Oerwinde

So Sun News Network went on the air like a week or two ago. Its essentially Fox News Canada, only with production values about equivalent to Weekend Update. Anyway, they've kept pretty quiet about the election so far, but on friday they broke an exclusive that an unnamed source has evidence that Jack Layton was in a massage parlour when it was raided 16 years ago. At the time he was a city councilor fighting police abuse of power and the source is cited as one of the officers who raided the place. It was a licensed facility and his trip was documented in his schedule and ran by his wife. Methinks the conservatives are getting desperate with the NDP closing in on them.

If the vote turns out the way the polls are looking, a combined Liberal/NDP vote could achieve a majority of votes. As the NDP and Liberal platforms are essentially the same in this election, and Layton has a rep for working with the other parties, I'm sure the Liberals could talk down their spending and still achieving much of what they wish to accomplish.

We Canadians have a much more peaceful way. The opposition parties try to push through legislation since they have a majority of the seats, so the party in power simply shuts down parliament, killing any bills that have not yet been passed. Or they make a bill a confidence motion, forcing the opposition to either abstain or vote for it in order to avoid forcing an election that they can't win.

This is the first time the Liberals have been in 3rd place in the history of the party. I don't see Ignatieff surviving as leader of the party with him leading them to the worst defeat they've ever seen. They need a leader like Cretien. He had a great speech the other day about how when he was first elected in 1963 Canada had no pension plan, no medicare, no flag, no national anthem, the constitution was a British act of Parliament, and no charter of rights. Now these are all things that define Canada and the Liberal party was responsible for it all(With help from the NDP on the medicare). If the Liberals had someone like that giving speeches like that from the beginning of the election we could be looking at the Liberals back in power, and thats a party that Harper can't attack their economic record. Especially since they've been taking credit for their accomplishments since day one. Personally I think the best thing to come out of this is it looks like the NDP will replace the Bloc in Quebec. Rejecting every federal party did nothing but further alienate Quebeckers from the rest of Canada. I think an NDP minority government could be fantastic. They would have the Liberals and Conservatives keeping their spending in check, though more likely the Conservatives would just act like the Republicans and shoot down good ideas simply because they didn't come up with them.

They handled Drogo wrong if I remember the book right. Dany sees how depraved the Dothraki are and he's surprisingly gentle so she comes to love him. In the show they made him just like the rest of them. She ends up being one of the best characters in the book. So far they're being extremely faithful. I pictured Robert taller though.

Wow things have changed. The 3rd place NDP are now within 6 points of the Conservatives while the Liberals have dropped to 3rd. These are just polls, but it seems like people are flocking to the socialists.

Thats an issue we're having here now in our election. We currently have 3 major left aligned parties(four if you count the Bloc, but they only matter in Quebec) and one right aligned party. Because the vote is split amongst the left aligned parties the right aligned party wins the most seats and forms the government despite the majority of the population being left aligned. And now the NDP (The furthest left) have seen a massive upswing in popularity, reducing the Liberal vote and instead of being a major victory for the NDP, it will most likely translate to more seats for the Conservatives instead. Latest polls put the NDP at 28%, Liberals at 24% and Conservatives at 34%, with the Greens at 7% and the Bloc at 6%(Only runs candidates in Quebec, so numbers for the Bloc are wonky). What that means essentially is 65% of Canadians vote for a leftist party, but the Conservatives could end up with a majority government. Majority government meaning the Conservatives could pass whatever legislation they want without needing the approval of the opposition parties. So while 65% of Canadians want more government spending on social programs, more focus on the environment, etc, etc. Instead we get corporate tax cuts and a move towards US style deregulation, move towards privatised health care, etc.

Its a likely outcome too. Harper has flat out said he will not work with the opposition parties even if he doesn't win a majority. He will likely table the same budget that everyone said they would vote against and rather than immediately going to another election, the GG will have no choice but to ask the Libs to form a government. Their position will be so fragile that they'll have no choice but to bow to the will of the NDP and the Bloc in order to stay in. What will happen there is a likely increase in social programs and an increase in decentralisation to the provinces. The cons will vote against them at every opportunity simply because they're the liberals even if the legislation they table is in line with their goals because the cons have pretty much become the northern republican party who doesn't care if nothing gets done unless its them thats doing it. Hence using the senate and prorogation to kill legislation they didn't like but the other 3 parties did.

I was blown away at how accurate it was.

Black Dynamite. Funniest movie I've seen in ages. As for Camelot, I'm really digging the show. I agree the characters can be stupid sometimes, like Merlin drinking with Morgan, and not thinking its suspicious that he's the only one actually drinking until its too late.

I thought the dev team's justification for it being so heavily front loaded was priceless "Well we figured players would do a bunch of sidequests, move on to the main quest, then come back and do more sidequests later" Combined with the entire forum community telling them it was a mistake to focus the game on combat, then the reviews come out saying the game's combat was crap and focusing so much on it was a bad decision. I think Obsidian should snap up the rights to the setting and show them how its done.

Which one was the crappy game? Because so far I have the count at 2 great games(NWN2, FO:NV), and 2 good games(AP, KOTOR2).

He'll be ugly when he gets his nose cut off later. I agree I was expecting him to be handsome though.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politi...article1988246/ Pot calls kettle black. Liberals air ad that voices speculation as fact and misrepresents dates to make quotes seem recent, Conservatives upset that they're stealing their methods. NDP has seen huge gains since the debates, gaining 9 points in Ontario, 13 in BC, and 5 points overall nationally. If they can grasp at that and keep pushing, they could replace the Liberals as the #2 party. Hopefully not at the expense of a Harper majority though.

Well, after the Leadership Debates I think Layton came out on top. Harper was constantly on the defensive and kept referring to Canadian democracy as unnecessary. He also has no charisma. Ignatieff stumbled a lot, and while he was pretty effective at keeping Harper on the defensive, he wasn't very effective at making himself look good. Layton on the other hand managed to show some charisma, pushed his party as a valid alternative, and almost never looked bad. Duceppe is irrelevent and realistically shouldn't even be there. Layton's point on proportional representation was good. The Bloc getting around 1.5 million votes and getting 50 seats vs the Green party getting 900,000+ and getting 0 seats is pretty silly.

IMO, I prefer the liar with the manly moustache. Everyone likes Jack Layton, but no one wants to vote for his party. I actually used that as a case against an elected Prime Minister when someone at work said it would be a good idea. When the most popular party leader is the leader of the 3rd most popular party, thats not a recipe for stable government if you have elected Prime Ministers. Thats like a reform party candidate being elected president in the US. Also, note for the non-canadians, the French Language leaders debate got bumped for the NHL playoffs because they didn't want to compete with Montreal vs Boston. A win for stereotypes!

So far according to polls, Canadians prefer liars who piss all over democracy to liars who leave the country for 30 years to teach at prestigious universities. Personally I think its the eyebrows. Canadians just can't get passed Ignatieff's giant eyebrows.

The issue there though is that while they can form the government, they can't pass any legislation without the say so of the other parties, so they have to woo other parties by including their agendas in legislation in order to get support for it to pass. Thats how we got socialised medicine. The Liberals didn't have enough support so the NDP promised support in exchange for it. Cooperation between parties is a good thing.

Tank! (Theme from Cowboy Bebop) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X3Kcyv3XLA...feature=related Also the entire score of Steamboy was phenomenal.

This was the issue here. But Harper somehow managed to bamboozle the Canadian public into thinking a coalition government that represents a majority of Canadians, is somehow less democratic that a minority rule.

I'm not sure if thats true, it might be so but I'm not sure. I would assume it would continue, our status as a peacekeeping nation is pretty important to a lot of Canadians. The first peacekeeping mission being our baby, its a point of national pride. I know Canadians have been in command positions in quite a few UN and NATO missions in the last few decades.

In regards to the Xenophobia, here's a Liberal rebuttal ad to the Conservative ones http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx8Q-9EWz3E And for reference, heres the conservative party's Youtube channel with all their ads http://www.youtube.com/user/cpcpcc And the liberal's http://www.youtube.com/user/liberalvideo NDP http://www.youtube.com/user/NDPCanada Greens http://www.youtube.com/user/canadiangreenparty

To put it into perspective, the Conservatives had 32% support of the electorate after the last election, The Liberals, NDP, and Bloc Quebecois had a combined 60% support. So a coalition government would have been representative of 60% of Canadians rather than 32%. Harper deemed this undemocratic. He's also gone on record in the past saying a coalition government is a viable option to bring down the Liberals back when the Liberals had a minority government, so his nickname of Harpercrite is well earned.

Thanks for that, the flash player wasn't working. As for the books, based on how long it took him to write the last two, we should see the next book in another 6 years.

The Conservatives were elected to a minority government based on a promise to clean up Ottawa after the Liberal sponsorship scandal as well as improving democracy by instituting an elected senate etc. What they;ve done has erode the democratic process by proroguing parliament (shutting it down, ending the session and killing any legislation still in committee) in order to stifle any discussion of the Afghanistan detainee scandal (Con officials had canadian troops hand over detainees in Afghanistan to be tortured), while prorogued, stacking the senate with conservative appointees, who then killed any legislation that passed in the house of commons because the opposition parties hold a majority of seats in the house. Several conservatives were found to have violated electoral spending limits, which amounts to electoral fraud. The conservatives then vowed to eliminate per vote party subsidies which gives $2 per vote to political parties, this would leave the Cons in a much better position to launch a campaign as their fundraising ability outmaches all the other parties. This was the last straw and Opposition parties united to bring down the government and establish a coalition government, instead the Cons prorogued parliament again so the vote couldn't pass and spend the prorogation period on an ad campaign calling a coalition undemocratic because it didn't include his party which recieved the most seats (32%). When they came back the word "coalition" had suffered a black eye from the Con's media campaign. It was pretty quiet from then on until one of the Con ministers changed the wording of a comittee document after it had been agreed upon, effectively having the comittee agree to the opposite of that which they agreed to. That began the initial contempt charge. Then the comittee debating a Con crime bill asked for the cost projections of the bill. The cons refused to provide them repeatedly. 2nd contempt charge. The government then fell on a confidence motion on the passage of the contempt charge. During their reign they have ran media campaign after media campaign of attack ads attacking the other parties and their leaders, as well as using government funds to promote thier party. They even had official documents replace "Government of Canada" with "Harper Government" The Liberals are accusing the Cons of excessive spending on things Canada doesn't need or want. 35 billion on stealth fighter jets which there was no bidding process for, 14 billion on US style megaprisons, etc. We do need new Jets, but 35 billion with no bidding process is silly. Harper is still going on about the "Reckless coalition" despite the current Liberal leader not supporting the coalition at the time it was proposed and denying it multiple times now.