The Blue Blogging Soapbox Blogging Tories Site of the Week for the week of September 7th is:
Christian Conservative and The Blue Zone
A two-for-one special this week! As we head into a general election today, I’d like to recognize two blogs who’ve been carrying the load in the Guelph by-election. While the rest of us have been busy with our summer vactions and all things nice weather related, these two have been hard at it. Your efforts are appreciated and have not gone unnoticed by your Blogging Tories compatriots.
Blog on!
Uncategorized
I couldn’t agree more about keeping Elizabeth May out of the leadership debate. She is the leader of a fringe party that has no chance of forming the government, or for that matter becoming the opposition. But under that criteria neither should two other people be at that debate.
Jack Layton heads a perennial 3rd, sometimes 4th place party. But even though Jack Layton thinks he’s running for Stephen Harper’s job, the amount of energy required to keep up that particular delusion would potentially bankrupt the NDP under Stéphane Dion’s green shift (yes, I just wrote that Jack Layton’s ego causes global warming). I myself have decided to “apply for Stephen Harper’s job,” but that doesn’t mean it is close to being so. Same applies to Jack Layton, he can say he’s running for PM, but cannot be reasonably said to be so. So why should he be allowed to impose his smirk in a debate between the two men who are running for the job?
Gilles Duceppe’s party, le Bloc Québécois, is in the running for exactly zero seats in English Canada, so how is it that Duceppe is in the English Language debate? I’ll leave his usefulness in the French debate to French bloggers, but he serves no useful purpose in the English debate. In fact he often plays the part of class clown in the English debate precisely because he has no possible votes to gain or lose. As such, he doesn’t belong in the debate.
The debate I want to see, the night I will consider sitting down to watch a debate is when the two men who are running for the job of PM, and only those two men, are debating each other. Harper vs. Dion mano a mano.
And that is why Elizabeth May doesn’t belong in the debate. She is just one more person who has no chance to be PM, and she would just be one more person taking screen time from the two men that we really need to hear from.
Debating with Fools, Elizabeth May
From the inbox:
September 5, 2008
Ottawa, Ontario
Public event for Prime Minister Stephen Harper for Sunday, September 7th is:
Ottawa
8:05 a.m. – Prime Minister Stephen Harper will leave 24 Sussex en route to Rideau Hall to meet with Governor General Michaëlle Jean to ask her to dissolve the 39th Parliament for an election call October 14th, 2008.
24 Sussex
Ottawa, Ontario
* Open to Media *
So unless Michaëlle Jean pulls some unexpected King-Bing-ish thing out of her chapeau, the election is on, and it is October 14th.
Election 2008
Day two using the newest web browser Google’s Chrome, and my initial response is quite positive. The interface is quite sparse (see picture below) with very little in the way of distraction, but when you want something, say a bookmark or to open a tab, it seems to be right there. It is intuitively simple with a clean presentation and it is fast. Nice browser, easily ahead of Internet Explorer (duh) and Apple Safari. It may well give Mozilla Firefox a good battle, but I have to figure out ways to personalize it a bit first.
Two downsides, it doesn’t have the spell check included that Firefox has, which I have come to rely on to spot my typos. I also can’t control opening files in third party software:
an mp3 file for instance plays in the browser instead of being able to open it in windows media player.
Overall, I like Chrome a lot. Browsers sure have come a long way since the early Netscape days. It will take a few weeks to decide whether it’s better than Firefox, but unlike Safari or any version of Explorer, I’m prepared to give it a try.
Click to Enlarge
software
The Blue Blogging Soapbox Blogging Tory Site of the Week for the week of August 30th is:
Sandy brings a thoughtful and knowledgeable presence to the net. I enjoy reading her blog and her contributions at Jack’s NewsWatch. Make sure you bookmark her other site – Harper Government Accomplishments – you’re bound to have a use for it in the near future. 
This post is reposted from Blue Blogging Soapbox
Blogging Tories Site of the Week
I’ve said it before, I’m guessing I’ll say it again, what is going on at the Toronto Sun these days? Today their lead editorial declares that Prime Minister Harper, the brilliant strategist that he is, is running to the polls right now because he fears, wait for it… The Obama Bounce. That’s right the mythical Obama Bounce theory that says Canadian’s will be so enamoured with the suave African American they will say, I must vote for Stéphane Dion:
What has Harper’s attention is the Obama factor, and the sooner-than-later date is Nov. 4, U.S. election day. A possible Obama win is the game changer.
Harper isn’t blind to polls showing Obama’s huge popularity in Canada. He sees the power of the “yes we can” and “change you can believe in” mantras for the Facebook generation. The Toronto media echo-chamber is fully engaged in the love fest. The euphoria in the usual year-long honeymoon period that would accompany Obama’s triumph is a daunting prospect.
What nobody explains, because the theory is idiocy, is why Canadian’s would see Obama and vote for the guy who most looks like John McCain. I don’t know Barack Obama, but Stéphane Dion is no Barack Obama, of that you can be sure. Does anybody seriously look at the Canadian political situation right now and think Stephen Harper is playing scared? Dion looks scared: Harper looks like the cat who has eaten the tweety bird.
Distressingly, the Sun ran this editorial a full week after former Harper strategist Tom Flanagan explained exactly
why the election has to be now:
… If the Tories can win a few more seats at the Liberals’ expense — an outcome Mr. Flanagan considers realistic given Mr. Harper’s superior campaign skills and the Tories’ fatter war chest — he predicted that would be enough to throw the Grits into a long-term tailspin that could eventually lead to their demise…
If the Liberals lose even a handful of seats, Mr. Flanagan predicted they’ll immediately dump Leader Stéphane Dion, a forecast echoed privately by plenty of Grits. The party would have to embark on a costly leadership campaign before most contenders from the last contest, including Mr. Dion, have paid off their leadership debts.
Moreover, a reduction in popular vote would mean the already cash-strapped Liberal party would get less money in election expenses rebates and in its annual public subsidy. Mr. Flanagan said that could make it difficult for the Liberals to pay off any debts from the coming election campaign and harder to secure bank loans for a future campaign…
It’s like this. In October, the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and Bloc get their government cheque based on how many votes they got last election. The Liberals are not getting much fund raising money, as much because any find raising is paying off leadership debts rather than going into the party coffers. If Prime Minister Harper can get the election before they get their cheque, he has a much better chance of making electoral gains at their expense, which would force the Liberals to lose Dion, have a leadership convention, raise a whole new issue of debt, all with less government money.
Obama bounce, sheeesh! What anybody following Canadian politics needs to know is, Stephen Harper plays a much longer game than that. I just hope somebody tells him to watch out for Grannies carrying umbrellas.
I've Seen Barack Obama and Stéphane Dion is no Barack Obama
It’s hard to let the weekend pass without mentioning Sarah Palin, so even though I don’t do US politics very often, I’ll post a few links on the subject.
Everybody seems to be quoting Mark Stein’s The Hostess with the Moosest, especially these two sentences:
What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I’m not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities.
It’s a good quote, but I like the … that goes with it:
Next to her resume, a guy who’s done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of “community organizer” and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy.
Oh, and I too like the naughty librarian vibe.
Besides Stein, I have mentioned before I like the McCain Blogette‘s, a mostly photo blog run by John McCain’s daughter Meghan, with two other young ladies on the Campaign trail with photographer Heather Brand and videographer Shannon Bae.
It’s an interesting behind the scenes site and I wish the Obama, Harper and Dion campaign had one (or perhaps they do – anyone?). The only downside is some of the pictures are awfully dark, which they shouldn’t be when they are taken by a professional photographer.
Presently they have some good shots of the Palin’s, (the pictures included here are from the blogette including the one to the right, called Doing hair with Piper and Willow Palin.), particularly the girls whom the blogette’s seem to have taken to, and vice versa.
US Politics
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