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The Official TOTA Elections thread (pg. 2)
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| DigiNut |
Liberals are getting desperate with their ad campaign... all they can say is that Harper is "pro-American" :haha:
Even if they had real dirt on Harper, it's stupid for them to be taking that approach. Martin is the incumbent; his campaign should be to inform Canadians what he's already done for the country. Slinging mud at Harper only proves that they have no track record to stand on.
Even better was the "soldiers with guns in our streets" ad that got pulled. I'm sure that all the Liberal campaign donors must be very happy that they've paid these people to mock our Armed Forces (don't take it from me, it's our servicemen who are pissed off). Oh, and then Anne McLellan says that Paul Martin didn't approve the ads... and John Duffy saying that the ad doesn't exist because it wasn't released on TV... lol. Duffy managed to piss off CTV's Mike Duffy too by taking cheap shots at him, implying that talking about the pulled ad made him a poor journalist.
Then there's the attack ad in Quebec, which is actually running, and Ralph Goodale says that the Liberal party never approved or released it. :conf:
All personal views on policy aside, the Libs really seem to be having a communication breakdown during this election campaign. All these crossed wires, and the rumoured "mole", and making policy announcements during the debate that were not in their Red Book or discussed with high-ranking party officials... even if I supported the Liberals, I'd be seriously worried about its internal cohesion right now. How could they ever hope to govern effectively if they can't even get their stories straight during the campaign? |
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| MarkT |
an excerpt from an online article today's Toronto Star:
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Tory evasive over comments
Jan. 12, 2006. 11:16 PM
KEVIN MCGRAN
STAFF REPORTER
Conservative candidate Rondo Thomas refused to answer questions yesterday about his comments that describe same-sex marriage issues as a battle between “righteousness” and “immorality.”
“Show some respect,” Thomas said as he drove away from a Star reporter and photographer, refusing to say whether he stood by the comments captured on video last February, and whether he’d been ordered by Conservative party headquarters to remain tight-lipped.
Thomas, an evangelical minister, missed two all-candidates debates this week in Ajax-Pickering just as Liberal incumbent Mark Holland posted Thomas’s video on his campaign website. On the video, Thomas says: “There is going to be a clash of morality views between those who believe in righteousness and those who believe in immorality and when we collide there is going to be conflict.”
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but it's "fear mongering" to suggest that there are morality pushers in the Conservative party...well this was caught on video. Add that to the candidate mentioned above by Orko and it's more than a little amusing to hear the CPC refer to the whole Liberal party as corrupt.
if this is the behaviour of their candidates now, I can't wait to see how they act if they are elected :rolleyes: |
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| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by MarkT
an excerpt from an online article today's Toronto Star:
but it's "fear mongering" to suggest that there are morality pushers in the Conservative party...well this was caught on video. Add that to the candidate mentioned above by Orko and it's more than a little amusing to hear the CPC refer to the whole Liberal party as corrupt.
if this is the behaviour of their candidates now, I can't wait to see how they act if they are elected :rolleyes: |
Oh noes, it's the dreaded Social Conservatives! OMG RUN AWAY!!!!!1111one
Let's recap: Liberals burst into anger (or tears) whenever somebody makes that pitiful "religious" argument that gay marriage is immoral. And yet...
- They accept that it is "moral" to have their property confiscated to pay for kickbacks to well-connected Liberals and Liberal supporters.
- They accept that it is "moral" to tell hardworking parents that instead of caring for their children, they waste their money on beer and popcorn.
- They accept that it is "moral" to paint a picture of our Armed Forces as a violent, fascist gestapo army that will occupy our streets and not allow us to leave our houses.
- They accept that it is "moral" for 9 unelected judges to have the final say over an entire house of elected officials, based on a set of totally arbitrary unwritten standards, and they accept that it is "moral" to be trying to take away our singular means of recourse if that system goes awry.
- They accept that it is "moral" for the government to be confiscating guns that people own legally, without any compensation. And they accept that it is "moral" to make it either illegal or impractical for our border guards to be armed, making it nearly impossible to keep the ILLEGAL guns out of our country.
- They accept that it is "moral" for murderers who supposedly had a tough time growing up to get out of jail in 6 months, while the families of the victims receive nothing.
- They accept that it is "moral" to demand that everybody receive the same quality of health care, and now child care, no matter how hard they've worked to earn themselves a better life.
- They accept that it is "moral" to be bringing strippers into our country by the boatload (provided they supply nude pictures as proof of their qualifications), as well as hundreds of thousands of unskilled people who will be supported on welfare, while simultaneously denying entry to doctors, engineers, and many other hard working immigrants.
- They accept that it is "moral" to be telling us we use too much electricity and should get used to freezing in our own homes, while simultaneously shutting down our coal-fired plants which would easily have met the excess demand.
- They accept that it is "moral" to engage in non-stop bashing of our most important friend and trading partner.
- They accept that it is "moral" to offer a cabinet position to a woman who defected from her own party for no reason other than personal advancement.
- They accept that it is "moral" to force every public servant in the most remote redneck woods of BC to learn to speak fluent French.
- They accept that it is "moral" to continue to slash our military budget, when our primary contribution to the post-9/11 effort in Afghanistan was a frigate that sank and had to be recovered by American troops, and when we can barely defend Hans Island from the Danes.
All of those things are okay, but being opposed to gay marriage... unforgivable!
Right? |
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| Jayx1 |
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Excellent post |
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| zoogla |
Okay I made up my mind. I'm voting Conservative.
(now how about those lifetime no-cover passes to Viva, Jay? ;)) |
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| DigiNut |
Speaking of getting desperate, apparently a Liberal runner, David Oliver, tried to bribe an NDP candidate to drop out of the raise. Of course, Martin and the LPC has since dumped him, so I guess in all fairness, Oliver's not a Liberal anymore.
Globe and mail article:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv...alDecision2006/
The sworn statement is here (PDF alert):
http://www.ccnmatthews.com/docs/npdstat.pdf
This is bad enough as is, but I've got a sinking feeling that there's some sort of plausible deniability at work and that David is taking the rap for someone else. Jeffrey Hanson-Carlson mentions getting promised a job in Ottawa... a guaranteed win... what is all this about? Or was this stuff all just bullcrap that David made up? We may never know... |
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| MarkT |
yes, Martin dumped him...so he did the exact same thing (in stronger terms, actually) than Harper did with his MP.
| quote: | Originally posted by Jayx1
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Excellent post |
actually I'd argue that it's not.
my post pointed out that their are members of the CPC who have a moral agenda that doesn't belong in politics...and that MPs in the CPC aren't all angels (the MP charged with smuggling a Mercedes and 100+ bottles of booze into Canada and lying to customs officials about it).
saying "well the Liberals are worse" does nothing to invalidate my post.
I'm not going to address each and every point he made...but the two-tier healthcare point is scary to say the least. So someone is born into a lower to middle class family and they aren't entitled to the same care that a person born into a wealthy family recieves. yikes.
I think our military would be insulted to have you say that our "most important" contribution to Afghanistan was a faulty ship...
I think insulting and flat-out ignorant to suggest that the decisions of our Supreme Court judges are "based on a set of totally arbitrary unwritten standards..."
whatever...if the Liberals are SO bad, you shouldn't need to stoop to such sensational exaggerations and outright falsehoods to make your points. |
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| Fir3start3r |
| quote: | Originally posted by MarkT
I'm not going to address each and every point he made...but the two-tier healthcare point is scary to say the least. So someone is born into a lower to middle class family and they aren't entitled to the same care that a person born into a wealthy family recieves. yikes.
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Where exactly have you been living??
The cat's waaaaay out of the bag on this arguement.
There are plently of private health care alternatives...
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I think our military would be insulted to have you say that our "most important" contribution to Afghanistan was a faulty ship...
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I'm more proud of the fact that they do so well with so little.
A totally embarrassing situation would be an understatement.
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I think insulting and flat-out ignorant to suggest that the decisions of our Supreme Court judges are "based on a set of totally arbitrary unwritten standards..."
whatever...if the Liberals are SO bad, you shouldn't need to stoop to such sensational exaggerations and outright falsehoods to make your points. |
No need to; we can't make this stuff up... |
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| ShadoWolf |
| quote: | Originally posted by MarkT
my post pointed out that their are members of the CPC who have a moral agenda that doesn't belong in politics... |
Undemocratically changing the traditional definition of marriage is itself a moral agenda.
You only rail against "moral agendas" when they go against your values. Otherwise, you have no problem imposing your own on others.
| quote: | Originally posted by MarkT
I think insulting and flat-out ignorant to suggest that the decisions of our Supreme Court judges are "based on a set of totally arbitrary unwritten standards..." |
While that's correct in many cases, it would be equally ignorant to think that the Supreme Court doesn't make arbitary and/or political decisions, usually based on unwritten standards. By her own admission, the Chief Justice said as much.
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Gods -- or nine well-paid lawyers with jobs for life
By GORDON GIBSON
Globe and Mail
Friday, December 16, 2005
The Greeks had a word for it: hubris. It means overweening or excessive pride and arrogance. It is a disease of the powerful.
Two weeks ago, a very powerful person, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Supreme Court of Canada, gave a speech in New Zealand that contained one big worry for those concerned with our democratic balance. She said, in effect, that the law is what the Supreme Court says the law is. "The task of the judge, confronted with conflict between a constitutional principle of the highest order on the one hand, and an ordinary law or executive act on the other, is to interpret and apply the law as a whole -- including unwritten constitutional principles."
Think about that. Who decides what these "unwritten constitutional principles" are? Why, the judges. This can trump clearly enacted laws? Might this amend even the Constitution?
Well, yes. Judge McLachlin also said that "even inclusive, written constitutions leave much out, requiring us to look at convention and usage." So the judges may supplement that list. They may discover new constitutional doctrine. And if they do, remember they really are "supreme."
Jurists may properly argue that someone has to "fill in the blanks" in legal interpretation, but the Canadian experience shows they may do so even in direct contravention of the intent of the constitutional framers. Two great examples over the past 15 years include Indian law and moral law.
In Indian law, the intent of the framers was quite clear: Aboriginal rights were to be confined to those existing in 1981, and the word "existing" was added in the final draft to underline that meaning. That did not constrain the Supreme Court from adventuring in this area: Simply include "existing" in whatever might be hidden, latent and as yet undiscovered, then get on with the discovery of new "rights." In moral law, Parliament, in designing the Charter, deliberately excluded sexual orientation as a constitutional element. The court, nevertheless, added this claim to the Charter on its own initiative in the 1998 Vriend gay-rights case.
And the court does what it wants. In a Nov. 22 speech, the Chief Justice said: "When a legal issue is properly before a court, not deciding is not an option." Oh? Just a year earlier, the court declined to answer the most important of four questions posed to it by the Martin government on same-sex marriage, namely whether existing law was valid. An answer was refused notwithstanding that the Supreme Court Act explicitly requires one to be given.
The court is well known for its "living tree" view of the Constitution -- that the meaning must change as society changes. But there is a danger here. Given a pair of shears, fertilizer and a number of years, a skilled gardener can shape a tree in any direction. So can the court. With parliamentary supremacy eroded, the check and balance for this no longer exists.
Strip away the grand stone building of the Supreme Court and the judges' ermine robes and what do we really have? God-like creatures? No. Something much less: nine well-paid lawyers with jobs for life.
And how were these lawyers appointed? By our elected representatives after due debate? By cardinals in solemn conclave? By peers of the realm? No. These people were appointed at the whim of one person, the prime minister. And why were they appointed? Undoubtedly, for their good legal minds. But also, well, politics?
One kind is the usual regional, gender, ethnic balance that, at any given time, rules out 90 per cent of the best candidates. That is political life. The second is of a far baser kind: What will make the prime minister look good? Imagine, to give a far-fetched example, if a prime minister appointed someone with no civic record as governor-general because it would please a fawning media and gain some ethnic votes.
In Canada, the provenance of the Supremes is the arbitrary choice of one person. For these arbitrary fortunate few to infuse themselves with the power to not just interpret law but to make the law is surely a bridge too far. But that claim is another part of the culture of entitlement. We have learned that the top elected people in Ottawa think they own the power of government and the money of taxpayers to use as they wish. But at least we can throw them out.
Another bunch of top people in Ottawa, these ones with jobs for life, think they own the law. And you know what? They do. Because they say so. Who in this election campaign will have something to say about that?
[email protected] |
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| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by MarkT
my post pointed out that their are members of the CPC who have a moral agenda that doesn't belong in politics |
Welfare, multiculturalism, Official Languages, state-run health care, state-run day care, state-sponsored abortions, rent control, gun control, legalization of marijuana, and rewriting the marriage law to include homosexuals, are all "moral agendas".
They're all based on:
(a) Sympathy (often misplaced)
(b) Anger (often misdirected)
(c) Entitlement
Politics is all about moral agendas. I am not suggesting that the Conservative platform is free from moral agenda, or even that I agree with all of it, but from what I've seen, their agenda is mainly based on:
(a) Civil liberties and Economic Freedom
(b) Responsible and accountable government
(c) Tradition and community standards
I do not like that part of their platform is traditional-based. But it is a very small part of their platform, and I prefer that immensely to a moral agenda born out of raw negative emotion.
As ShadoWolf rightly pointed out: you only seem to have a problem with (I should say, you only ever seem to notice) the moral agenda when it goes against your own morals.
| quote: | | I'm not going to address each and every point he made...but the two-tier healthcare point is scary to say the least. So someone is born into a lower to middle class family and they aren't entitled to the same care that a person born into a wealthy family recieves. yikes. |
Liberals always reference the "born into a wealthy family" argument. It's commonly known that most wealthy people (aside from Liberal/Democratic politicians and Hollywood stars) worked hard for their wealth and were not born into it. And let's hypothetically say that someone is born into wealth; does the hard work of their parents count for nothing? Are you suggesting that the only pay off for hard work should be the ability to care for oneself, and not one's children or grandchildren?
A more realistic contrast is that of:
- Person A, who drops out of high school, gets involved in gangs and drugs, frequently has unprotected sex and ends up having a kid at 17, alternates between various unskilled jobs - never working hard to excel and advance at any of them, and never does anything to further develop his/her skills or education, consistently tries to buy unaffordable things, and ends up broke with bad credit; and
- Person B, who works like a dog to get straight A's in high school and get accepted into a prestigious university to work equally hard there, OR moves onto an accredited trade school and goes through several backbreaking years of apprenticeship, saves and invests their money, waits until age 25 to get married and have kids, often sacrificing his/her personal life to get ahead, makes connections and eventually develops a good reputation and becomes well-known in his/her field.
To those "evil" conservatives, Person B has earned a better life, including better health care that they have put money away for. To those "compassionate" liberals, these people are merely victims of circumstance, their past histories are completely unimportant, and if Person B is allowed to have a better lifestyle, it should only be "better" in the context of frivolous material purchases like big-screen TVs and fancy jewellery. Serious, life-altering conditions like superior medical care and better quality housing should not come as a reward to those who have sacrificed themselves.
| quote: | | I think our military would be insulted to have you say that our "most important" contribution to Afghanistan was a faulty ship... |
Our military shouldn't be insulted by the truth. What they should be (and are) insulted by, is Paul Martin and his cronies flashing advertisements showing them as tools of oppression in our streets in a vivid image of some creepy Orwellian martial law.
| quote: | | I think insulting and flat-out ignorant to suggest that the decisions of our Supreme Court judges are "based on a set of totally arbitrary unwritten standards..." |
And yet our chief justice, Beverly McLachlin, has said exactly that. She has said that judges can't expect the written constitution to cover everything that's important, so they have to make it up as they go along. In actuality, the constitution is intentionally brief, specifically because the gaps should be filled in by the legislative branch - not by the courts.
An ignorant suggestion? More like a plain observation, for those who haven't pulled the wool over their eyes.
| quote: | | whatever...if the Liberals are SO bad, you shouldn't need to stoop to such sensational exaggerations and outright falsehoods to make your points. |
Sensational, perhaps - falsehoods, by no means. As I'm sure you know, I'm quite capable of discussing things rationally and at-length as opposed to with banal sound bites. I simply felt that such a post was in order as a response to your non-stop fearmongering about gay rights and Harper's alleged (and thoroughly UNproven) "moral agenda", which even if true does not tell us anything about the other CPC reps and would still have to pass a majority vote in Parliament. |
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| EvilTree |
| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
- They accept that it is "moral" to continue to slash our military budget, when our primary contribution to the post-9/11 effort in Afghanistan was a frigate that sank and had to be recovered by American troops, and when we can barely defend Hans Island from the Danes.
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You really gotta research more. |
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| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by MarkT
yes, Martin dumped him...so he did the exact same thing (in stronger terms, actually) than Harper did with his MP. |
Yes, so Martin has now dumped David Oliver and Mike Klander. But he has not dumped:
- David Smith (for the Abotech affair)
- Mike Reid and John Duffy (for their gaffes too numerous to mention, including "beer and popcorn")
- Joe Volpe (for his direct involvement in the stripper trade and other human trafficking)
- Anne McLellan (for directly and repeatedly contradicting Martin, implicating him as either lying or incompetent)
- Ralph Goodale (for his alleged involvement in the Income Trust scandal)
- Ujjal Dosanjh (tainted blood and other various health scandals)
- Judy Sgrow (for leaking confidential immigration information)
- Belinda Stronach (I won't even go there)
What's important, though, is not simply the fact that he's let these people off the hook.
No, what's important is that nobody can be sure anymore exactly what Paul Martin's rules are.
How low do you have to go to get kicked out of the Liberal party? Is bribing an NDP candidate any worse than carrying on a personal miniature AdScam or insulting millions of Canadians to their faces on national TV (and I'm not talking about the Parliamentary channel)?
I don't know the answer, and it's starting to look like the party doesn't know either. And if party members don't know the rules, there's no telling what kind of chaos and what kind of divisions and cliques will form within the party.
This is bad news for Liberals, but good news for Conservatives. The more divided the Liberal party becomes, the easier it will be for a minority Conservative government to find "Blue Liberals" to contribute votes on important legislation. One Liberal candidate in Alberta has already defected to the Conservatives - but unlike Belinda, she's not getting offered a cabinet position and won't even be running in this election. |
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