ChuckerCanuck 2.0

Here's Glles Duceppe explaining why his party lost a seat on Monday:

"'What is clear is that the party has been paying the price for its MPs quitting in mid-mandate because voters do not appreciate it, he added. 'I think all politicians should think over the idea that, once they win a mandate, they should complete it..."

Nothing to see here, folks. It is just an aberration based on some cranky voters casting a protest vote against the personal ambitions of a single MP. Certainly, it has nothing to do with the Conservatives. As Duceppe later asks:

"If the Conservatives are such a hot commodity, why did they score a mere 10 per cent in the other Quebec riding that voted Monday, Hochelaga?"

Let me try to answer that one: there are not two more dissimilar ridings in all of Quebec. The priorities and interests of the citizens of these two ridings are different. If the values and priorities of these two ridings were remotely similar, then you' expect the protest on the lower St-Lawrence to have yielded a Dipper win, not a Tory win. Afterall, no two parties are more ideologically similar than the Dippers and the Bloc Quebecois.

The real aberration, Gilles, was the 2008 election. It was four parties against one. It was Tory messaging on crime and arts. It was Jean Charest saying just enough to make Quebeckers feel that all Quebeckers didn't like Tory culture policies.

Things change however. It can't be four against one the next time or the Bloc will have its left flank exposed to Dipper advances. Jean Charest won't be dissing culture policies, he'll be lauding stimulus spending. Crime has turned to a Tory advantage since the Bloc foolishly sided with pedophiles on minimum sentences.

And, as for the arts, Stephen Harper has created an entirely new dynamic by performing alongside Yo-Yo Ma in Ottawa. We might not be the bestest at creating a myriad of junk programs that pays people to pile rocks on museum floors, but we know the importance of the individual citizen as creator and consumer of art. Everybody should be able to play a Beatles tune on the piano. Not just the precious pet of the Hochelaga set.

Labels: 30 seats in Queebec for the Tories is the goal

Oh yeah, by-elections don't matter. They are just little aberrations that can't be stretched to tell a bigger story. Except.... except....

Well, except that one thing comes out of last night's by-elections: Liberals don't matter. My friends across La Belle Province should take note of this. Except for a clutch of ridings in Toronto and Montreal with a small rump out east, Liberals do not figure in the national political debate. They could cycle through a hundred more academics and the exercise would be academic - the results won't change.

Remember, my dear friends in Quebec, not only are they insignificant in most regions of the country, they are not particularly reliable when it comes to national unity. Sure, Chretien was. Trudeau was. Laurier and St-Laurent. But the day the entire caucus signed over veto power to the separatist Bloc Quebecois in exchange for cabinet seats, they handed over their Captain Canada power rings.

By-elections don't matter. Except that the only party to pick up a seat yesterday was Stephen Harper's Tories. They gained that seat here in Quebec, the land lost to Tories forever. A while back, I suggested, to quite a bit of derision, that Tories can scoop up 30 seats in the next election here in Quebec. Last night should have convinced my right-wing friends that it is worth the effort. Especially when you consider that none of the classic "pandering" (to use the Westerner expression) was required to secure the seat. Get the right candidate and show off the record.

And if Tories don't smell the opportunity, rest assured that last night's second biggest loser, Gilles Duceppe, did. Oh sure, he'll spend himself a few days cursing the people of the lower St-Lawrence, calling them bad Quebeckers for not supporting him. But once he puts on a Zamphyr CD and pours himself a glass of 2004 Chateau Collectiviste, he'll adjust. Let's make sure it is too late.

Labels: At 5 am I scraped ice off my car at 6 pm I stood under palm trees

Gosh darn it. Team Blue is going to end the night either with good news or great news. At least one seat - a thorough trouncing and a really good showing in the seat in the lower St-Lawrence. Winning two seats would be tremendous but already, Tories should feel good.

Especially set against Team Red. They will end the night in third place everywhere and pretty damned close to forth place at that. I know they would like to brush the results off but this is going to stick like skunk spray. Nowhere are they relevant to the contest except as an oddity or spoiler. A few well placed high speed trains are not going to wipe that fact out.

That's Iggy messing with the Prime Minister until Iggy is done.

Labels: See you later in the day tomorrow

Like Nic Nanos, I strongly urge Michael Ignatieff to re-invent himself as something attractive to Dippers. The only hope the Liberals have of surviving the next election cycle is to steal NDP support away from them. In order to help Mr. Ignatieff with this extreme makeover, I have ten surefire ways to leftify himself.

10. Wear Hemp. Nothing gets lefties more excited than a wardrobe made of a durable, all natural fibre - nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

9. Buy a Bus that Runs on used deep-fryer oil. Paint it Liberal Red with a big white L emblazoned on the sides. Everyone will cheer your environmentalism.

8. Dreadlock the eyebrows. Like Chuckercanuck, Iggy's eyebrows grow about half an inch a day. Tired of trimming? Do what Bob Marley only dreamed of doing.

7. At the Calgary Stampede, don't have a pancake breakfast, have a falafel lunch. Those deep-fried chickpea fritters get all the neighbourhood commies a-twitter.

6. Make Hedy Fry your deputy leader.

5. Pick on Israel. It did you some good in 2006 when you told Quebec that Israel had committed war crimes. Wrap yourself in a kefifa and go march in a Hizbullah rally with Denis Corderre.

4. Make up with Ian Davey. Then marry him. Some politicians pay lip service to same-sex marriage. But you could ignite the country's imagination by being the first same-sex married national power couple.

3. Buy a GWB doll on ebay. Stomp on it at every public appearance.

2. Invite Jimmy Hoffa Junior to your coming Thinker's Conference. Off a keynote address slot to Hugo Chavez.

1. Bash free markets. Liberals know that markets are only as good as the government's that regulate them. You've started on this path already but got distracted by the many different ways Tories are killing people (EI, H1N1). If you want Canadians to be excited by your leadership, promise to lead them out of the economic freedom that has so crippled us this past year.

Do this and the keys to 24 sussex are yours.

Labels: Helping Iggy Out

Four by-elections tomorrow. Two in Quebec, one in Nova Scotia and one in British Columbia. Two parties are in the top two contnders in three ridings each. One party is competitive in two ridings. Another party is competitive in none.

It is pretty reasonable, based on the above, to assume:

Since the Bloc is a regional player and focuses message and resources solely on that region, therefore it is the party competitive in two Quebec seats. So, while more popular in total, the thinness of the vote means the NDP are competitive in none. Meanwhile, the two national parties, the Tories and Liberals, are the parties competitive in three ridings each.

Except it is the Dippers competitive in three ridings and the Liberals are competitive in none.

In the midst of the worst economic conditions in decades, active combat and military cuasualties in Afghanistan, a planet-exploding climate problem and a shrinking part of the mystic Chinese market, the only credible alternative to the Tory government is not competitive in any of the four diverse ridings across the country. A coincidence that can be remedied by letting Canadians get to know the real Michael Ignatieff. Then they'll realize its time to throw the bums out.

Labels: If I were a Liberal I'd expect MORE

Iggy's penchant for ruthlessness continues as he sheds the barnicles clinging to leadership office. Curious about how this news would be received, I asked a few random people on the street for their input:


"I am stunned that it took Iggy this long to figure out how inept these guys were." -- Guy Giorno

"Why did he pick these guys in the first place? His instincts are just terrible. Maybe it is because he's never managed anything in his life." -- Sandra Buckler

"Phew. At least I'm still around. It pays not to get paid." -- Warren Kinsella

"And guess who's next?" -- Bob Rae


(I know, I know. What a crazy street to be walking down and find such a collection of random Canadians to accost. I guess that weekend seminar I attended called 'Journalism 101', hosted by the CBC, really paid off.)

Labels: Peter Donolo will turn things around

Unsurprisingly, the yanks are trying to figure what motivated the massacre at Ft. Hood, Texas.

So, I thought I'd give you my prejudice.

Some people are crazy. They are psychotics with mis-wired brains that make their propensity for violence very dangerous. Rare as they may be, we have all met them once or twice in life. We might have joked nervously that so-and-so is the kind of guy who walks into the office with a gun and starts shooting everybody. We know who they are.

I get that he was muslim and didn't like the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. I get that he wanted out of the military.

But folks, lots of people find themselves in that situation and don't decide to slaughter a baker's dozen of innocent people. Sometimes, they just suck it up and survive. Sometimes, they kill themselves. Never have they started mass murdering.

In other words: the guy is crazy evil. Would be if he converted to Christianity or Climate-changism or hated women or sex or his job on the assembly line.

I guess I say all this because some folks will distract us by talking up a tangent (religion) which avoids the more serious talk we need to have in our society: there ain't no cure for crazy and we ain't got no good ways to protect ourselves from crazies. We just sit around, joking nervously behind their backs and wait for them to blow.

Labels: Apologies to James Brown for appropriating his great line

Everybody loves a good commie-on-commie fight. And the by-election in Hochelaga is exactly that: Dipper versus Bloc Quebecois. (The third communist party, the Liberals, are relevant only insofar as they syphon votes away from the Dippers.)

Needless to say, Chuckercanuck endorse the NDP for noble and ignoble reasons.

The noble reason is simple: I prefer federalists to separatists 10 times out of 10. It is why, despite my frequent mocking of the Liberal Peter Pan, I still endorsed Justin Trudeau last time out.

The ignoble reason is pretty easy too: the more competitive the NDP are on the island of Montreal, the less competitive everybody else is. If the NDP competes with the Bloc for the deep-urban, recklessly irresponsible vote in the commie parts of the city while at the same time Tories are providing heat to the Bloc Quebecois in the small-town sensible parts of the province, then the Bloc's biggest weakness gets highlighted for all to see.

There are left wing separatists and right wing separatists. Those two camps co-exist uneasily in the Bloc Quebecois. It creates lots of problems for them. F'rinstance, the Bloc was big earlier this year in defending pedophiles from minimum sentences. That plays well in downtown Montreal where we would jail victims and free convicts. But outside downtown Montreal, the Bloc was totally off-side majority opinion.

Provincially, the cleavage between left wing separatist and right wing separatists took root when downtown Montreal put a commie-lunatic from Quebec Solidaire into the provincial legislature. The PQ was rejected by the dread-locked, shower on thursdays set. The BQ could face the same rejection unless it focuses heavily on winning that demographic from the NDP. The more focus there, the more annoyed right wing separatists in small-town Quebec become. If that dynamic can be created in the next election, neither Jack nor Gilles end up the big winners.

Labels: Tories win 30 seats in Quebec in the next election

Peter Donolo has been running the show for a week now and the Liberals continue their unrelenting goofballery. Today's installment: Warren Kinsella pulls a Cherniak that would make even Cherniak blush.

Again with this silly concept of pairing. But here's what's interesting (and obvious): Warren and Peter had 8 Liberal MPs they could have paired with the Bloc MPs bubble boy. It would have been a snap to save lives, which is all Peter and Warren care to do, to save bubble boy from having to leave his bar stool and go vote.

Call it a missed opportunity. Imagine instead of the ridiculous hyperbole in which Warren and Peter have invested so heavily, they had managed a pairing. What a coup! They could make their point gracefully without resorting to undue panic-mongering. It wouldn't have been so much about health and safety, rather it would be about parlimentary collegiality. Instead, we get a dose of panic-mongering that underlines how rusty Warren and Peter really are.

Labels: Now back to the critical issue of bestiality

Unless sumpin' big comes along, let's take a break from politics, shall we? I don't really want to slog through tedious Olympic politics or whatever today's outrage happens to be.

Instead, I would like to talk about bestiality. Specifically, giving a man a three year sentence for making love to a horse. Since the article comes from the august New York Times, I am still being way classy for putting the issue before us.

I realize that I am likely to raise the hackles of my right-wing brethren AND upset the busybodies at PETA but maybe it is time to decriminalize bestiality. Not because it is an acceptable social practice; in the age of swine flu, none of us would encourage a heavy swapping of bodily fluids between species. But what exactly is the crime here?

Answer 1. It is a gross perversion and we should outlaw perversions. Ah, but one man's perversions is another man's pleasures. Personally, I have heard of many practices that I would consider perverse, the Dirty Sanchez comes to mind, but rumors are that some folks in my suburban corner would vociferously oppose my attempts to ban the practice. (Incidentally, the rumors are about Liberal voters, of course.)

Answer 2. The horse got raped, so it is rape. This might be Brigit Bardot's line of argument but that puts, pun intended, the horse before the court. Can we say the horse expressed consent to the inter-special coitus? One imagines that the horse didn't enjoy the affair: Sugar would be accustomed to the offerings of a male horse which are vastly more substantial than what the "rapist" could deliver. Did Sugar even notice? If Sugar was not receptive to the amorous advances of this chap, why didn't she just buck and kick a hole in his guts? Without a clear sign of dissent, any good defense lawyer could raise reasonable doubt that the acts amounted to rape.

Answer 3. It is a violation of someone else's property. Sugar belongs to someone. And here, to my mind, is where the law has teeth. It seems to me that the appropriate course would be damages plus psychological therapy / chemical treatment. But this guy is a repeat offender. He and Sugar have carried on in a carnal way on multiple occasions. So he is obviously not able to overcome his burning desire for the backside of a mare.

So maybe jail time is the only thing that'll set him straight; or at least, he'll get a sense of what it feels like to be Sugar.

Labels: Is bestiality a serious crime?