remains, keeping in an outdated, representational, two party intended system that can favour a fringe party such the Conservative Party of Canada in power.

 

[mammador]

whoever preserves your strong economy/good living standards.

 

[cbrunny]

It's funny that Americans think a bad economy ends at the border.

 

[Whiskey16]

whoever preserves your strong economy. .

???

Get up with the times. Results this week can officiate the Conservative Party of Canada's governance over a second recession.

 

[mammador]

It's funny that Americans think a bad economy ends at the border.

i'm not an american, dope..