With polls showing neither the Liberal nor the Conservative parties being able to secure a firm majority in the coming election, we might be poised for a historic breakthrough in the way we run our elections in Canada.Andrea Horwath – lacking insight…
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CuriosityCat: Liberal Party fundraising – plea for directed donations
The party needs to raise substantially more money than it has in past years, from smaller donations and from a much wider donor base.At the same time, the party is trying to involved members more in decisions, party affairs, and policy discussions.One …
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The Chancellor versus Breugel: The Cat thinks Merkel is right about the Eurobond
The European Union is a loose confederation of widely divergent nation states, with the weaker ones suffering from the consequences of a worldwide recession, living beyond their needs, and financial markets that are wary of investing in the sovereign d…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Modernizing the NDP: Who is pinker – Brian Topp or Thomas Mulcair?
They’re off! The race for the new leader of the Official Opposition party – the NDP – is now on, with one major announced candidate (Brian Topp) and the other major candidate (Thomas Mulcair) setting up a panCanadian team before throwing his hat in…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Mulcair and Topp – Their challenge: 90,000 new NDP members
Right now, the NDP in Quebec is punching far below its weight when it comes to the number of Quebeckers signed up as members of that party. In fact, it is punching so far below its weight that it really isn’t in the ring at all.The challenge for Topp a…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Harris Decima polls: NDP and Liberal cooperation – now and in 2010
The latest Harris Decima poll shows little appetite for a merger of the NDP and Liberal Party.However, this poll only shows the views of supporters of these two parties with respect to a full merger of the two parties. The total nationally is 24%…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Obama joins other leaders who have lost their way
Governments of developed countries have lost their way. They do not understand the problems facing their economies, and have allowed right wing economic ideologues to stampede them into premature and potentially catastrophic deficit slashing when the a…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Who will win: Mitt Romney or Rick Perry? Ask the Cheese Doctor
If Obama wants to know which of these two men he will be facing in the 2012 election, he could find the answer from a French-born anthropologist who could be called the Cheese Doctor.Jack Hitt in the New York Times describes a lengthy interview he had …
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Liberal Riding Associations: Will you take up this torch?
We are entering the time of conventions, when new policies will be discussed as part of the Liberal Party renewal process.I extend the invitation to Liberal riding associations to talk to each other about one of my pet ideas, and to combine with othe…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Nixon, the Rose Mary Stretch, and the James Murdoch 15 minute conversation
One day, when the history of the phone hacking done by News of the World reporters is finally written, will historians record that the 15 minutes of the disputed conversation during which James Murdoch may (according to some attendees) or may not (acco…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Should Trade Unions get 25% of the votes for the new NDP leader? A solution
This issue is boiling up right now, and on Friday the party brass will decide whether to continue the favoured position of trade unions by reserving one quarter of the votes for them. This amounts to a kind of “affirmative action” whereby some Dippers …
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Will the new Canadian NDP leader lack legitimacy?
There’s a good chance he or she will.If the NDP executive (bureaucracy) decide on September 9 to hamstring the Quebec wing of the NDP by setting a date for the election that is too short (anything before May 15 would be too soon), and/or provide for so…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Will NDP party brass "do an Ignatieff" on September 9?
To say that the future of the NDP as a possible government-to-be hangs in the balance is not overstating the issue. On September 9 the party brass might make a decision which makes the NDP’s current standings in the polls and number of MPs the high wat…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: NDP leadership vote should be on May 15, 2012 OR voting should be asymmetrical
If it is any earlier, it will be very unfair to Quebec, the home of a whopping 59 of the 103 NDP MPs.Any earlier election might well be viewed by the Quebec NDP MPs and party members as an attempt by the NDP in the Rest of Canada to limit the influence…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Did Canada’s "Arab Spring" start in Quebec on May 2?
The answer is Yes if pollster Allan Gregg’sspeculations are right. The NDP has 33% – tied with the Tories:Jack Layton’s untimely death has triggered another orange wave across the country, a new poll suggests.The Harris/Decima survey conducted for The …
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Liberals: Ask your NDP friends to vote for Pat Martin as next NDP leader
Liberals have a golden opportunity to shape the contours of our politics for the next decade by involving themselves in the NDP leadership selection process.They can do this by talking to their NDP friends and trying to persuade them to vote for an N…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Bob Rae and the Iffy Question of Merger with the NDP
Summer nonsense spilled over into the press conference held today with Bob Rae. One of the questions dealt with a possible merger between the Liberal and NDP parties. Rae was forthright, and quoted FDR in his answer.Like Roosevelt, Rae said he saw the …
Continue readingCuriosityCat: US Presidency: Rick, George and Mitt
Rick Perry would be a dramatically different president than George Bush Junior was, if he lives up to his stated intentions. Unlike most recent Republican presidents, who have hypocritically preached fiscal restraint by the federal government while pil…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Jack Layton’s lesson for Liberals and Tories
This is what Adam Radwanski said in today’s Globe & Mail:It should be humbling to his contemporaries that this was enough to make many Canadians acutely feel a void as soon as he was gone. Because without taking anything away from Mr. Layton’s …
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The HST Rebellion: Now it’s the turn of Premier Christy Clark
So irate voters in BC, the greatest of the Canadian provinces, have risen up and cast aside the HST decision made by the Liberal government:In this referendum, 1.6 million voters — about 51 per cent of the registered voter base in B.C. — rejected t…
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