Over? OVER?!? It's not over until we say it is!

First of all, I have to say something you'll rarely hear on this blog: Stephen Harper's government is right. Taxing banks in order to create a bailout fund is a very bad idea. Primarily, it will destroy whatever small sense of moral hazard remained in the market. Not only will a bailout be expected, it'll be guaranteed, so go ahead and continue whatever ridiculous derivative inventing and market manipulation you like, knowing there's absolutely no downside. Responsible institutions get to pay for the mistakes of the irresponsible ones.

This is a better idea, producing big downsides for shareholders and bondholders of irresponsible banks, as well as upper management that is paid heavily in options. It also would make unwinding a failed bank instead of bailing it out more attractive, because the liability side of the final ledger would be missing all of the bondholders that would otherwise expect first claim to the bank's assets.

The market's shedding another percentage or two of its value today, approaching the low point of last Thursday's panicked selloff and immediate bounce. We might be watching the slow deflation of another market bubble, fueled by emergency interest rates and worldwide government debt spending at a rate that can't be sustained. We need to be ready for more choppy waters ahead. We need something smarter than the proposed bank tax.

Finally, a reason to follow Twitter

Best feed ever.

Now she tells us

Helena Guergis, yesterday:

I feel as though they've thrown the rule books out the window, that they're not respecting due process at all. I find it very undemocratic.

Gee, ya think?

The ball in the Prime Minister's court

The Speaker's decision is pretty clear - when it comes down to it, the House has the right to insist on whatever documents it wants.  However, he's given the government two weeks to find an accommodation with Parliament about how to release these documents and still protect the national interest.

One of two things will happen now: 

The Prime Minister will take seriously the decision, and will begin to negotiate with the opposition leaders to find that middle path. 

Or, the Prime Minister will consider the two weeks an opportunity to play more games, trying to work around this decision. 

The first choice would be good for Canada.  The second would not.  Guess which one of these paths I think this particular Prime Minister will take?

Decision Day?

I was hoping to be safely tucked back into my own domain before another election brought about Gaffe-o-Meter IV: The Gaffinating, but there is some buzz that the Speaker's decision regarding the contempt of Parliament motion made weeks ago might send Canadians to the polls.  However, I will do what I need to do, if the Prime Minister decides that it's easier to ignore his own fixed-date election legislation for the second time rather than respect the institutions of Canadian democracy.

However, I don't think things will happen as fast as all that.  Then again, I never seem to see it coming until we're on top of it, so what do I know?

As Bear604 always liked to write, "For those of you scoring at home"

Two weeks after banks bumped mortgage rates 6/10s of a percent, here comes another quarter.  This will be a wilder ride than even I thought.

On a four hundred thousand dollar mortgage (not an unreasonable amount of loan to buy a pretty boring run-of-the-mill single family detached house in Edmonton), in two weeks your debt servicing costs just went up by $3400 a year - almost $300 a month.  If there are two more fortnights like this before your mortgage renewal date comes up,  you'll need to come up with an extra $850 a month, so I hope your family income has gone up by $30,000 a year since your last renewal so you can convince the bank you can afford that.

Update, April 27: here's another 0.15%, rounding the increase to a full percentage point in a month.  It's possible that even the bears don't know how far this can go.

Good news at last

The Oilers have the first draft pick in the 2010 entry draft, so that was totally worth sucking all year long.

Here I am

If it wasn't for messing around with the blog, I'm sure I would have something pithy and entertaining to say about Rahim Jaffer or Dave Taylor.  I'll see what I can come up with later today.

Meanwhile, this generic template is very much like my original back in 2002, so I might have some fun with it before I return some variation of blinding red and orange.

Today's the day

Blogger stops supporting FTP transfer on the first of May. I've been using FTP transfer to publish my blog for nearly a decade. I also have my own URL and several side pages. So, long story short, this is going to be interesting.

Fortunately, no one reads me any more except me, so no one should notice if I break everything. Wish me luck!

Edited to add: It didn't go as well as I'd hoped, and now it seems I can only manually change the pages at revmod.ca.  This will be my temporary home until I have the time to repair it all.

We will now begin our descent. Fasten your seatbelts.

I don't think I'm a genius for predicting interest rates were due to rise, but apparently many people were surprised by this sudden turn of events, and are responding to the change by.... er, assuming a mountain of debt while they're still allowed to. But don't worry - this couple won't spend more than they can afford. They're both personal fitness trainers! I gather that's a lucrative career.

So, today. A day later. The Conference Board of Canada says that twenty percent of Canadians can't afford their housing. But instead of laying the responsibility on the shoulders of housing inflation completely disconnected from the rest of the economy, "The report found that private-sector developers have tended to focus on building homes that are aimed at higher income Canadians." Just to be clear, one builder in Edmonton will sell you a 1200 square foot house in Leduc for $320K. Going by a standard affordability calculation, which says that historically a house should cost about three times the family's annual income, this would be aimed at higher income Edmontonians, the average family earning just over $90K/year. But I don't think anyone is mistaking 1200 sq. ft. as a mansion, nor Leduc as a lucrative location. In other words, I think the Conference Board of Canada is smoking crack.

The easy money has been flowing, and it's kept housing prices hyperinflated. But this isn't the tulip bubble - the Conference Board's report makes clear that overpriced homes have real consequences for real people. The piper will have to be paid. The day will arrive sooner than anyone seems to think.

International news

So the United States finally has public health insurance.

What? Really?

Okay, so the United States finally has universal health coverage.

No! Really?

So, I'm led to believe that the United States finally has health coverage extended to many more people. Yes? Whew!

Anyway, David Frum explains the difference in the interests of the Republican Party and the Conservative Entertainment Industry, and how the health care bill illustrates that the former is paying the price for the selfish interests of the latter. Gosh, that's too bad, Republicans! Boo hoo hoo! Maybe if you'd call out Glenn Beck's bullshit or quit apologising to Rush Limbaugh, this wouldn't have happened! But you didn't! Boo hoo hoo!

And now, Inflation

Just a week ago, analysts were expressing concern about the rising dollar and inproved job situation, and hoping for an interest rate increase much sooner than September, Mark Carney's hoped-for date of moving from zero. Those analysts are worried that, while we all want the economy to recover from recession (and for jobs to appear in greater numbers), if we overshoot, we can move into an inflationary spiral.

Well, this morning, StatsCan reported 2.1% inflation for February, much higher than expected. The Bank of Canada really only has one lever to pull, and so I expect interest rates must start upward sooner than Carney wanted. If the supply of essentially free money in the economy isn't choked off, too many dollars will continue to compete for too few goods and services, and inflation goes much higher than anyone wants.

The only good news in this situation is that after Carney's extensive promises of holding the rate through the summer, it won't take much of an interest rate hike to have an overcompensating psychological effect. This good news is its own bad news as well, though - the recovery is still fragile enough that even a shot across the bow could shatter it. What's a Governor of the Bank of Canada to do?

I think, in having to choose between a little medicine now or a lot later, the correct choice is obvious.

Either way, we're rapidly reaching the end of fire sale interest rates. This will have an obvious cooling effect on the housing market. And since I think the housing market is already hyper-inflated (Follow the full story here, here, here, here, and here), this is another reason why a little medicine now beats requiring a lot later.

Generational theft

In the face of a growing deficit and lower oil and gas prices, the provincial government has elected to return to the sort of fire-sale royalty rates we charged for our oil and gas before Ed Stelmach was elected leader of his party on the promise of a review of those rates.

So, unlike other jurisdictions that have responded to major recessions with one-time infusions of cash into their economies, Alberta is responding to an oil-price-related slowdown of our overheated economy with a price cut on our resources that will forgo $363 million in revenue for each of the next two years, and unknown amounts beyond that, while hoping to deplete our finite resources more quickly. In fact, if they don't, this policy will be called a failure.

Because the only thing better than leaving our children with a debt burden is making sure they don't have the natural resources to sell in order to help pay for our greed. Hilarious!

Another reason I preferred Stephane Dion

POGGe has been pointing out occasions when Israeli Apartheid Week, described as a "pro-Palestinian teach-in" on university campuses across the country and indeed around the world, has exposed several of our nation's leaders as anywhere between timid mouthers of platitudes to rabidly pro-Likud and pro-occupation and expansion.

Among the first set are people who are frightened by the use of the word "apartheid". Ontario legislators unanimously passed a resolution condemning IAW, claiming among other things that

The term "Israeli Apartheid Week" incites "hatred against Israel, a democratic state that respects the rule of law and human rights, and the use of the word 'apartheid' in this context diminishes the suffering of those who were victims of a true apartheid regime in South Africa," said [Ontario Tory MPP and resolution mover, Peter] Shurman.

Compare this to Desmond Tutu, who aparently is willing to diminish his own suffering, because he compares Israeli government policies to apartheid, arguing that they neither respect human rights nor the rule of law in their relationship with the Palestinian people, whatever the Ontario Legislature might say.

Which brings me to the title of my post. Micheal Ignatieff has condemned IAW, implying it is anti-Semetic, racist, and intolerant. Never mind that his earlier descriptions suggest he understands the situation on the ground just fine; this most recent statement regarding IAW shows he is willing to be cowed by a sufficiently strong lobby. At least our current government is honestly taking a side in the conflict, even if it is the side of the oppressing government.

Calling Israel's policy in the occupied territories "apartheid" is certainly tough language. But condemning that language serves to stifle the debate, to stifle criticism, not the other way around as Ignatieff claims.

Dear Olympic attendees who got curling tickets as part of a package instead of events you really wanted to go to:

I'm sure you don't know any better, but this is unbelievably rude. So is this. Would you scream and yell at golfers about to take a swing, or as the first article suggests, ring a cowbell through a figure skating routine?

It's partially the venue's fault for not having someone holding up a "quiet, please" sign. Although if it turns out there's an electronic board that flashes "Make Some Noise", I'm going to have some strong words for VANOC.

A true test to see if Danielle Smith is as savvy as everyone says - will she say "Thanks anyway"?

My one-time M.P., crazy-ass Myron Thompson, is now sitting on a Wild Rose Alliance constituency association board. So, lucky them.

This has the potential to be interesting

In the face of the Wild Rose Alliance becoming a force in Alberta politics, and watching neither the provincial Liberals nor the NDP (who I continue to dutifully belong to and donate to, barring a better alternative) show any desire to renew themselves after taking an election pounding that was at least partially self-inflicted, I'm ready to hear other ideas.

So is the Alberta Party.

(Thanks to Dave Cournoyer for the heads-up about the twists and turns in the Renew Alberta saga.)

Math

I'm becoming increasingly concerned about the changes Flaherty announced on Tuesday, so I've been crunching some numbers. I posted large swaths of this in the Edmonton Real Estate blog comments section this morning, but I thought it bore repeating here:

I'm more than a little concerned that the delay before the change will create a bubble all its own, quite aside from any debate about a current bubble. Surely there are some first-time buyers out there who are going to rush in while they can still get more money/debt based on the variable rate. And I'm also sure there are lenders who will happily give them those loans calculated at absurd variable rates while they still can.

At ING's posted variable rate of 1.95%, according to their own calculator:

On a family income of $50,000, they'll lend someone $375,000 with payments of $1233 a month. At their five year fixed rate (still a low 3.89%), payments go up to $1629. At a still historically below-average rate of 6%, this family will now be paying $2120/month, over half of their gross income, on this mortgage.

$100,000 gets me $780,000 with payments of $2567/month. 3.89% raises that to $3388. And 6% takes us to $4409 - once again, over half their gross income, so God help them if one of them goes on maternity leave or long-term disability.

The banks will do this because they have no skin in the game - they're securitising the debt the same way American banks did, and it's all guarenteed by you and I through the CMHC anyway.

So quite aside from any bubble I might currently see us in, we're going to have a hard landing when this pool of mad-rush driven buyers dries up, and another when the rates go up, as they inevitably must.

Changes

Jim Flaherty has announced a few changes to CMHC rules in the hopes of deflating a bubble that he insists doesn't exist.

Some people may chalk up the timing of this announcement as the government wanting it to be ignored in the face of Olympic fever. I think it shows how quickly we've gone from zero to consensus that Canadians are living with a housing bubble, and that the government wants to curb that talk as quickly as possible, without curbing the market.

Unfortunately, the talk is due to an actual housing bubble, and the market has to curb to end it. Flaherty's changes will only force the people closest to the edge to take a step back, and not much of a step at that. I think we'll see more at the budget, if the talk doesn't slow between now and then.

Edited to add: The CBC article linked above keeps changing as details emerge and reaction is considered. One reaction at the end of the article almost knocked me out of my chair:

"This is a little bit late in telling Canadians we need to be more cautious in taking out a mortgage," Royal Bank chief economist Patricia Croft said in reaction to Flaherty's announcement.

Though she stopped short of calling Canadian real estate in bubble territory already, she said the April 19 date for implementation is actually likely to cause more short-term stimulation of the market, as people scramble to get in under the deadline.

"If you wanted to buy a house, wouldn't you now do it before April?" Croft asked. "It's even more evidence that house prices are going to cool down later this year."

When you hear a banker, for whom profits come from issuing mortgages and securitizing the debt, tell you the market is inflated, run for the hills. Run for your lives. That, or Patrica Croft deserves a medal for honesty in the face of her employer's short-term self-interest. Or, she's hoping to have some deflationary effect herself, better sooner than later in the eyes of even the financial industry.

The last actually seems most likely. It's entirely likely that banks have looked at the wreckage wreaked by the housing bubble and burst in the United States, and would just as soon avoid the worst of that, even at the expense of a few short-term dollars. Consider it a side benefit of having a financial system operated by a tiny oligarchy - they have the luxury of looking beyond the next quarter's profits.

Before the market tanks...

... it's fun to celebrate a little something. Congratulations to Alexandre Bilodeau on Canadian gold!

You read it here first

The Wall Street Journal yesterday asks interesting questions about a Canadian housing bubble.

Canadian Economy Death Watch, part 2

In the United States, the inevitable failure of sub-prime lending threatened to pull down banks and insurance companies directly, and the ensuing recession managed to bring the car industry to the brink. In Canada, our banks may be huge sub-prime lenders, but backed by the government via the CMHC, the bubble looks isolated from the rest of the economy (so long as the massive extra government debt paying off the investors in securitized mortgages isn't considered part of "the economy", even though it's inevitable that it'll result in increased taxes for reduced program spending). When it all spins apart, will only the foreclosed-upon, and the Canadian taxpayer, carry the burden?

Well, the construction industry would certainly struggle - no one will be interested in buying a new home in a deflationary market. That would trickle down into the rest of the economy. So would layoffs or wage rollbacks in the public sector, a possible step toward balancing a CMHC-caused deficit. (Never mind that public sector workers had no part in causing the problem, unless that public-sector worker is Jim Flaherty.)

A few extra mortgage defaults, caused by wage cuts or job losses, will add to the snowball. Alberta is already dealing with the highest rate of mortgages in arrears in the country, adding a hundred a month from under a thousand for over two years now, breaking 3500 in November (the PDF really has to be downloaded to be readable). Many more motivated house sellers makes for a weak and even deflationary housing market. Lather, rinse, repeat. Spread the recession around to the retailers of everything from soup to Nutz.

Short of stocking up on gold and guns, and hiding in your bunker trading recipes for squirrel stew, what can we do, individually and collectively, to protect ourselves from this? I don't pose the question intending to answer it. I also don't pose it rhetorically. I'll be spending the coming days and weeks asking some very smart people. I'll let you know if the answers are useful. Do I need to point out that I think selling your real estate, particularly property you don't actually live in, particularly in the most overheated markets, would be an important step?

Danger

So, Mrs. RevMod and I have been doing some househunting, and we were both shocked at the size of mortgage we've been pre-approved for. We've also been wondering why the housing market in Canada hasn't suffered the massive deflation of the American market. Even as we've gotten closer to buying, we've been researching the answers to these questions, and we've reached the point of stepping back from the precipice. Allow me to share what I've discovered.

Former Tory and eventual independent MP Garth Turner is the author of Going Rouge Greater Fool, a book and weblog dedicated to tracking the Canadian housing market as we rush toward what he sees as its inevitable decline. Now, my politics certainly don't match his, but he's spent a lot of time thinknig about the housing market, so he can't be ignored. Further, unlike almost every one of the real estate "experts" that are quoted in the newspaper (presidents of local real estate marketing organizations, bankers, CMHC or government representatives), he doesn't have any particular self-interest (beyond what I expect are investments that reflect his view of the future). He, and others I've found through reading him, have pointed out some problems on the horizon for Canadian real estate:

- Wages have been stagnant through the entire rise of the housing market since the turn of the century, significantly raising the ratio that measures affordability (median house price divided by the median household income) People have been assuming greater amounts of debt to buy these homes, because debt has been cheap and easy throughout the period. They're willing to take on that greater debt because they believed through the boom that geometrically increasing prices on real estate would continue in perpetuity (a falsehood made obvious in the last couple of years), and they believe now that there's something unique about the Canadian market that shelters us from the real estate devaluation that's happened so sharply in the United States and elsewhere (resource-based economy, conservative banking practices, magical Canadian pixie dust).

- Far from being conservative, our banks are lending out absurd amounts of money to most anyone who asks, and then securitizing the debt. Those of you who have paid any attention at all to the American real estate meltdown will recognize this practice - banks would issue mortgages to people at attractive teaser rates, with absolutely no concern about the ability of the borrower to pay it back. They then would repapckage the loans into mortgage-backed securities, to sell to investors who were more than happy to buy a security that was backed by the solid Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The banks would then have to issue more mortgages to continue to have debt to package into securities.

The reputation was that these loans were only issued to people on the edge, people who shouldn't have been issued credit cards, much less mortgages, but as we've since discovered, many many people in all sorts of income classes were issued too much debt, and the availability of this seemingly easy money had a rapid inflationary effect on housing prices. That led to the speculative market in housing, which led to overconstruction, and all of this continued to feed prices, so long as no one got off the merry-go-round. But of course, perpetual motion machines don't exist in nature, and neither do they exist in a real economy.

Let me say this again, because it's important. Your bank will lend you money - more than you think, because they'll sell the debt to someone else. The debt is guaranteed by CMHC, an arm of the government, which means when the housing bubble deflates, we're all going to be on the hook as taxpayers to make sure the investors continue to get paid. The bank, therefore has no interest in screening you to make sure you can pay back the loan - they have no skin in the game. This is the very recipe that cooked up a huge bubble in the American housing market.

- The government may see the bubble coming, but it has vey few good choices. If they make outward noises that it's a bubble, they ignite the selling that'll pop it. That goes for more subtle signs that they know it's a bubble, like tightening the CMHC qualifications. They could raise the prime interest rate, but that can also be seen as a warning about the housing market, and it comes with a second problem - a higher interest rate slows growth, which would be a good policy to deal with housing, but a lousy idea in the rest of the economy. The point is that beyond a certain threshold, there's no good way to slowly let air out of the bubble. Really, the government can only leave it be and attempt to quietly prepare and even hedge for the worst (buying up the mortgage-backed securities now might be cheaper than paying them out later, for example), or they can try to keep the bubble inflating in the hopes of passing the problem on to the next government. That's obviously an irresponsible choice, but knowing how Prime Minister Prorougey McAutocrat has behaved thus far, it's the most likely choice.

So, to conclude, Mrs. RevMod and I have decided that this may be the wrong time to buy, that Canada's real estate market isn't immune to the trouble that incinerated the American market, and that it'll do no harm to rent a while longer while we watch from the sidelines and perhaps get other debts out of our way while the interest rate is still so low.

As a postscript, I want to link to the Edmonton Real Estate blog as well. The authors are Edmonton realtors, and don't have the same pessimistic view I have of the long term prospects, but they also don't seem to have the same starry-eyed optimism I've heard from every other realtor or sales centre associate I've spoken to over the last few months. It's worth a read on occasion if you're interested in more detail and in the perspective of thoughtful people deeply involved in this market.

Update, Sunday evening: The Globe and Mail's cover story this weekend uses the dreaded word "bubble", but only to deny one exists. The alarm bells started going off for me reading the sidebar:

Residential mortgage debt as a percentage of personal disposable income has been rising since the early 1980s.

But thanks to lower mortgage rates, the debt service ratio - a measure of how well Canadians can afford their monthly interest payments - was trending downwards until a couple years ago.

And since the banks losses on mortgages in Canada are so small as to be insignificant, they have steadily continued to dole out more in mortgages each and every year.

To recap this with a slightly different spin, for the last couple of years Canadians have taken on decreasingly affordable mortgages, even while interest rates are at historic lows. The government's default insurance exposure is likewise increasing. And, to do the math, on a half-million dollar home, the 5% down payment is $25,000, but a 3.15% CMHC insurance premium is added to the mortgage, making the debt nearly $490,000. It will take very little downward pressure to leave these homeowners with more debt than house, which encourages defaults, which begins the dominos tumbling. I say again, we're headed for a very uncertain and scary time, and Jim Flaherty can try to cool the market come budget time by raising the bar for entry, or he can stay on the sidelines while an entirely predictable crash takes a lot of Canadian futures with it.

That can't be right

So, there are in the range of thirty-five thousand commercial flights in the United States daily - thirteen-and-a-half million in 2008. That's one hundred and eight million flights in eight years. In that time, two whack-jobs - one with a theoretically-exploding shoe, the other with theoretically-exploding gaunch - have tried and failed to blow holes in two planes. I'm going to say maybe eight hundred passengers between them. To keep another approximately one hundred people a year alive from being bothered with foiling the incompetent plots of underpants-burning idiots for the next eight years, we're going to walk through strip-search machines, take even less carry-on luggage, and sit still without so much as a magazine like so many (twelve billion over eight years) misbehaving elementary school children during the last stretch of our flights.

Going by my estimate of four hundred people per flight, a plane would have to blow up every four days to approach the death toll by automobile on US roads. If the point is to save lives, it seems to me you could have much more positive effect by slowing down the top speeds on roads than you can by going through a greater inquisition at the gate. And meanwhile, my estimate assumes someone actually manages to ignite their hat or shirt or what-have-you, which, going by the first two attempts, really isn't that easy to do. Right now, the death toll by exploding clothing on planes is zero. Zero!

I suppose what I'm suggesting is that we could stand to not overreact. But governments love to overreact - it deflects accusations of failure.

Of course they were

The Yes Men have admitted responsibility for the fake Environment Canada press release this morning setting impressive goals for carbon dioxide emission reduction. I only wish I had had time to predict this outcome on the blog this morning, because I certainly did to my wife at 7am. Oh, well.

The best part was when an official from the PMO described the hoax as "childish" in an e-mail to the media, and then proceeded to berate the wrong person for it.

Here's how the stunt wasn't childish at all: one PMO official showed exactly what he's made of, slandering a political opponent for no good reason. The Prime Minister loves to employ other bullies to match his own proclivities. The Yes Men like to expose groups and individuals for exactly what they are.

Here's another way it wasn't childish: the first story today was about Environment Canada's announcement that Canada would be taking a strong leadership position on CO2 reduction. The next story, a couple of hours later, is that the Canadian government had to make an announcement that they still suck on climate change.

Thanks, Yes Men! Screw over our government any old time!

Let's see those assholes in Strathcona County ban me from using this: Yes, that's a steering wheel laptop tray. That's totally going on my Christmas wish list. As a bonus, I'll get to test my vehicle's airbags, repeatedly.

(from Amazon, hat tip Wonkette)

Announcements, alt music Friday
So, in a week, I'll be marrying the future Mrs. RevMod.

My strongest impression of my stag evening tonight was this music. Though you won't be seeing an attractive brunette's breasts in accompaniment, as I did, enjoy!

Tory trouble

Dan thinks last night's Calgary-Glenmore by-election could be the first indication that the political map in Alberta is about to change.

Obama calls Kanye West a "Jackass"



Which is, you know, totally obviously true, so if Obama finds himself having to beg for forgiveness for this, I'm going to be a little pissed off.

I hope this is the only question that's raised during the press conference at the end of the meeting with the Prime Minister today, which of course it will be.

The best part of this story is the President's choice of word. He seems so young and cool, presidential-wise, but then he channels my favourite elderly curmudgeon:



The next time a bunch of birthers show up for a thinly-veiled racist protest, he should totally go out on the front step of the White House and tell those kids to get off his lawn.

Cover

It's beginning to become clear that neither the NDP nor the Conservatives are particularly interested in going to an election right now.

The Tories are still attempting to write a negative script about Micheal Ignatieff, because neither the one where he's a foreigner (born in Kenya, perhaps?) nor the one where he's in bed with"the socialists and the separatists" seems to be sticking. I think they'd like more time to try to brand him. (It's also worth nothing that even as a negative narrative stuck much more successfully to Dion, it still wasn't enough to get the CPC the majority they crave so badly.)

The NDP have more seats than ever, and many in the party have very long memories of what's happened to these sizable caucuses in the past - Canadians tire of minority governments and all but wipe the NDP out trying to create a majority. I'm not sure this history is likely to repeat, but the psychological scars remain. Further, Canadians don't seem too keen on a fall election, so for the NDP to prop up the government for a few months or even issue to issue leaves the party smelling like a rose. Finally, when Harper next goes down his inevitable path of power-hungry jackassery, Layton gets to be the hero who pulls the plug on the government.

So that's what the changes to EI are all about - the Conservatives have to offer Layton some cover to hide behind, and adding a few extra weeks of payments for the formerly long-term employed is just about the tiniest fig leaf of an excuse to vote with the government as I could imagine. But given how badly the NDP wants to find an excuse, it'll probably do.

Gaffe-o-Meter 2009?

So, rather than wait for an inevitable bit of Tory pushiness or stupidity, Micheal Ignatieff has announced that the Liberals will vote against whatever confidence measure happens to wander up. I suppose he avoids being seen as indecisive or unwilling to pull the trigger, the way Dion was, but this blanket "Let's have an election" declaration seems to be distasteful to a lot of Canadians who would just as soon not unless there's some pressing reason.

Nonetheless, strategic errors aren't gaffes, and I don't count pre-writ foolishness anyway. But I guess what I'm saying is I'm starting to think I need to prepare for the latest gaffe-o-meter contest, including reminding myself who won the last prediction and making an donation to the candidate of his or her choice.

More gaffe announcements to come.

Alt music Friday, alliteration edition

Bye Bye Bye. Boy band? Bollocks!

Fringe time and Alt Music Friday, all in one post!

May I recommend a show, having seen none at all yet this year? This is my third year of carrying a frequent fringer pass, and it's the Be Arthurs' third year of performing. I first saw them in 2007, performing as buskers between venues. Last year, they were promoted to free stage status. This year, they're putting on Reunion Tour, a "play" which I gather from their materials is a thin skeleton upon which to hang their musical stylings.

Ah, yes, their musical stylings - the Be Arthurs are Edmonton's premier ukulele cover band. Really, it can't be described - it needs to be seen.

And yet, if I rob a bank, I'd go to jail

Investment bank Goldman Sachs has posted a record profit, and will be paying out record bonuses to staff. A lot of the profit seems to be coming from acting as intermediaries selling government bonds issued by the United States Treasury in order to raise the funds required to pay for the bailout of investment banks.

Karma has its work cut out for it.

Why I don't like Harper even a little

"Nobody wants to see the opposition coalition we had at the end of last year," Harper said. "I think everybody in the public recognized the dangers that presents to the country."

Know what's more dangerous? The Prime Minister publicly and repeatedly pissing on Canadian Parliamentary tradition for his own political advantage. By all means, convince the public to disrespect the institutions that has helped our national government work for a century and a half.

Stephen Harper is a republican, in the purest sense of the word.

Economic stimulus

I hear an election costs the government three hundred million dollars. That's a lot of jobs (as opposed to the Tory economic stimulus, which discusses spending a lot of money but doesn't actually spend or do anything). Go for it, Iggy!

By the by, I can't think of a better fight to cause an election than EI benefit expansion. There is no better way of stimulating the economy than putting money in the hands of people who need to immediately spend it. Again I say, go for it, Iggy! I promise to find a nice picture of you for the Gaffeometer.

Alt Music Friday

I stop by here once in a while. Yeah, not often enough.

Meet Edmonton's new Poet Laureate:



I think the city is just trying to squeeze free concerts out of local musicians. We'll know this for certain if Edmonton's next Poets Laureate are the members of Shout Out Out Out Out.

Geek PSA

If you haven't been watching Dollhouse, why not?

If you have, I highly recommend two very interesting essays about the themes being explored, that can be found here and here.

And again, if you haven't, why not? You totally, totally should.

Slow down

Seriously, Canada, be cool. First with the mix tape, now with this weird starry-eyed stalking? (Oh, please, CBC, do not change the photo at the top of that story, because OMG!!!!1!) Canada, he's the head of state of a rival nation - if he starts to realize we have a huge crush on him, he's going to exploit that, and soon we'll be doing his homework and staying in Afghanistan until 2017.

Then again, he does seem more interested in protecting the rights of Canadians than certain Prime Ministers I could mention. But still.

Alt Music Friday

One of the first blogs ever to link me was published under the title "My City is Still Breathing", but it was years later before I first heard the Weakerthans song the title was lifted from. Since then, I've grown very fond of the band. How can you not love lyrics with this much curling talk?

Party before country

Micheal Ignatieff, yesterday:

I decided to permit [the Newfoundland and Labrador Liberal MPs] in the budget vote tonight a one-time vote of protest to signal their displeasure and my displeasure at these unilateral actions which, in my view, weaken our federation, cause strains in our federation at a time when Canadians should be pulling together.

And then the part that wasn't in the papers:

However, the rest of the Liberal party will vote for the budget, because weakening the federation might be a bad thing, but even worse would be weakening the Liberal party through leading a coalition government, or forcing an election. Expect to see this caucus find other creative ways of expressing our unhappiness with this government that don't involve actually doing anything about it over the next several months.

Or was that part just subtext?

Alt Music Friday

After last week's more challenging and arty Final Fantasy, here's some straight-up rock and roll - Toronto's Tokyo Police Club. Perhaps hearts broken by Ignatieff's acquiescence this week can tessellate into a real opposition.

Games

So the Prime Minister decided to release a budget that the Liberals can mostly accept? A budget that doesn't contain the sorts of poison pills the Fiscal Update did? If only.

Harper was astute enough to realize he couldn't use the budget to attack his Parliamentary opponents, the way he tried in November. But that didn't keep him from attacking opponents outside of Parliament. Just ask Danny Williams. Or the public service unions. (Hat tip to pogge for the latter link.)

It's this Harper that needs to be defeated - it's this Harper who doesn't deserve the confidence of the House. But the Liberal party will put political expediency above the national good, and will continue to play ball with this megalomaniacal small-time Machiavelli.

Hope Ignatieff finds a pair one day soon.

It stopped being about the budget two months ago

Let's review where we are, shall we?

Before the Governor-General reads the throne speech today, she's going to be swearing in 18 new senators - appointments that should not have been made, or should have been refused by the Governor-General, until the Prime Minister proved he had the confidence of the House.

The reason we don't know if he has the confidence of the House is because the Governor-General let him suspend parliament in the face of losing a vote, just like they do in your more civilized Banana Republics. But the opposition might have changed their mind since then, since the Liberals helped with the second stage of any Banana Republic-style centralization of power - they had the Leader of the Opposition disappeared.

And let's not forget where this started - when the government felt a world-wide financial crisis was excellent cover to de-fund the opposition parties.

Suspending Parliament was arrogant. In Canada, the Prime Minister serves at the pleasure of Parliament, not the other way around. Continuing to act like Prime Minister without proving that confidence, particularly with the Senate appointments, moves into the territory of hubris. Now the Prime Minister is playing another game of chicken with the new Liberal leader, "playing games with budget leaks" as Mr. Ignatieff himself put it. This looks like an early sign of the government governing exactly the way they did before the last election: pushing the Liberals into a corner again and again just to watch the creative ways the Liberals could fold their cards, again and again.

The budget might just provide Mr. Ignatieff with a fig leaf's worth of cover to back down from defeating this government, and I feel certain that if it does, Iggy's going to take it. But Harper has spent nearly every day since the last election making a mockery of our fundamental democratic institutions. He attacked the opposition as anti-democratic, and possibly even seditious, even as his behavior suggested a lack of understanding, or a lack of respect, for Canadian parliamentary tradition. His government came very close to defeat, his career very nearly ended, and instead of using the eight weeks since to show any sort of contrition for that behavior, he's once again engaged in brinkmanship with the Liberal Party. I hope, for the sake of Canada's parliamentary democracy, that Mr. Ignatieff is willing to take a stand, to help escort this usurper from 24 Sussex Drive.

I suggested at the suspension of Parliament that Mr. Harper should have done his party a favour and stepped aside. Time's up. It's no longer about the budget. Really, it never was.

Alt music Friday

Time to modernize the blog a little. I've noticed around the webtubes that people like myself, with no particular talent of our own to speak of, have been filling the occasional blog post simply with talented others. With no Parliament sitting yet ("Coalition if necessary, but not necessarily a coalition"? Hope Iggy finds a pair before the budget), and nothing but rainbows and unicorns and puffy clouds coming from our southern neighbours (Even David Brooks reported favourably from the conservative columnist dinner last week: "[Obama] very considerately asked me what vintage of wine I wanted my water turned into."), I've got to fill this page with something, and what could be better than that talented young fella Owen Pallett, aka Final Fantasy? I mean, who samples loops of violin? Here he is, live in Halifax:

The long nightmare is almost over

In a couple of hours, Barack Obama will be President of the United States. He has recieved enormous goodwill from around the world, including from here in Canada - I'd suggest the goodwill toward the United States is nearly as high as it was on September 12, 2001. Whatever else historians will note about Bush 43, the way he used unilateralism (on climate change, on SDI, primarily on Iraq) to screw away that goodwill will be long remembered.

I'm looking forward to seeing if Obama has learned that lesson.

A rhetorical question

Why does the American media require Jon Stewart to point out that Israel is not blamelessly defending herself in the current conflict? Why is he the one to point out the siege Gazans live under, that might make them angry and desperate enough to fire rockets (albeit rockets that can't be aimed and are unlikely to do any damage to people or property)? Why has the American media been perfectly happy to swallow the propaganda of the Israeli government whole, the same way they swallowed the American propaganda leading to the invasion and occupation of Iraq? Don't these people learn anything?

So, I suppose that's several rhetorical questions.

Resurrection

Dennis Saunders, currently writing Neomugwump and formerly of The Moderate Republican, woke his blog up, so I'm pleased to drop him back in the list just in time to point out this very thoughtful post around the Rick Warren controversy.

Short version for those of you who don't follow the USAmerican politics, Obama has asked Prop 8 opponent Rick Warren to deliver a prayer at the Inauguration, making many of Obama's gay supporters feel abandoned or thrown overboard, while Obama panders to the right wing somehow. I think it's more complicated and smarter than that. Dennis agrees. Go read.

Running out of ammo

Perhaps it's just as well that the Prime Minister convinced the Governor-General to let Canada sit out the entire financial crisis, because meanwhile, the United States is quickly running out of ammo to throw at it. Reducing the prime rate to one quarter of one percent is a desperate attempt to encourage spending, because your rate of return through saving on US treasury bills is now a little lower than the rate of return through adding the change you find in your couch to what you already have hidden under the mattress.

No wonder Iggy seems cool to the prospect of a coalition - who the hell wants to govern during the next couple of years?

More irony

The man who said (in a bald lie) that "The opposition does not have the democratic right to impose a coalition..." during his television address a week ago, has decided that even without proving he has the confidence of the House, he should exercise his democratic right to name senators - a dozen and a half of 'em!

As Frank magazine used to put it, Stephen Harper is a Great Canadian(tm).

I suppose as the economy gets worse, ANY job is a good job

Bob Rae sure did look happy as the final obstacle moving out of the way for Iggy's coronation. And no wonder. Does Bob want to be the guy who, in the face of popular opinion deciding that Canada's parliamentary system is somehow "undemocratic", has to pull down the Tory government? Bob took a stand - he said Harper's government was too far gone, had accused his caucus of being traitorous, separatist sympathizers, and no budget was going to fix it. Bob had the conviction to carry through with the coalition plan.

Ignatieff, though - there's a guy who has few enough convictions to lead a Liberal Party. Call him separatist, call him traitor, call him undemocratic - the important thing is to keep all the options open for as long as humanly possible. I'm sure the Tories will waste no time testing this lack of conviction - expect more exciting poison pills in the budget.

Meet your new Liberal caucus - chew toy to the government once again. Because that worked super-well for Dion.

Everybody's got a price

I brag this is an ad-free blog, but once a year, I break the rule to get myself in a poker tournament. Who knew the price was so cheap?

Anyway:

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

The WBCOOP is an online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers.

Registration code: 851558

Countdown

In all of the coverage of the end of Dion's days as leader of the Liberal party (and let's be clear, it's not the coalition generally coming apart, it's the Liberals who are so impatient and dumb they demand the resignation of someone who has already resigned), Stephen Harper seems to have successfully dodged the bullet this time out. But I don't think he has. Instead, I think the Christmas break will just reinforce to opposition members that the Prime Minister has been acting in an increasingly abusive and autocratic manner, and they aren't going to forget easily that they've been painted with the brush of words like "traitor". Should the Liberals get their crap together quickly, even with someone as lukewarm on the coalition as Iggy has been, they should still manage to topple the government, if only to prove to Harper that hiding behind the vice-regal skirts only gets him so far.

The Tories have one save up their sleeve, and I don't think I've heard a syllable about it since Thursday - Harper now has seven weeks to resign and let the Tories find a replacement. Either way, I believe this Prime Minister will be gone before the snow is.

How bad is the economy?

During Meet the Press this morning, among ads selling luxury cars and Charles Schwab trying to make us all feel better, was a Wal-Mart commercial.

We're all going to die.

And the winner is...

Kevin Brennan, once of Tilting at Windmills, more recently of POGGe, came just eleven points away from correctly predicting the gaffe totals, with a prediction of 15/12/2/5. Congratulations, Kevin - identify a local candidate before the next election rolls around, some time after the Liberals get their act together, and they'll see $20 in your name.

See you all right back here whenever Stephen Harper decides again to defeat his own government, in clear contravention of his own fixed date rules. Either that, or four years from now, again in the middle of a Presidential race, again over a Thanksgiving weekend. Remind me to post why fixed dates are stupid.

Gaffe cleanup: the addendum

The election day cleanup I did ignored completely the Andrew McKeever uncontextualized "war deserters" facebook post mentioned back here. No-chance candidate, possibly just a name on the ballot to put up against Bev Ota (if he has time to keep up with his facebook and get into flame wars during the writ, he's not a serious candidate): prom=one, comments that I don't even know if they were written during the writ means sig=1 for lack of better information. One more point for the NDP.

I'll try to calculate the winner by the end of the day.

!!!!

Linda Duncan is showing a ONE VOTE lead over Rahim Jaffer in Edmonton Strathcona at this moment on the CBC website. It's particularly entertaining to see the word "elected" still sitting beside Jaffer's name.

Edited to add: now it's 150-odd for Duncan, but the "elected" is still there for Jaffer.

The next several months

I'm concerned that Harper has won a functional majority for the next year or so, on the back of a Liberal party that's going to be in disarray again while they figure out who they want as leader. Watch them step out of the house every time the bells ring again, abstain from votes again.

What would happen in a perfect world is that a chunk of the Liberal party would recognize that Dion managed to undo 18 months of negative campaigning in about a week, and if the party got together behind him, he could have a do-over by next summer with a much better result. But there are way too many Liberals too attached to the very old Trudeau-Turner split now represented by Iggy and Rae to ever let that happen. So congratulations to the Conservatives for their functional majority for the next long while.

Close races

The number of seats that could flip over the next couple of hours, or under judicial recount, seem higher than normal to me. I;m going hunting for a list, and might edit this post when I find one. Offhand: Edmonton Sherwood Park, Vancouver South, Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar, Oak Ridges-Markham, and Outremont to name several.

Local results

Turns out Edmonton-Sherwood Park is the riding to watch tonight in Alberta. Sadly, it seems to be the officially-named but brown Tory neck-and-neck with the independent but white Tory. Thanks again, Alberta, for disappointing me.

The ridings that were theoretically competitive - Edmonton-Strathcona and Edmonton East for the NDP, and Edmonton Centre for the Liberals, were, in practice, part of the provincial blowout.

Late start

So, why won't the CBC say "minority"? Anyone who can count can see that the elected and leading for the other parties add up to 161. Things could flip, but not that far.

Go vote

Out of respect for the law of the land, liveblogging the results won't start until 7:30 Mountain. To resist temptation even to seek the early east coast returns out for myself, I'll be taking the earlier-mentioned big change in my personal life out for a birthday meal, so if I'm late, well, guess the check didn't come quickly enough. See you as the numbers roll in.

Election day catchup

This year's gaffe-o-meter has been complicated by a few factors: a lot of discussion early on of the pre-writ (sometimes by several years) activities and statements of candidates, a real issue jumping up mid-writ to overrun reporting of our 308 elections (while dominating the 51 Electoral college elections in the States), and the media's disinterest in the Canadian battle in favour of Sarah Palin and her three-ring gaffe machine. I'll add a personal fourth reason: a heavy work schedule married to significant changes in my personal life have left me distracted, too.

I'll soldier on, working backwards.

Dion is confused by a question posed by a local newsman, and the tape is met by hoots of derision. I'm frustrated by this one, because Dion could have easily, and happily as part of the broadcast, said what I think he was getting at: we'd all seen the pop of the bubble coming from some distance back. Was he being asked about preventative steps he might have taken leading up to now, or was he being asked about steps the Canadian government should take going forward? Alternatively, he could have snapped into his 30-days-big-meetings talking points, which he should have been able to perform in his sleep. Dion's the leader, so this is automatically a prom=3, and I think it stopped the momentum I discussed just one post ago right in its tracks, so despite it being more mumbly-joeism rather than any indication of Dion's unfitness to lead (IMHO, YMMV), I think a sig=2 is correct, for a six point gain for the Grits.

This has been a bad campaign strategically for the Tories, I think. They spent a lot of time and treasure painting Dion as hapless over the last several months, only to have to change him to "scary" after the markets cratered and Harper looked uncaring. The debates contributed to the uncaring image, but I think telling Canadians through Peter Mansbridge that the collapsing market presented great buying opportunities became the stick that Layton and Dion beat Harper with for the rest of the campaign. Again, party leader means prom=3, and the issue stopped any majority hope the Tories had, but I don't think it was as game-changing as the Dion error. There is perhaps not enough subtlety in my scoring system. Sig=1, total three more for the CPC.

Another mumbly-joeism, much older but much debated since, between Jerad Gallinger and I at least. Liberal Andrew Telegdi, Member of Parliament for Kitchener-Waterloo, at an election forum, declared that the first task of this election is to elect Stephen Harper Prime Minister. He claimed later that he meant to say "eject", which was probably the stupidest excuse possible, but better than what he was really thinking, which I suspect was "let's hurry up and elect Harper again, which we all believe is going to happen, and then move on with the business of the nation. In the meantime, who do you want as your local representative?" which is why he referenced May. Sitting MP = prom=2. However, I can't imagine anyone believing that this slip was in any way indicative of Telegdi's voting preferences: sig=1. Total, two more for the Liberals.

Just to clean up the last suggestion hanging about, Dion playing street hockey was fine (no one expected him to look like Lemieux). And, seriously, nothing out of the Bloc? That just seems so unlikely. Oh well - perhaps money or ethnics will come up tonight and Duceppe will run up a score.

An aside

I've got some catching up to do (not a lot, mind) on the scores. But I've just arrived home after some extended road tripping, and is it just me, or are the wheels coming off the Tory campaign a little? I'm not talking gaffes, I'm just talking about the campaign itself. To wit:

- Harper seems caught off-guard by the American financial crisis, and doesn't seem to really want to acknowledge it. Claiming that we're isolated from it looks dumber every day, as the Loonie shrinks against the US dollar and Canadian banks claim they can only offer half the rate cut on loans that they themselves will receive from the Bank of Canada. Dion's "no plan" criticism from the debate seems increasingly spot-on. I'll save Harper's "great time to invest" bits for the gaffe count.

- The late platform release doesn't seem to have worked very well. The lack of substantive policy directions within it likewise isn't setting the world on fire.

- Speaking of fire, Dion seems to have finally found something of fire in his belly. The no-luck schmuck image the Tories so painstakingly designed for him held up really well, until possibly the last week or so.

- Layton may find himself hoist upon his own strategic voting petard, after arguing last weekend that Liberals might want to move their votes the NDP's way so as to make sure that Dion's cratering doesn't leave Harper with a majority. Does a Liberal recovery turn the argument on its head?

I'm not sure what the polls are telling us, but I'd be astounded by a Tory majority now. I think the Conservatives ought to be very thankful indeed this weekend, that most of the country is done paying attention as of tomorrow, and will be focused on turkey and what-not until Tuesday.

Full disclosure - I'd love to give Dion a vote of support this election, but despite what voteforenvironment.ca tells me, the real race in Edmonton East is between the Tory incumbent (Peter Goldring) and one of my favourite New Democrats from way back, former provincial leader Ray Martin - the Liberal candidate is going to be left well behind. I have no problem casting a strategic vote when it's also for the best local candidate.

How bad are things going for Stephane Dion?

I'm not much for tracking the polls. But there's some interesting side stories there. Intrade sells contracts on future events - you pay so many cents for the prediction of an outcome, and the site pays you a dollar if it happens. A Tory victory contract will cost you right now 95-98 cents, depending on your timing. By comparison, Barack Obama contracts are selling for 62 cents.

That's gonna have to be some kinda debate on Thursday. And somehow it's going to have to beat watching Joe Biden give Sarah Palin a stern talking-to. I wouldn't take a contract on that at any price.

And this is why I didn't let the Greens play

Every party has managed to earn a look in the last 24 hours, after days of quiet error-free campaigning. I appreciate their thoughtfulness in all timing their gaffing to serve my road schedule.

They have not, however, all earned points. Let's have a look.

Conservative: Lee Richardson suggested in Calgary's weekly giveaway organ that recent immigrants may be responsible for gang activity.

"Particularly in big cities, we've got people that have grown up in a different culture," he said. "And they don't have the same background in terms of the stable communities we had 20, 30 years ago in our cities ... and don't have the same respect for authority or people's person or property."

He later added: "Talk to the police. Look at who's committing these crimes. They're not the kid that grew up next door."

The other parties are screaming, of course, but I think the Calgary Herald's editorial defense of Richardson is pretty accurate - Richardson is no racist. Nonetheless, the fact that the Herald had to spend a page arguing it is what makes this statement a gaffe. Richardson, as a sitting MP and candidate for re-election, is a prom = 2, but I expect the issue will evaporate by tomorrow, so sig = 1. If I turn out to be wrong about the life of this story, I reserve the right to reevaluate.

Liberal: Winnipeg Liberal candidate "crazy" Lesley Hughes has some really crazy ideas about September 11. It's unclear to me if her apology is acknowledging the craziness of the ideas generally, or just the part about Jews being warned away from the towers (because it seems anti-semetic). But it's ancient, so no score for the crazy lady.

NDP: Can someone find me the source material being discussed here? The story might as well be "Candidate says unpleasant things we won't repeat." I find it hard to score that.

I find it less hard to score Michael Byers' desire to close the doors on the tarsands. It's probably not a bad line to take in a UBC j-school class, but it was a dumb overstepping of policy, in that it feeds the belief that putting the economy in NDP hands would be very dangerous indeed. Byers is called "high-profile" in some of the stories around this, and I suppose from the outside he seems to be, but running against both Hedy Fry and Adriane Carr, he's going to get killed come election day. Still, even with a prom = 1, I think this might have some legs in reinforcing an argument about NDP secret agendas, so I'm giving a sig = 2. I'd be tempted to give three, but I haven't noticed the story taking the bounce I would have imagined.

(Note to Bear604 - check out, and then repair your link to the Thunderbird.)

BQ: Finally, Gilles Duceppe claims that the Tory "tough on youth crime" plan will serv[e] up "young flesh" to hardened criminals."

First of all, CBC, thank you so much for not also putting quotes around "hardened."

Duceppe's not apologising, so I think this falls into the category I described back in the rules section:

It might be a mistake for the NDP to release a platform paper advocating gender segregation of schools, to the derision of the Canadian electorate, but it's not a "gaffe". On the other hand, if Jack Layton explains the policy by making an aside about high-school boys being distracted by the firm and supple bodies of women in the full bloom of their hot, hot youth, that would be a "gaffe".

In fact, we seem to be having the very "firm bodies / hot youth" discussion I suggested here, but I'm suggesting that Duceppe is actually initiating a policy discussion about prison rape. It might be dumb, but it's not a "gaffe" in the same sense. No score for this one yet. I could be convinced otherwise.

Total score - Con 6+2=8, NDP 0+2=2, Liberals hold at 1, the BQ still not on the board.

The mortgage bailout, explained

Are you American? Do you own something that you think is worth more than anyone else is willing to pay for it? Perhaps the Treasury Department would like to buy that stuff, too! Here's a website that allows you to itemize what you'd like to be rid of, and what you'd like the American taxpayer to give you for it.

Is there a particular reason that the Treasury wants to buy the bad debts, rather than just, say, buy the banks themselves?

A partial list of people who have not been pure enough in behaviour to run for the NDP this time around:

Dana Larsen

Kirk Tousaw

NDP Ontario MPP Rev. Dr. Cheri DiNovo

Mike Harris, Glen Clark, and Ralph Klein

John Edwards, Howard Dean, and John Kerry

Barack Obama

Pierre Trudeau

And, let's be honest here, damn near anyone I've met under forty years old (and some over). When did pot use become a barrier to NDP nomination? Once Jack is cornered enough to have to answer that question, the answer should be interesting.

New reciprocal link

I note this because a) it's been a while and b) he has a neat little meter of his own, tracking the parties and leaders according to their Wikipedia page views. Go visit Jerad Gallinger and tell him Don says "hey".

Sig and Prom, illustrated

Darlene Lannigan is pretty much nobody, so her comments, though pretty racist and suggesting something disturbing about how she views constituents, have only made a small media splash. Prom 1, sig 2 (and should have been three, but for the media feeding on Gerry Ritz).

Gerry Ritz is the Minister of Agriculture, and apparently didn't show appropriate levels of empathy toward people that no one in the meeting knew. Because his prominence is high (a three, for sure), no one seems to care that the significance was zero.

I spent last night thinking that if hosting the gaffe-o-meter has in any small way contributed to the media being oversensitive to these things, I don't want to do it any more. Then I decided I wanted to come to be viewed as the national expert on gaffes, and get on Canada AM panels saying "who cares?" to bits like this, so I've got to keep the g-o-m operating. But let me make my public announcement now - I'll never again stand for election anywhere for anything, because apparently I have a tin ear for what's appropriate. I wonder how many others have come to the same conclusion this week?

The meter above will be updated when I get to my desktop computer, probably late today or early tomorrow.

Finally, a quiet week wakes up

First up, Minister of Agriculture Gerry Ritz made some dark jokes about the listeria outbreak during a conference call.

Good for him. Read this blog regularly, and you'll discover I'm pretty sympathetic to whistling in the dark as a coping mechanism. Yes, the outbreak was tragic, but that's all the more reason Ritz needs to break the stress with his comedy stylings. Anyway, at least he was on the file, whereas Minister of Health Tony Clement was practicing his set at the DNC in Denver during the outbreak.

But then there was an apology, and gaffe-o-meter veterans know that an apology, self-acknowledging the gaffe, trumps whatever I might think of the original statement. Remember Peter McKay's "stick to your knitting" to Alexa McDonough? Goddammit, that one pissed me off a lot - it was just as sexist as "lipstick on a pig", which is to say, not at all. Just because someone objects to something you say, you don't need to fold like a cheap tent in a strong wind every time. I digress some distance from the point.

It was pre-writ, as Calgary Grit points out in the previous comments, so no score regardless.

Second, former Marijuana Party candidate Dana Larsen is now former NDP candidate Dana Larsen because, if I understand correctly, he advocated the use of drugs. And you know, was filmed while stoned. This might be him, right here. There seems to be a lot of discussion about the NDP lack of vetting, but really? This is a surprise to the party? Or did the party just experience some morning-after remorse?

Anyway, does anyone expect 308 candidates to be individually vetted by the central campaign? More likely to me is that the local constituency knew very well what his background and attitude toward drug policy is, and approved wholeheartedly of it, or at least didn't feel that it was beyond the range of acceptable views and experiences, because let's face it (and you can discuss this more with Bear604), the views of people living in the Lower Mainland are different than people living in Toronto.

But again, pre-writ, so no points. The scores remain unchanged, and the slow week continues. Would someone please let Rob Anders out of whatever crate Harper stores him in during elections, and get him a microphone, stat?

Liberals on board

They still have a LOT of scoring to do, going by some of the predictors, but the journey of a thousand miles blah blah blah. And if every gaffe costs them a candidate, well, they aren't going to be contesting a majority if they score as high as some predict.

I'm not penalizing the Grits for Simon Bedard's comments regarding Oka twenty years ago ("You go in there with the army and you clean up the place. Fifty deaths! 100 deaths! 125 deaths! It's over. You bury it and you move on."). Old comments don't score even if they're resurrected during the writ - call it the Azania rule. No, he's getting notched for saying this week that reserve gang activity (an "underground mafia" in the Globe article) validated his old comment, and that further, Stephane Dion has the backbone to intervene.

Backbone, Dion has. Intervene, he did. Unfortunately for Mr. Bedard, that came in the form of the candidate's rapid shitcanning. One prom for a candidate that had no chance to begin with, and only one sig for something I would have liked to see get more coverage. Not even my commenters seem to have noticed this one.

There's never a stone when you need one

Harper's week has been hurt by two birds: first a puffin, now a Sparrow. Ryan Sparrow declares that a father of a soldier lost in Afghanistan is politically motivated. What sort of partisan blinders do you have on to think sending that accusation to the media will produce the story you're hoping for? A quick apology and suspension, and this ended up being less of a story than the cartoon bird, but still, one prom (I had never heard of Sparrow before this, have you?) by two sig is another two for the Liberals. Next up, Simon Bedard.

Snap decisions

So, what I thought was a dumb bumphy story shared a news cycle with the Green Party's successful lobby to get into the debate. Actually, I thought they were both sort of dumb bumphy stories, but I think I've already made clear my thoughts about Elizabeth May.

Anyway, I've been stewing over this one, still wondering if it was a gaffe at all. How many more thousand eyeballs went to see notaleader.ca because of this story? How does the benefit of that measure up against the damage caused by Harper's apology? In fact, was the apology damaging at all, or was it another step in undoing Harper's control-freakish image?

Answering these questions is above my pay scale, so I'll go back to strict interpretation of the scoring. The gaffemaker is uncertain even now - was it just some random web designer who might not see much sunlight and therefore thought a pooping puffin was high-larious? (In fairness, it's still better than the Tory "youth blog" from last time around.) Or was it a decision and a plan made at the highest levels? Without knowing, I'll give one prom for a nobody, by two sig for owning a day and then going away (and possibly not being that damaging after all), equals two points for the Conservatives, awarded two days late.

One note - the scoreboard above won't be changing while I'm on the road - it should tomorrow when I'm finally home.

Entries Closed

Not many entries this time around, but that's okay too - we can still generate a winner. I'm going to experiment this week with Google Docs and Chrome to see what sort of fancy scorekeeping I can do - stay tuned.

Even from the few entries, trends have emerged. Primarily, almost everyone expects the Liberals to score higher than the Conservatives, and have guessed at a low Tory score. Perhaps you're imagining that communications control will remain as tight as it has the last couple of elections. I suppose we'll see.

The widest variety of guesses come on the Liberal side of things - from a low of twelve to a high of forty. Forty? Seriously? How many interviews is Scott Reid scheduled for?

I've had a few suggestions for early gaffes - the Puffin ad and the Liberal plane in particular, but these aren't really the sort of thing I've normally scored. Check the archives during previous elections to get a sense of the things that are going to count: they almost always involve a spoken, occasionally written, error in judgment by an individual. I can't remember a time I've assigned points to "the campaign". And just to anticipate some of Dion's struggles with English, as I established with Martin, "Mumbly Joeisms" generally don't count.

The gaffe3 AT revmod.ca address is now for reporting what you spot. My job and the fact that I have a candidate to volunteer for this time around (if they'd ever return my calls - I think they may need people pretty badly) means that I'm not going to be keeping the same close tabs I used to, or updating within a few minutes or hours of an error. They'll all get tallied, don't you worry.

Now or never

Just to be absolutely clear, the Gaffe-o-Meter is a predictive game... I seem to have left that unclear to all but the veterans. Send your predictions in - there's less than fifteen hours before I get to start tallying the screw-ups of our nation's best and brightest. Send an e-mail to the above-listed address predicting the final scores for each party, and play along at home.

As a guide, a reminder how it went in 2006:





And 2004:




Is the lack of entries thus far indicitive of the massive disinterest this election will generate? Would I have been better off putting up silly pictures of McCain and Obama, and scoring them instead, to the cries of Greens wondering where Nader is on the chart? Only you can decide.

Time for three hundred and eight elections

The writ's been dropped, which leaves you about thirty-seven hours to make your gaffe predictions. Don't forget to also make your predictions in James Bow's election pool, and Calgary Grit's "offbeat" election pool.

Oh, and possibly find a local candidate you can believe in, and go work for her or him. You know, democratic action and all. It's not just an opportunity for gambling, folks.

And that's what a gaffe looks like

Georgia's Representative Lynn Westmoreland calls Barack and Michelle Obama "uppity". Actually, perhaps he didn't - the article reads:

Speaking to reporters Thursday, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Grantville, Ga., described the Obamas as members of an "elitist-class ... that thinks that they're uppity," according to The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper.

You see, Westmoreland doesn't think they're uppity - it's the Obamas themselves who think it. That Barack sure is a racist! Or perhaps I'm misreading it - let me untangle it further. The Obamas are members of an elitist class that in turn think of the Obamas as uppity. It's those country-club Democrats, those Kennedy types, who are the racists!

Perhaps an extra prom point for Westmoreland, since his presidential candidate says "we're all Georgians now." That means this guy is our representative.

Oh. Never mind. Still, if this were our election, I'd be giving this a sig of two (tipping the scale when he confirmed that "uppity" was the word he'd intended to use), multiplied by a prom of two (again tipping the scale for already coding racist, or as the AP article prefers to put it, "drawn criticism from civil rights advocates on a number of issues", which is a lot of words to avoid saying "bigot"), and the Republicans would be carrying around four spare points. And then you'd all tell me I've screwed it up in the comments. Fun!

Entries are rushing in

Well, trickling, really. If current reports are to be believed, entries will close on Monday at midnight (Mountain time, because here I am). Are you a candidate, or planning to be one? Award twenty shiny loonies to yourself! Buy that lawn sign you've been saving up for. You've earned it, just for knowing what a bunch of screwups our national politicians statespeople are.

Not a candidate yourself? I'm sure that $20 would come in handy to your local error-prone MP, to help pay for damage control, or perhaps you want to help out that wacky neighbour get past the post (first, natch) in order to bring his whackjobbery to a national stage (see Thompson, Myron).

Less than 100 hours to get those entries in. Probably. Unless Harper decides to respect his own fixed date legislation.

Compare and contrast

John McCain will be speaking to a (full?) house tonight at Xcel Center, which is something the Minnesota Wild accomplish about 42 times a year despite being kinda boring. But they win. Hey, there's a model for John McCain to emulate!

Of course, the Republicans didn't take a chance of renting a stadium. The only stadium the Republicans have managed to fill is Superdome.

Yes, this post was all about finding an excuse for that joke. What can I say? I'm out of posting practice.

The world according to Sarah Palin:

"A woman can walk through any door she chooses." Except the one at the abortion clinic.

Palin was just mean-spirited enough that Biden's going to have some elbow room to tear her a new one (though perhaps not several). "Being a small-town mayor is like being a community organizer, but with responsibilities." I think what she meant was "... but with white constituents," but I could be reading her wrong.

Also, a woman with that many children perhaps shouldn't talk so enthusiastically about "laying pipe." Just sayin'.

Edited to add: And "drilling"! Damn, how did I manage to neglect "drilling"?

The Rules

No, it's not about how to catch a man - it's the way our little gaffe game is played:

1) The scoring will begin on the day the writ is dropped for the Federal election - entries will be cut off midnight the next day. Entries will include the predicted total score for each party.

2) Two numbers determine the score - the quality of the gaffe ("sig") and the rank of the gaffemaker ("prom"). Both scales will score on a range from one to three. GaffePoints ("GP") for an individual gaffe will be calculated by multiplying "sig" by "prom". Party scores will accumulate by adding the GPs of each gaffe.

3) Contest entries will be scored by measuring the distance (plus or minus) between the prediction and the score for each party - lowest total difference wins.

4) I am the final and only arbiter of the quality of the gaffe ("sig") and the rank of the gaffemaker ("prom"). Debate, however, is encouraged in the attached comments section - I can be convinced.

5) Scoring will close at 0800 MST on the day following election day. SPECIAL PARIZEAU RULE: Scoring will double for gaffes made on election day, including acceptance and concession speeches.

6) For the purpose of the contest, "gaffe" is defined as an unplanned error in fact or judgment. It might be a mistake for the NDP to release a platform paper advocating gender segregation of schools, to the derision of the Canadian electorate, but it's not a "gaffe". On the other hand, if Jack Layton explains the policy by making an aside about high-school boys being distracted by the firm and supple bodies of women in the full bloom of their hot, hot youth, that would be a "gaffe".

The prize: the reader who guesses closest to the actual final result will win a $20 donation to the local candidate of their choice next time around, which I can only presume will be about this time next year.

Send your score predictions to gaffe3 AT revmod.ca. I'm going to make an effort to put up a separate page for the predictions, so you can follow along at home. Previous results for 2006 and 2004 may guide you, or not.

Here we go.

That's the graphic - next up is the rules and the awarding of the previous prizes. But work first.

In the headlines

Hurricane will keep Bush, Cheney from attending party convention. Yes, it's Gustav that'll keep them in Washington (or possibly Crawford). It's not at all the pleading from McCain to stay the hell away.

Green party announces its first member of Parliament. "With a Green MP sitting in the House of Commons, it will now be impossible to exclude the Green party from the televised leaders' debates in the next election," says Elizabeth May. And she's correct, if by "impossible" she means "overwhelmingly likely." I myself will be happy to include her in the Gaffe-O-Meter, just as soon as she manages to get an MP through election. A general election. Until then, trying to track the errors of candidates that the media won't be paying attention to seems like more work than it's worth.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin named to the Republican ticket. Hard-core social conservative? Political lightweight? Absolutely. And yet, she also seems sincere, friendly, without much in the way of political artiface. If anyone doubts that the presumptive Republican nominee is a different fellow than the Straight Talk Express guy of 2000, the friendly old guy who kept showing up on The Daily Show, think about how this cynical grab at a few of the disappointed Clinton voters (a very few, given the very different political views of the two women) will be ruining the life of a woman who was doing just fine in happy obscurity. Best line of the linked article: "McCain is such a cruel creep that he's making Sarah Palin debate Joe Biden."

(By the way, was Condi Rice even considered? If they were looking to check an affirmative action box or two on the application, she has the right reproductive organs, with the bonus of being black. She also has some serious experience and actual gravitas. But perhaps she's too associated to Bush, and not socially onservative enough to nail down the crazies for the ticket, something they're hoping for from Palin.)

Oh, and there's probably an election coming. I have Gaffe-O-Meter prep work to do. Hello, intertubes traffic! I've missed you.

Don?....Don?

Since Don's been absent from RevMod for over a month now, you're invited to visit us at ursa minor:bear604. Watch as we mess around with YouTube clips, and people's heads. It's just that much fun.

Edited by Don to match the fonts and style of RevMod, and to add: glad to have you pitching your much more active blog, Bear - it's always good reading.