Paul Martin Will Be in No Rush for a New Election
Assuming the numbers hold and the NDP can supply support to a marginal Liberal minority government, I ponder how desperate Martin will be to buy off more votes to gain 25+ more seats for the Liberals. Not very.
With the only realistic threat to an eventual Liberal government being the Conservatives [about 60 seats away from a majority], Martin does not need to rush into a new election.
From a progressive’s point of view, his ability to wait is a wonderful thing. The minority government itself better reflects the reality that the first-past-the-post electoral system is maimed and needing retirement. Jack Layton’s well-founded desire for a national referendum on proportional representation will add to the obviousness for Canadians that we need an electoral alternative.
Paul Martin’s email address is [still] pm@pm.gc.ca
Fair Vote Canada’s website is still http://FairVoteCanada.org
Let’s get busy!
Finis
Questions, comments, feedback, gripes, thunderous applause? Email me…use the address at the bottom of the page. Please email me at the email address below if you would like to have each new blog entry emailed to you. For free, even. Archives are below these 10 most recent posts.
Stephen Harper is Gordon Campbell in Paul Martin Clothing; Paul Martin is Gordon Campbell in Jack Layton Clothing
Joe Clark was right to describe Stephen Harper as dangerous. He’s a neocon who wishes to undermine Canadian political sovereignty for harmonization with the United States and asserting economic freedoms over political democracy, thereby turning citizens into consumers. He supports the Washington Consensus of economics over democracy, including the 4 Horsemen of Structural Adjustment: Free Trade, Privatization, Deregulation and Foreign Direct Investment. He will do to Canada what Gordon Campbell has done to BC and what Klein and Harris perpetrated on Alberta and Ontario. But he pretends to be Paul Martin-ish in his concern for communities and “Canada”.
Paul Martin is no better. As a neocon finance minister for most of the last decade he cut social services, downloaded expenses to provinces and municipalities by reducing transfer payments and dropped the Red Book commitment to address child poverty. Being a sweatshop-steamship owning millionaire globalization advocate doesn’t help his likelihood of being a true man of social and economic compassion. He dresses himself up as one concerned for social good, but his track record is more like Stephen Harper’s plan than Jack Layton’s. Likely, if it weren’t for more social and economic centrists in the Liberal caucus, Martin would have gotten away with far more neocon bullshit. An election mandate for him would be as disasterous as for Harper. And while Martin tried to scare everyone during the English debate last week that Harper wouldn’t solve hospital waiting lists, the rest of the candidates who stated that Martin himself created that problem were quite accurate.
NDP or Greens or any ideologically progressive party. They are the only sound alternative. That and pushing for proportional representation in provincial and federal legislatures in the next election are our only real hope.
Finis
Questions, comments, feedback, gripes, thunderous applause? Email me…use the address at the bottom of the page. Please email me at the email address below if you would like to have each new blog entry emailed to you. For free, even. Archives are below these 10 most recent posts.
More Beheadings
Well, I was seriously hoping to be terribly wrong about suggesting the beheadings wouldn’t stop at only one.
The PR value seems too alluring to refrain from this sustained terror campaign…because that’s what it is: terrorism. You don’t need to crash planes to terrorize a society.
Finis
Questions, comments, feedback, gripes, thunderous applause? Email me…use the address at the bottom of the page. Please email me at the email address below if you would like to have each new blog entry emailed to you. For free, even. Archives are below these 10 most recent posts.
Who ISN’T Iraq’s New Interim President?
Perhaps it’s a function of Al-Jezeera being Al-Jezeera, or perhaps it’s just a diction or a translation issue, but in today’s Al-Jezeera story about who actually is the Iraqi interim president–Sunni Muslim tribal chief Ghazi al-Yawir, it’s instructive to note two items about w.Caesar’s reputed choice–Adnan Pachachi.
The first point is the use of the word “accused”: “In a press conference, Pachachi explained that he declined the offer of the post of Iraq’s interim president after he was accused of being the candidate of the United States.” [my emphasis] It would be interesting to see if in the original press conference he actually gave off the vibe that such an accusation felt like he was charged with knocking over a 7-11. That’s how it reads in English anyway.
Pachachi continued, “It is a lie…that the Coalition Provisional Authority wanted to impose me as president.” [my emphasis again] “Impose” sure sounds heavy-handed. So maybe Pachachi was wise to avoid appearing to be w.Caesar’s lapdog in an occupied country that now actually has a slightly improved chance of being authentically self-determining now that there’s a Sunni President along with a Kurd and a Shia holding vice-president posts in the new federalism.
Another report provides some background about why Pachachi–who is 81 years old–may be avoiding the job: “Pachachi came from a family that produced several top politicians over the past 50 years but has no power base in Iraq after more than 30 years in exile in the United Arab Emirates. His ties to the Americans did not help his standing among Iraqis frustrated by and distrustful of the occupation.”
But then again, Pachachi was critical of w.Caesar’s Fallujah debacle. Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut on that one.
Not Adnan Pachachi:
Finis
Questions, comments, feedback, gripes, thunderous applause? Email me…use the address at the bottom of the page. Please email me at the email address below if you would like to have each new blog entry emailed to you. For free, even. Archives are below these 10 most recent posts.
Getting Rid of the Toxicity in the White House
In preaching to the converted, or even w.Caesar supporters, it’s always nice to have a clever piece of flash animation to reflect how toxic the White House occupant is.
Take a peek: http://flash.bushrecall.org/
Finis
Questions, comments, feedback, gripes, thunderous applause? Email me…use the address at the bottom of the page. Please email me at the email address below if you would like to have each new blog entry emailed to you. For free, even. Archives are below these 10 most recent posts.