It seems everyone is picking Thomas Mulclair as the favorite to be the next NDP leader after the voting is all said and done. Pundits are predicting it, and there must be a grain of truth to it when former NDP leader Ed Broadbent went public last week with a
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Scott's DiaTribes: Looking forward to covering the NDP Leadership Convention
The NDP is holding their leadership convention on March 23-24 in Toronto, and they put out the word a month or so back that they would be accrediting bloggers to cover their convention. After some consultations, instead of applying as representing my individual blog, I decided to apply to represent
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Robocon update
A couple of different things today: – Here’s a study showing that despite claims to the contrary: alleged voter suppression tactics using robocalls (ie telling them their polling station had moved) may have worked rather significantly. Some caveats in there, of course, but it’s the first really in-depth study of
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: One does not equal the other
Certain columnists in certain media are trying to downplay the Robocalls/Robocon controversy by claiming that certain ridings where robo-calls were alleged to have been showed increased voter turnout; ergo, voter suppression didn’t happen or robo-calls didn’t work. The latter argument – where it’s claimed the alleged vote suppression robocalls didn’t
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Blog geek stuff – external voting button for Prog Blog
One of the features we’ve been trying to resurrect since “new” Progressive Bloggers went up is the ability for external votes to work on people’s blogs.. so they can have readers vote for them there, rather then having them go to the main Progressive Blogger site. You’ll note that in
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: A small bit of advice for Stephen Harper
If you’re going to send a spokesperson out to the media and talkshows to defend/obfuscate against robocalls and whether or not your party engaged in voter suppression, I’d suggest Dean Del Maestro isn’t the guy to keep sending out there. He’s an accident that’s happening (the Liberals were calling their
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Robo-con thoughts.
That’s what we’re naming this alleged electoral fraud scheme – at least on Twitter, apparently. My thoughts on this are as follows: – Is Harper or high ranking members of the PMO involved? I don’t know, but the fact this is the party who has done never-before seen attack-ads in
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Bill C-30, Section 34: Where are all the Conservative libertarians on this?
Scary stuff found in Section 34 of Bill C-30, courtesy of Terry Mileski of CBC: Section 33 tells us that, ‘The Minister may designate persons or classes of persons as inspectors for the purposes of the administration and enforcement of this Act.’..Section 34 spells out the sweeping powers of these
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: When you’ve lost the National Post..
Actually, it’s not quite the National Post, despite some saying that. It’s actually one of their op-eds calling for the resignation. Still, I think that’s the first call I’ve seen for it, and the major surprise is it didn’t come first from the Star or even one of their writers:
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: A timely new story on police and internet
For Vic Toews or the Conservative government and the furore they’ve caused with Bill C-30, the “internet snooping” bill, as I prefer to call it, not the “lawful access” bill, or the law to get child pornographers off the internet bill, or whatever ridiculous name Vic Toews tries to come
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Stop Online Spying
Nothing more by me needs to be said: Loading…
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Lots of odds and ends to talk about this morning
There are several stories that caught my eye over the weekend. Here are some of them: It appears the Mennonites are the latest group in Canada to get on the wrong side of the Conservative government: The Mennonite Central Committee Canada reports on its website that the Canadian International Development
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Contradiction? What contradiction?
Prime Minister Harper in China on the tarsands: Prime Minister Stephen Harper blasted “foreign money and influence” behind critics of Canada’s oil sands even as he welcomed Chinese investment in Canada’s energy sector…At the same time, he made clear he does not equate Chinese foreign investment in oil sands development
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Olive: Time to play hardball with Caterpillar (but you can bet the Conservatives won’t)
Here is a very hard-line piece from David Olive today in the Star about what the Canadian government should do about Caterpillar – a tone I’m not used to seeing Olive, the Star’s business columnist, come out and write in his pieces, so he’s obviously ticked off: We could nationalize
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Public backlash forces Harper to back down a bit on OAS cuts
Conservative MP’s are often described as parrots for doing nothing but repeating scripted phrases over and over again in defense of their government, or being not the brightest bunch in the world. However, they are smart enough to recognize when the voters get mad, and concerned enough about their own
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Tony Clement is your champion of open government, Conservatives?
I had to laugh when I read this: ..Clement will be hosting a conference in Ottawa next week on open government. “As a minister, Clement has pushed forward with initiatives to enable Canada’s public servants to use social media in the workplace and a broader initiative to introduce open government
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Harper needs to come clean on his Old Age Security ‘reforms’
Parliament resumes very shortly as of this writing. It is to be hoped that Stephen Harper will deem Parliament important enough to reveal the details on his very public musings in Davos Switzerland last week about Old Age Security needing to be “reformed” – an announcement that couldn’t wait for
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: It’s time to step on a Caterpillar, Premier Mcguinty
I was reading a column that Martin Reg-Cohn wrote yesterday on the continuing saga in London where as those who’ve followed it know, Caterpillar has locked out it’s workers in a draconian effort to get them to slah their wages by half – this as the CEO earns a million
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Harper to First Nations: Bother my MP’s, not me, with your issues.
I’ve not seen another article come out yet on the meeting that Harper had with the First Nation’s Chiefs other then this one, but from the First Nations perspective, their concerns appear to have been taken rather lightly by the PM, to say the least: First Nations leaders will be
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: ‘Canada is becoming a jingoistic petro-state’
Who made that declaration a couple of days ago in the US? The Nation? Daily Kos? Some other left-wing publication? Nope. Slate did – and Slate isn’t exactly known for its left-wing tendencies. A rather unflattering portrait of it’s northern neighbour: It’s well known that America’s dependence on foreign oil
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