Churn

Stephan Dion has announced his resignation, and it appears the Liberals will have a replacement for him by mid-week. Again, it appears that they are taking the wrong path to do it though. I'm amazed at the crappy decision making they are using to get through this. There must be some real boneheads involved in running that party. It's like a cat in a harness running along a path and you've got to yank them back onto the path.

I was thinking they were reading my blog, or listening to my coffee-shop discussions for a while, as they seem to be dealing with my problems as I bring them up. Getting rid of Dion and making a move toward a quick replacement process is good. But of course, they're picking the wrong process, which leaves them open to criticism of putting a leader, and potentially a PM into place based on the choices of some inner circle of proven-inept organizers.

Bob Rae has been pointing out that it should be a broader voting of all Liberal members - that's the guy who's thinking. I think that Ignatief would still win the vote in that situation, but they really need to understand that the process should be broad and quick. This isn't 1982 - they can easily do a phone/internet thing pretty easily. I could write a javascript form for them with some basic security in about two hours. Why can't they figure this out.

The Bloc and NDP are pretty quiet. Now the talk about the Conservatives is that they messed up by proroguing. If they had kept parliament in session, they may well have won the non-conf vote and still be around. Instead they have focussed the Liberals on their weakness (their leadership) and may still yet get their house in order.

The saga continues. We'll see if they can change their mind a few more times and get this thing settled so that we can get a bit of stability into Canadian Politics.

Change of plan

Well things are changing fast. Blogging from my ipod is not optimal but seems to kind of work. Watching the news, it appears that Dion will shortly step aside and iggy will take over. I think the latter is a mistake though. The use of some open process would be more sensible and inclusive. I keep spouting that they can both fix this mess and appear hep and hapnin' by orchestrating it all thru YouTube.
Probably lots more to come tomorrow.

Thanks for the Mess Steve

I'm quite saddened by this whole thing. Watching the goings-on in Thailand, Zimbabwe and various banana-republics, I fear that the Harper cronies will try to throw us into that mix.

I have no political party affiliation or loyalty - but I do recognize dangerous behaviour when I see it. I see blatant lying and more worrisome propagandist messaging coming from the government. Watch for jingoistic language straight out of the Republican play-book. This plus the advertising campaign they are setting off borders on incitement to violence. Have they no respect for our system, our way of government?

Here are my issues:

• Use of the word 'Canadians' - they've positioned this to be the right-wing conservative sympathizers. It becomes almost threatening to people who don't share their point of view.
• Use of phrases of 'the other' that stereotype and marginalize people based on their thoughts and beliefs: "socialists" "separatists."
• The use of 'the big lie' - their communications take the position of thinking up a hollywood-esque melodromatic scene, and they they happily invent facts to fill in the picture, then repeat it ad nauseum, blatantly ignoring reality, happy to paint their picture around lies. "They wouldn't even include the Canadian Flag in the pictures when they signed their agreement" - Well, first, their was a flag there - and second, what the HELL has that got to do with anything. This smacks of the Republican 'he didn't wear a flag pin' attack upon Obama in the US. I swear they have a US handler brought in on these PR things, who just recycles all their dirty politics.
• The big PR campaign that is just getting into gear now. As I type there are people in sound booths and edit suites piecing together propaganda pieces that are all sad eyed kids and sneering opposition members.
  
• These are tough times and the gov't made all sorts of orchestrated speeches about cooperative government, but instead they came along with a weak financial statement during a Worldwide Recession and Economic Crisis, and instigated confusion at a time when we need stability and leadership.
• The fervour being whipped up in Alberta serves nobody and hurts our country more than does the 'separatists' vowing to not defeat the coalition. Inclusion in the political process helps pull bloc supporters over to the side of constructive collaboration and positivity, and away from negativity, isolation and hatred. Which way are Albertans being pushed?
• Crazy phraseology about 'democracy' and 'the constitution'. The opposition members represent over 60% of the population, and the parliamentary system around the world sees constant use of coalitions to bring about progress in government. These lies are all attempting to confuse Canadians who are already too influenced by American TV, and in fact are banking on the assumption that they are. This isn't a US presidential system - nobody votes for a PM, we put in parties, and the proposed coalition has support of the vast majority of Canadian voters.
• If anything was anti-democratic it was the move by the gov't to cripple any opposition by removing their funding and trying to push them back into begging for handouts from developers, special interests, lobbyists and cronies.
  

It's saddening to see such desperation and confusion in government at a time when our economy is suffering so much. Imagine how different things would have been had the financial statement followed the direction of the throne speech, and broadly sought support for financial stimulus, and infrastructure support. Hell, most of that needn't even be brought about for many, many months. In fact, most infrastructure work has lead times measured in years. But the announcement and a few paltry millions scattered about to start drawing up the plans would have set our stock-market going the exact opposite way.

Now, I'll also wrap up by saying I wish that Stephan Dion had stepped down and that we had an interim Liberal leader, or jeeze even Jack Layton taking the lead on this. But in spite of my distaste for Dion as an attempted leader, I'm prepared to accept the parliamentary tradition of the current leader taking the reins and take him at his word that he's step down in May when Ignatief takes over. (don't get me started on him).

Pass the Sour Cream

So if Harper Prorogues parliament, does that make him the proroguer and the rest of the MP's prorogies?

Things continue to develop quickly, and its looking that they are ignoring my Layton hand-off to new-Liberal-guy idea, and going with Dion as the new PM. It's also looking like the conservatives are going to prorogue, which is frighteningly like a step toward a dictatorship. Shut down parliament so nobody can dissent and do what you want. I don't know if the PM has to ask the GG to prorogue parliament - I would have thought so. I can't imagine that our GG (really her room full of handlers - she's just a figure-head afterall) has any option, but if she did she'd say that the business of the house has not been completed, and proroguing is inappropriate. Come back with the confidence of the house and we can talk.

It's a surprising turn of events, and hopefully we can see a new government take over who can put a solid plan forward to quiet the markets and add some sense of astute, economic policy in place.

A good question that nobody has asked is will Dion put the Green Shift into play? The NDP would likely support it. It would also be astute to roll back the GST at least one percent to where it was before. Low impact on consumers and good impact on the budget. Hell, they could fund the whole stimulus package on the back of the billions it brings in.