Top 2 Stories on CBC.ca

"Liberals, NDP, Bloc sign deal on proposed coalition."

"TSX point drop biggest ever."

I'm just saying.

And you all thought I was a Conservative partisan hack before. HA.

Ignatieff & Rae Both Signed Off On This Deal

Just wanted to make sure that's crystal clear. They support this deal with the NDP and the deal with the Bloc.

If this goes through, just wait for how bad this extremely mild recession (in Canada anyways) will get once we have Dion and Layton trying to spend their way out of it. This is a disaster waiting to happen, not to mention an affront to modern democracy.

Stephane Dion - Canada's Next PM?

And they take another step.

Again - perfectly constitutional. Ridiculous and unbelievable? Yes.

Stephane Dion was OVERWHELMINGLY rejected as the Prime Minister, just 6 short weeks ago. Now, the Liberals and NDP are going to try to appoint him in that role.

Of course, he's got the Unelected and Rejected group to advise and lead him, so at least there's that.

Unbelievable.

Democracy, Schmocracy

At least, that's what this Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition attempt seems to suggest to the Canadian public.

There's a few links that very concisely say what I would like to. So I'll link you to them: Andrew Coyne's blog, as well as ALW's. The few recent posts on each of those sites is good reading.

Believe it or not, I believe that the Lib-NDP-Bloc have a perfectly reasonable right to first defeat the government, and then ask the Governor General for them to form the government. Of course, she'll first be hearing from the PM, asking her to dissolve the government and have an election. The opposition parties would have to convince her that they would be able to form a stable government (whether they could convince her or not, this is highly unlikely to be a 'stable' government coalition).

Why is this such an affront to democracy then? Well, just consider the fact that part of this coalition suggests putting in 4 'All-Star' Canadians as an 'economic council' to guide the Liberals and NDP on this glorious coalition. Who are they? Frank McKenna, Paul Martin, John Manley, and Roy Romanow.

None of whom are elected officials. None of whom were chosen by the Canadian people. All of whom either left elected office, or the Canadian electorate specifically rejected.

This leaves aside the grand plan of this coalition to try to spend our way out of this recession, by increasing taxes and providing "stimuli" - which would be bad enough, but to implement it via a system of unelected and rejected ex-politicos is simply embarassing.

I like that. If the above scenario happens, I'm going to dub that group the "Unelected and Rejected". Sounds like a cheesy band title. If only that's what it was.

Luongo Hurt

...and all I hear about is Oiler fans celebrating.

I've never understood sports fans that celebrate in another player's injury. As has been said countless times, sports is largely cheering for laundry. And a player you are celebrating being injured one minute can be on your favourite team in the very next.

It just strikes me as weird to celebrate an injury to another human being in the sports arena period.

Follow The Leader

I'm not a fan of the Parti Quebecois, but I AM a newfound fan of their new leader, Pauline Marois.

Why?

Here's why:

MONTREAL -- They may never write stories about her health again.
Bleary-eyed and freezing, a group of journalists was forced to follow Parti Quebecois Leader Pauline Marois for her regular morning walk under a dark pre-dawn sky.
Marois had been frustrated by stories that she was too tired to run a decent
campaign, and that she had cut back on evening events to deal with her fatigue.

So she challenged her tormentors to join her for her daily walk -- and they
were compelled to oblige.

The 59-year-old politician was followed by a group of reporters and camerapeople as she began her march up Montreal's Mount Royal at 5:45 a.m., with only the moon piercing the near-total darkness.

It was a surreal scene.

Marois put on her iPod and listened to tunes while several panting members of the media struggled to keep up with her brisk pace. She occasionally tossed a taunt their way during the half-hour walk. "I'm still here!" she shouted back at one point.
When someone asked why she was doing this to them Marois replied: "Because all of you thought I was sick."

At the end of the walk, she told the assembled throng that she hoped their little field
trip would turn the page on any questions about her health.

Brilliant! C'est incroyable!

Remembrance Day Thoughts

Several things were on my mind yesterday, as the world observed a day of remembrance for the tragedies of war.



1) Remembrance Day should be a statutory holiday. I remember the argument a number of years ago that children would be able to remember better in school than having a freebie day off, but when we celebrate Civic Holiday, Labour Day and now Family Day with statutory holidays, it seems somewhat embarrassing that we don't afford Remembrance Day the same respect. I have a view of the cenetaph from my office and I suspect the crowd that gathered would have been significantly larger if not so many people were working. This needs to be revisited again.



2) Just because you dislike war (as we all do) doesn't mean that you can't respect the sacrifices that people made to defend freedom.

There were a lot of good people who have died in wars over the years to help protect innocent people from tyranny. Remembrance Day is a day to honour those men and women. It is not a day for anti-war protests. There are 364 other days a year for that.

Lest We Forget

NHL Expansion: London Knights

Although I happen to feel that the current edition of the Knights could probably beat the New York Islanders in a best of 7 today, I was intrigued recently about the idea of current London Knight alumni in the NHL, and what type of lineup they would ice. Here's my best guess at how they would shake down.

Forwards:
R. Nash, S. Gagner, C. Perry
P. Kane, C.Kelly, B. Shanahan
R. Schremp, D. Bolland, S. Kostitsyn
T. Kostopoulos, B. Prust, D. Fritsche
Extras: K. Barch, D. Larman, D. Bois

Not a bad group. I included Shanahan (currently unsigned, but likely to play somewhere this year), and Schremp (still oddly unable to get an NHL chance). 3 of those players are likely to go to the All-Star game this year (Nash, Perry, Kane). I think there's probably quite a few NHL teams that would trade their current forward lineup for this one.

Defencemen:
D. Wideman, D. Girardi
A. Henry, K. Quincey
M. Methot, J. Erksine
Extras: D. Syvret, D. Jancevski

A solid group with options. Wideman and Girardi are probably two of the better young defencemen out there, and both should (if they keep playing the way they are) be at the 2009 NHL All-Star Game. The other 4 are solid depth defencemen. Again, I would guess that there are a fair number of NHL clubs that would take this group.

Goaltenders:
S. Mason
Extras: ?

One of the better goalie prospects in hockey, but also the weakest position due to absolutely no depth at all. New Knight T. Cann will probably join this list in the next couple of years, but it's clearly the weakest spot on the 2009 NHL Knights roster.

I think if this team could find a backup goalie out of retirement or Europe, they would likely be a solid threat to make the playoffs.

What Exactly Obama Will Do

As I have been called to task, I will now have to put my extremely limited knowledge of the US Presidential campaign to the test and try to predict what President Obama will actually do.

1) Pull out of Iraq.

Might not be tomorrow, might not be Saturday, but I have a very strong feeling there will be a pullout of Iraq by the end of 2010, at the latest. Gradual, not an immediate pullout, but a pullout nonetheless.

2) The Attorney General won't be William Ayers.

I realize it's a negative, but it won't be him. Sorry MC.

3) Raising taxes.

He's got to. He shouldn't but he's got to. Don't ask me what taxes, but certain ones must be raised.

4) Improve of US relations.

At least temporarily. This will not be as drastic as many people think, partially due to the fact that Bush was far less unpopular worldwide than he was in the minds of many demoliberals. But at least initially, perception of the USA has dramatically improved (something that would not have happened should McCain have won).

5) Chicago will win the 2016 Olympics.

How can they not now? It will be the last year of Obama's term, and for them to host the Olympics in the first American black President's hometown will be too much for the IOC to resist.

6) 2012 Election Prediction: Obama over whomever.

It won't be with 300+ EC votes this time. But he's going to win in 2012 as well. The Republicans should be looking 8 years down the road.

Horrific Sports Journalism, Part 1

"Mason Jars First Win."

I really hope it won't be up there long, but surely, SURELY they could have come up with something wittier, and less cringe-worthy.

Smiles and Cries

"Ya gotta control your smiles and cries."

Points to whomever gets that reference first.

Anyways, I've been hearing an awful lot from a lot of people that the sky is caving in, now that we are about to have President Obama (or as his buddies call him, President Barack). Alternatively, I've heard that PO is going to solve world hunger, end all wars, and fix the economy all before yesterday's breakfast.

My take is that Obama won't be nearly as bad as his opponents are afraid of, and won't be nearly as good as his proponents are sure of.

All that said, it truly is an incredible day for the democratic process. And when it is all said and done, Obama's 2008 election campaign will go down as one of the greatest political performances in history.

Official Prediction: USA Votes 08

Obama in a landslide, probably with more than 300 Electoral College delegates.

The Democrats should also take the House and Senate as well, although not as handily as Obama does.

Prepare for 4 years of...well, I guess we don't really know...

Movie Review: Dan In Real Life

Yes, I realize this came out eons ago, but it was good enough to bother posting on well after the fact.

Steve Carell has many talents - and now apparently romantic comedy is one of them as well. One of the better family movies I've seen in a long time - eminently relatable, and very enjoyable. Nice to see him do something different from the usual slapstick humour that he seems to constantly fall for.

One of the more recommendable PG-13 movies out there, and it's a real question as to why it even garnered that rating.

World Series Preview

This was supposed to go up earlier, but nevertheless:

Phillies in 5.

Dion Gone, Who's Next?

While the Liberals continue to search for a quick fix to a rather large problem (namely, the Conservatives continue to crunch them from the right, and the NDP and Greens push from the left), Dion announces he will step down, but not until an interim leader is chosen.

This is apparently to avoid infighting over "which camp" an interim leader would come from - Ignatieff or Rae.

Of course, there will already be plenty of infighting over who the next leader will be, so Dion might simply figure too much is too much.

In terms of who the candidates might be, my guess it will be someone from the list of Ignatieff, Rae, McKenna, Kennedy, Hall Findlay, Coderre, Manley or Tobin. And from that, the only ones I really see with any reasonable chance of winning are Ignatieff, Rae, McKenna and Manley. And as a friend said to me recently, of that group, Manley should probably be a Conservative (agreed), and I would suggest that McKenna probably should be as well.

Weirdly, the best thing the Liberal party could do for their electoral forture is elect a right-leaning leader and try to steal back those right-of-centre votes they lost as a result of the left-leaning of Dion.

Canucks 4, Red Wings 3

Being in attendance for this, compliments of my wife for my birthday, was awesome.

Canada Election 2008

A few thoughts:

1) Please, please, please stop those of you making the comments that "Harper just wasted $300 million on a federal election that returned the exact same result." I have a feeling a good number of incumbent MPs that were turfed would disagree with you, not to mention those who have a new representative for them. Furthermore, if Harper was able to predict the election prior to the votes being counted, he should have a different job. And finally, the fact that no party other than the Bloc (and MAYBE the NDP) is fully happy today should be proof enough that the landscape has been altered.

2) And the landscape has been altered. The Liberals have taken one in the teeth, with shockingly low popular vote numbers, and bad (and surprising) losses around the country. There was nary a riding that was a positive surprise for them (never a good thing). The Greens have been emphatically declared "irrelevant". The NDP has put together yet another "good" result, but I wonder if Layton had actually gone after Dion (his real competition) instead of Harper (almost nobody actually chooses between NDP and CPC), if we could be seeing a NDP Official Opposition today. The Bloc will be happy, although I continue to wonder what purpose their party actually does play in the Canadian political spectrum. And the Conservatives will be mixed - happy they won more seats, disappointed they missed the majority, happy they broke through in Ontario, disappointed they failed to break through in Quebec and Toronto.

3) Speaking of Toronto, I'm still baffled that (apart from Layton and Chow) it always goes straight red.

4) Elizabeth May - why did you sell out the Greens and tell them to strategically vote Liberal in certain spots? Like Layton, if you had gone after the Liberals instead, you could REPLACE them, rather than simply be an afterthought. This election should signal the end of Ms. May's political career.

5) Same for Dion. Although I am still surprised that the Liberals seem to feel their choice is either Rae or Iggy. In the time we are in where the economy is a big deal, I have a feeling that the CPC war room would eat Rae for dinner.

Demise of the Economy...

...appears to be somewhat exaggerated.

While it does appear that a downturn is coming, it seems beyond doubt that we are better prepared to deal with it than the USA.

MLB League Championship Series Previews

Well, after a decidedly weak 1-3 record, I need to run the table to get over .500 for this year. Not looking good.

Dodgers/Phillies
The Dodgers team looks pretty locked in right now, but they did earlier in the late summer as well (winning 8 in a row), before crashing back and then recovering. They're a weird team to figure out.

The Phillies, on the other hand, are looking like they have some leftover business to take care of after last year's disappointing loss in the NLDS to the red-hot Rockies.

This one should be very close, but the Phillies just seem like an all-around deeper team. If the Phillies are smart and don't let Manny beat them, they should have enough hitting to get past the Dodgers.

Phillies in 6.

Red Sox/Rays
I strongly dislike both of these teams due to their residency in the AL East. A couple of years ago, the Red Sox zoomed past the Yankees for the title of "most disliked team in the AL East", and this year the Rays managed to do the same. So it's tough to pick between them.

I still don't believe in the Rays, so I'm grudgingly picking the Red Sox to make yet another World Series (and make Boston fans all the more insufferable).

Red Sox in 6.