The riding is probably the safest NDP seat in the country, next to former leader Alexa McDonut's Halifax seat.
...Transcona could be the sleeper riding to watch.
Doesn't this also beg the following question: if anyone other than Stephen Harper was leading the Conservative Party right now, would they not be in a position to hope for more than a mere minority?
"I don't think Harper has to be thinking about a majority at all," Mr. Flanagan said in an interview.
"Strategically, this is sort of a prolonged war of attrition."
As Mr. Flanagan sees it, the first major battle in this incremental war occurred in 2004, when Mr. Harper managed to reduce Paul Martin's Liberals to a minority. In the second clash in 2006, Mr. Harper won his own Conservative minority.
The third skirmish, which Mr. Harper appears set to launch next week, likely won't kill what Mr. Flanagan jokingly refers to as "the evil empire." But, if the Tories can win a few more seats at the Liberals' expense — an outcome Mr. Flanagan considers realistic given Mr. Harper's superior campaign skills and the Tories' fatter war chest — he predicted that would be enough to throw the Grits into a long-term tailspin that could eventually lead to their demise.
"You can fight a war with some objective less than total victory," he said of the coming campaign.
If the Liberals lose even a handful of seats, Mr. Flanagan predicted they'll immediately dump Leader Stéphane Dion, a forecast echoed privately by plenty of Grits. The party would have to embark on a costly leadership campaign before most contenders from the last contest, including Mr. Dion, have paid off their leadership debts.
Moreover, a reduction in popular vote would mean the already cash-strapped Liberal party would get less money in election expenses rebates and in its annual public subsidy. Mr. Flanagan said that could make it difficult for the Liberals to pay off any debts from the coming election campaign and harder to secure bank loans for a future campaign.
Hence, he concluded, another Tory minority "would be enough to throw the Liberals into turmoil and give Harper . . . a virtually free hand in Parliament for quite a while and really handicap his main opponent."
"Prime Minister Stephen Harper would be "misguided" if he chose to call a federal election before Parliament resumes sitting on Sept. 15, NDP Leader Jack Layton said Thursday."
96. Pine Ridge Golf Club - Main Course (1912)
The bottom line is that using a few outrageous examples to manipulate the discussion so they can advance their agenda with their base is not good government. Might be good politics, but not good government.
Brother D, I'm curious. Where do you stand on the money that the government has pledged to the Canadian Human Rights Museum? Given that its own consultations have shown that few Canadians plan to visit it - at least, not the bricks-and-mortar building itself in Winnipeg, isn't this a perfect example of a program "that very few Canadians will ever use"?
To be fair, she's challenging someone else and is not slagging the HRMC just yet, but the lady makes an interesting point, right?
I agree with the basic analysis, but will disagree with the assessment of the potential harm. Pissing off groups that don’t support you is a great strategy if you have a majority government. But if you’re in a minority position, and seem to be unable to find traction toward a majority, it seems to be bad strategy to go around poking your traditional opponents in the eye. It’s going to take a major breakthrough in Ontario and Quebec to get the Tories over the minority hump, and I just can’t see how messing with arts funding is going to turn the tide in either of those provinces. However, the Hs&Ws post was very brief, and I assume (with good cause) there is more to the thesis.
Construction of the 2.7 km Golden Gate Bridge began in January 1933 and was completed by April 1937 - a total of 52 months.
With no bridge in sight, we challenge Gary Doer's NDP Government to build the 18th Street bridges (spanning 100 meters over the Assiniboine River) in less than 52 months. Work on the bridges began in October 2006 - only 30 months remaining!
I love the potential of the internet in today's political world.
"There's a lot of potential for developing the current stadium site and using the proceeds to pay for fixing it up." added Craig. "For example, we could put a hotel at the south end of the field with suites that double as luxury boxes. Another option would be to put additional seating on the roof of the hotel, similar to the seats outside of Wrigley Field in Chicago. Certainly, some of the valuable land around the stadium could be developed and used year round instead of as a parking lot ten times a year."
I have, in the last several days, become officially haunted by those pictures of Obama and Gordon Brown in London a few weeks ago. Two men who could not be more different, except that in each face, I see somebody who Showed Promise because how could he not show promise?, and who now, it seems clear at least on the worst days, does not have a fargin' clue.
The Obama camp is actually trying to make hay out of the McCain advisor who took Georgia lobby money — even as they rush pell-mell toward a position the Georgia-lobbying McCain advisor might as well have written. Obama's ads are uniformly awful — the most leadenly conventional, unsurprising, counterproductive ad campaign since the No side posters in the 1995 Quebec referendum. The man who barely beat Hillary is now running on a Hillary policy of inevitability, triangulation and consensus-before-conviction. I'm far from sure about this, I don't trust my instincts when it comes to politics outside Ottawa, but this guy Obama is starting to look like a big washout.
Obama may still accept the Presidency next January, that much is still clear - remarkably still up the in air considering all of his advantages. However, that doesn't change the fact that he's going to oversell himself and badly under-deliver in the process. Four and out will not surprise me.
(click map to enlarge)Sen. Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic presidential nominee if John Edwards had been caught in his lie about an extramarital affair and forced out of the race last year, insists a top Clinton campaign aide, making a charge that could exacerbate previously existing tensions between the camps of Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama."I believe we would have won Iowa, and Clinton today would therefore have been the nominee," former Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson told ABCNews.com.
Clinton finished third in the Iowa caucuses barely behind Edwards in second place and Obama in first. The momentum of the insurgent Obama campaign beating two better-known candidates -- not to mention an African-American winning in such an overwhelmingly white state -- changed the dynamics of the race forever.
Obama won 37.6 per cent of the vote. Edwards won 29.7 per cent and Clinton won 29.5 per cent, according to results posted by the Iowa Democratic Party.
"Our voters and Edwards' voters were the same people," Wolfson said the Clinton polls showed. "They were older, pro-union. Not all, but maybe two-thirds of them would have been for us and we would have barely beaten Obama."
Two months earlier, Edwards had vociferously, but falsely, denied a story in the National Enquirer about the alleged affair last October, and few in the mainstream media even reported the denial.
Your editorial pointing to the lack of trust between the aboriginal community and the Winnipeg Police Service was accurate. However, I would like to clarify the points the First Nation leadership made.
We question the use of deadly force in this incident. Too many Manitobans, no matter what their racial origin, are dying at the hands of police and the excuse that "he was holding a weapon" (be it a screwdriver, a knife, or possibly in this case, merely a cellphone) is wearing thin. An independent public inquiry into the procedures and actions of the Winnipeg Police Service would restore public confidence in the system.
The Aboriginal Justice Inquiry recommended establishing a special investigations unit through special legislation, responsible directly to the minister of justice, to take control of the investigation of any incident involving a police officer where possible criminal conduct arises or where a person dies or suffers serious injury.
This particular recommendation would not only protect First Nation and Metis people, but all citizens of Winnipeg from overzealous police actions. An independent process would restore everyone's confidence in the Winnipeg Police Service.
Chief David Harper
Garden Hill First Nation
Member of Island Lake Tribal Council
Our Regional Directors
David Harper - Northern Manitoba
It was nice to see Child and Family services people there today in case the protesters had small children with them. One of the workers approached me early on and said they will seize the children if the kids if they had to. It was nice to know !
"...Why does Saskatchewan have 11 Olympic athletes going to Beijing and we only have two? That's pretty lame at a time when the city is investing millions in community clubs and recreation, a new indoor soccer complex is in the works, the Doer government has made phys ed mandatory for grades 11 and 12 and sports funding was a key promise of all the parties during last year's provincial election."
"Oil."
The daughter of the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, based in Topeka, Ka., told CTV.ca she and several other church members will go to Winnipeg on Saturday to demonstrate against what she described as McLean's "filthy way of life." Shirley Phelps-Roper said his life was emblematic of Canada's moral decay."God handed us a gift," Phelps-Roper said in a phone interview on Thursday.
She said McLean deserved his death by beheading on a Greyhound Bus last week.
"(His death was) supremely unemotional. You got God shaking in rage. There is no emotional component ... He was a rebel against God. He was taught to be a rebel by his parents. He came from a rebel country ... They brought this wrath upon his head. And it sucks to be him and it sucks to be them," Phelps-Roper said.
She said his brutal murder was a sign from God.
"You gotta connect the dots, people ... from your idols to your filthy way of life," she said.
Court documents show McDougall was charged with assault and aggravated assault resulting from a random spree of violence while living in Wasagamack First Nation three years ago. He was handed a sentence of 120 days time served and a two-year supervised probation order for assault and assault causing bodily harm.
On Aug. 26, 2005, McDougall punched and elbowed two 11-year-old boys in what the Crown attorney called a "random" booze-fuelled rampage as the boys and a friend walked by a creek on the reserve. When a guardian went to pick up the boys in a van, McDougall began choking her for a prolonged period after she refused to give him a cigarette. She and the boys eventually escaped and called police.
On the same night, McDougall also encountered a pregnant woman and demanded she give him a cigarette. When she refused, McDougall choked her and threw her to the ground. The woman, who had told McDougall she was pregnant, escaped by running away. Court documents show she was flown to the St. Boniface hospital in Winnipeg for medical attention, but the fetus died.
McDougall was denied bail after the judge ruled the public danger McDougall posed through his "crazed" actions made him a "great risk to the public."
ATTENTION all wanna-be radio stars!
CJOB wants you!
Each of the three Asper children inherited a large voting stake in the company from their father, Izzy Asper, who died in 2003. Their personal stakes of about 25.6 million multiple voting shares are now worth about $58-million each.
