Unable to reach agreement on what to cut and by how much, the American governmental Troika (the House, the Senate and the President) struck a Supercommittee consisting of 12 members of Congress (half from each party).The Supercommittee’s mandate is to …
Continue readingAuthor: CuriosityCat
CuriosityCat: Meet Newt Gingrich – Republican nominee for president in 2012
The Republican field is thinning as contenders shoot themselves in the foot and limp offstage. Bachmann self destructed. Front runner Herman Cain is fumbling badly, changing his stories about what happened and what he knew fifteen years ago faster than…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: A Prime Minister challenges a Chancellor: Could this be the end of the EU?
An epic struggle for the future of the EU was started this morning when a Greek politician threw down the gauntlet, challenging both those within his country who opposed his leadership as prime minister, and the latest ‘solution’ of the EU financial cr…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: NDP Top Brass stifling growth of the party in Quebec
A straw in the wind, which might soon become the straw that broke the NDP camel’s back in Quebec: membership cards are excruciatingly slow for one province.Guess which province?The one that Jack Layton scored the NDP’s biggest electoral success in its …
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Tory donors versus Liberal donors in 2010: The 3 to 1 advantage Harper enjoys
In 2010 the Conservative Party of Stephen Harper received donations from almost three times as many individuals as the Liberal Party did.The Tories raised $17 million from just ovvr 95,000 donors, while the LPC raised only $6 million from just over 32,…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Which Canadian federal parties are the Rulers of Twitterdom?
The answer is found in the politwitter website. The statistics on the site are a bit out of date but do give us a snapshot of how the parties fare with regard to twittering.Premier Redford recently showed the importance of politicians being up to speed…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Merkel kicks Sarkozy who kicks a cat named Greece
We’ve just seen a case of trickle down kicking taking place in the EU. Sarkozy wanted to use the European Central Bank to bail out the banks, but Merkel quickly ruled out, saying it wasn’t up for discussion. So other methods were debated and agre…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The Arithmetic says that NDP MP Nathan Cullen’s electoral cooperation plan can succeed
It’s been a little over a week since Nathan Cullen launched his bid for leadership of the NDP with a bold plan to encourage cooperation between members of the three opposition parties in those ridings where sitting Tory MPs were vulnerable.Despite the …
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Godfather Merkel’s Offer the Banks could not refuse
Anyone wanting to know how to deal with the banks should not look to President Obama but to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. Deep Throat in BrusselsDeep Throat has it on good authority that Merkel is a fan of the famous Godfather movies of Francis …
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Why Wall Street is being Occupied – in two sentences
Banks and politicians should take the time to ponder this extract (my redlining) from an article by Adreas Whittam Smith in The Independent:How did some banks become “too big to fail”? Why did their reckless behaviour go unchecked for so long and is it…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Chancellor Brinkmanship: Angela Merkel’s Teutonic discipline for the EU Latin Fringe
To some, the Eurozone crisis has all the hallmarks of a train crash. These onlookers are only partly right.The Eurozone crisis is a slow motion train wreck, with the speed being checked as and when she wants to, by Chancellor Merkel of Germany.The Stam…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: OWS – the next step: occupy the boardrooms of large corporations & the internet
OccupyWallStreet is spawning offspring at a healthy click, and I’m not talking about occupy some other city kind of spawning!A fascinating website named epolitics has a posting on two recent developements of the OWS, one of which is rather humorous, th…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Chantal Hebert misstates Nathan Cullens electoral cooperation idea
In today’s Toronto Star Chantal Hebert writes about Nathan Cullen’s idea for electoral cooperation between the LPCC, NDP and Green Party. She is of the opinion that the idea is doomed because it ignores human nature, really amounts to a quasi-merger pr…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Any one of the NDP’s Two and a Half Men would make a good leader & PM
The NDP now have three good candidates for their top job: The Fighter, The Dealer and The Visionary.Both Brian Topp and Thomas Mulcair have decades of experience in practical politics, with Mulcair on the hustings and Topp in the proverbial smoke-fille…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The Reasons behind the Cullen Plan to Turf-a-Tory in 2015
Why would a young MP decide to join the race for leadership of the NDP, when he faces competition from veterans in the field, such as a backroom dealer, Brian Topp, backed by the party brass, and a seasoned politician , Thomas Mulcair, who fought and w…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Signs of Hope: Some MPs in the Liberal caucus support the Cullen Plan
In a wide ranging interview by Tim Naumetz in The Hill Times, Nathan Cullen, the innovative young NDP MP who has joined the race to replace Jack Layton as leader of the NDP, said that he has been getting some feedback from several sources in the other …
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Do Brian Topp & Thomas Mulcair have the right "leadership material" to head the NDP? MP Pat Martin says No!
Outspoken NDP MP Pat Martin is calling their leadership skills into question because of their ‘knee jerk’ rejection of the Turf-a-Tory Cullen Plan floated by NDP MP Nathan Cullen earlier this week when he joined the fray for leadership of that party:Na…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Let the people speak: Some comments on the Walkom article on the Cullen Plan
I skimmed through some of 70 plus comments on the Thomas Walkom article on Nathan Cullen’s idea to Turf-a-Tory through electoral cooperation between the Liberal, NDP and Green parties before the 2015 election.This idea is starting to get legs (Walkom’s…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The Man behind the Cullen Plan to Turf-a-Tory in 2015 by electoral cooperation
Nathan Cullen had some blunt words for a Toronto crowd he addressed last night, when asked about the risks to a party which decided to adopt the Cullen Plan and then found its own nominated candidate outvoted:Nathan Cullen sketches the Cullen PlanIt is…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Fleshing out the Cullen Plan for electoral cooperation
Several people have written or blogged about the Cullen Plan for electoral cooperation between the NDP and Liberal Party in certain ridings for the 2015 election. The response has been positive with a few doomsday scenarios sketched out.Jack Layton &am…
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