Miscellaneous material to start your week.- Simon Enoch rightly criticizes the Cons’ fair-weather commitment to democracy in the wake of a fairly resounding vote on the part of Canadian Wheat Board members to preserve the institution and its single-des…
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Accidental Deliberations: Strength in diversity
I’ll deal in more detail with the prospect of Pat Martin running for the NDP’s leadership as a pro-merger candidate. But before getting into its ultimate significance, let’s note how the media’s coverage distorts what Martin’s trial balloon actually fi…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.
– Geoffrey Stevens notes that much of the Cons’ justification for utterly senseless choices is to point to an imaginary majority:
We don’t have a “silent majority” in Canada. It appears we have instead an …
Accidental Deliberations: A response in kind
Shorter Toronto Star:
We’re *outraged* that our transparently systematic attempt to cause trouble for the NDP was met with an equally systematic refusal to play along.
Update: pogge has more.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Still feigned indignation
At the very least, the media finally seems to have picked up on the reality that all Canadian national parties include some former Bloc members and/or sovereigntists in their ranks. But that leads to the next obvious problem: that it’s scolding the NDP…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Gerald Caplan calls out the non-stop and substance-free gotcha politics facing the NDP since the public started recognizing that it had a legitimate chance to form government: It never stops and never will. The momen…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The medium of the bread and circuses message
How short is a news cycle? How long is a piece of string? Give any story a couple of days and odds are you won’t be reading or watching on Day Three what you were reading about and watching on Day One. Like Bloc NDP leader Nycole Turmel who – sp…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Telling
No, Tim Harper’s take on the latest news about Nycole Turmel isn’t any better than most of the media’s coverage. But it does at least include one rather telling contrast:Inside Quebec, the Turmel revelation will likely cause little damage.It is underst…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Linda McQuaig notes that the same financial actors who caused the global economic meltdown that’s being used as an excuse for austerity measures around the world are themselves making out like bandits – even tho…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On incomplete pictures
One might think that an expose into Nycole Turmel’s political involvement would go back further than the past five years. But surely Daniel Leblanc wouldn’t have cut anything important out of the story…“I’ve been at this for decades,” Turmel sa…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Unclear on the concept
Quick, try to make sense of this passage from Postmedia’s coverage of the Cons’ plans to reintroduce gun registry legislation this fall:In October 2010, the bill was killed by an opposition motion, which passed by a slim margin of 153-151. The motion w…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On stretches
Shorter Barbara Yaffe:Of course we can find good news for Liberals – just as long as we get creative in defining the term!Update: Actually, there’s a serious point to be made here. While it’s disingenuous enough to conflate the B.C. and Quebec Libs wit…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Christopher Michael points out the real problem underlying the News of the World’s scandalous demise:The Sun is either clairvoyant at predicting the results of British elections, or instrumental in determining t…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Evening Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.- Janyce McGregor’s article on the perils of Senate reform is well worth a read in general. But let’s particularly highlight an issue I’ve raised before – if one which is no less glaring in the absence of …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: What’s good for the goose…
It’s rather surprising to learn that donating money to a political party is considered a “questionable political tactic”. But I look forward to seeing the same standard applied to a single one of the Saskatchewan Party’s thousands of corporate donors.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Barbara Yaffe points out that the Council on Hemispheric Affairs seems to have a much better idea what Canada needs out of a fighter jet than the government that’s trying to push ahead with a multi-billion doll…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On timelines
August 2009: The NDP’s federal convention in Halifax votes to have the party’s executive draft a new preamble to the NDP’s constitution.May 2011: The NDP achieves unprecedented success in Canada’s federal election, forming Canada’s Official Opposition …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- The McGill Institute’s Election Content Analysis includes plenty of interesting information on how this month’s federal election was covered. But the most noteworthy point looks to be the lag time between dev…
Continue readingDriving The Porcelain Bus: Toronto Star attempts a smear-job on Jack and Olivia
MPs lap up free trips courtesy of groups, foreign governments – thestar.comTowards the end of the election campaign, the Toronto Star very grudgingly endorsed the NDP. Before that they usually directly or subtly attacked the NDP. Now, we see they are b…
Continue readingMadLibMadLib: That Terrible, Terrible CBC (or How The Left Controls The World)
Now, I’m not a mathematician; I went to librarian school. I do, however, understand a little bit about statistics and I can count as high as my fingers allow. Recently I was forwarded to a video that supposedly proves that the CBC Vote Compass is Liberal biased (or “totally rigged”).
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