Elections BC Says That Accuracy Of 3rd Party Ads Does Not Matter.

SomeThingsAreWorseThan
UselessVille


Gabriel Yiu is raising the spectre of the smear once again.

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You may remember Mr. Yiu....

He was the 2009 Dipper candidate in Fraserview who was the victim the Stallion's Mojitos man's foreign language smeary-smears.


Mr. Yiu was also attacked earlier this year by that most upstanding of all BC Liberal MLA's, Mr. Bill Bennett, while the latter was sitting simultaneously pretty and potty-mouthed as a member of the Ledgeness Protection Program.

Of course the usual suspects, both inside the Clark warrior wizard room and, allegedly, outside immediately piled on.

Which brings us to now...

Because, once again, Mr Yiu is raising the alarm.

This time it would appear that a most excellent group of Anton-friendly finest of the finefolks who call themselves the Better B.C. Coalition made stuff up about Mr. Yiu and the BCNDP that they published as third party advertisements in the Chinese language press during the election just past.

Carlito Pablo, in the G. Straight, has Mr. Yiu's story:

...According to Yiu, the Better B.C. Coalition took out an ad in the Chinese-language newspaper Ming Pao, circulated fliers, and passed around a poster by email that misrepresented his party’s stance on marijuana, natural-gas exports, and taxes.

According to the English translation provided by Yiu of the Chinese-language materials, New Democrats “comprehensively” support the legalization of marijuana. Wondering if this will lead to cannabis being sold “publicly” in schools, they asked provocatively: “What would happen to our kids?”...

{snippety doo-dah}

...The material released by the Better B.C. Coalition also claimed that the New Democrats would stop plans to export natural gas to China, “seriously damaging Canada’s national interest and Sino-Canada trade”.

That’s also not true, Yiu said. In its election platform, the B.C. NDP pledged to support the development of a liquefied-natural-gas industry geared for exports to Asia.

The coalition likewise warned voters that New Democrats would tax businesses even before they made a profit. But according to Yiu, he and Vancouver–Mount Pleasant MLA Jenny Kwan clearly stated in an April 23 media release that the B.C. NDP would not bring in a general corporate capital tax..."

Egregious "make the b*stards deny it stuff" all on it's own, right?

Sure thing.

But here's the real kicker, from the nice people at Elections BC:

...Section 266 of the Election Act stipulates that an individual or organization commits an offence by providing “false or misleading information when required or authorized under this Act to provide information”. Nola Western, deputy chief electoral officer with Elections B.C., explained that the law requires truthful information with respect only to names, addresses, birth dates, phone numbers, and financial reports.

“The content of the advertisement and whether that content is accurate or not is not part of what is contemplated by Section 266,” Western told the Straight in a phone interview. “The content of the advertisement is not required or authorized by the Election Act.”...


In other words, as long as you get the trivial stuff right really big lies are just fine thank-you.

****

And people wonder why this crap doesn't stop.

Sheesh.

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Personally, I'm waiting, with bated breath, for the Ron Obvious follow-up (i.e. the sequel to his big wet kiss to the Wizards of the War Room) about how fantabulous and far-sighted the 3rd party groups that just poured millions of dollars worth corrosive sulphuric acid in the eyes of our collective body politic really are.


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SmearGate Three (The Justining) Cranks Up.

It'sNotJustThePMO'sJob
AnymoreVille


Well, well, well....

Whaddy'a know.

John Ivison has a new trailer for SmearGate Three is out.

Of course, when the actual feature finally comes out and the politics of destruction is complete say, this time next summer, all will be forgotten when the Globe's new National Correspondent, Gary Mason, does an inside-baseball piece about what a great bunch of guys, not to mention geniuses, the smear merchants are.

Or some such thing.



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All this hagiography of plumbers and smear merchants brings to mind one of Dr. Thompson's last best pieces before he went of the rails pretty much for good...Despite it's tone it is actually, ultimately, hopeful given the situation then compared to what we face now...It's excerpted over at Mr. Wenner's cash cow....Here.

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Ian Reid Responds....What To Do About The Polling.

IfDippersWereOstriches
CowgirlsCouldRide'EmVille


The other day I zoomed in on one particular passage of Ian Reid's magnum opus on all that he thinks went wrong on May 14th:

"...There was no targeted riding polling done (by the BCNDP) in the campaign..."

And here is what I had to say about said passage...

"...If true, this is really flabbergasting to me....Because.... It strongly suggests that the Dipperian Braintrust had absolutely nothing solid to go on if they were relying on all the meaningless gibber-jabber that everyone concerned, including dufus outsiders like myself was watching and trying to make sense of..."


Now, in the comments to the original post, Ian has been good enough to respond thusly:

"...I have two reasons for the focus on polling: Firstly, I used to be in charge of it for the Harcourt and then Clark governments and I'm very interested in it as a way for regular folks to have their unfiltered choices noticed by lawmakers and, secondly, good election polling is designed to feed strategic decisions that cumulatively result in a win.

I heard a presentation by Jim Messina a week after Obama's November (2012) win in which he talked extensively about their polling strategy, which he claimed was integral to their win.

Two things were essential he said. They never - Never! - did a national poll. It was all targeted polling focused on the states they needed to get to win the thing and they knew precisely what was going on on the ground and what they had to do to hold or turn the state. They measured for success.

And they got the turnout weighting right. Clearly, in low turn-out elections, which are all elections now (that's a separate issue), weighting makes all the difference. That was the error of all the BC polling except the Liberals..."

Real food for thought, I reckon, especially when you see how ridings are really one or lost, poll-by-poll on the ground, as the VSun's Chad Skelton made crystal clear recently using E-BC's own data.

OK?



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Sub-header?.....This


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The Nut Bar Runneths All Over The Place...

HerMissionWhichSheHasChosen
ToSubjectUsToVille


Well, well, well....

Whaddy'a know:

A press release was sent out by Dayleen Van Ryswyk Friday night announcing her intention to run in the Westside-Kelowna by-election as an Independent candidate.

"After much thought and consideration, I have decided to step forward and run in the upcoming Westside-Kelowna by-election as an Independent candidate.

I am appalled that Christy Clark would consider the Westside-Kelowna riding as an easy win, especially since she lost in her own home riding of Vancouver-Point Grey. Her own constituents found her unable to represent their interests, and they kicked her out. What makes her think the voters of Westside-Kelowna want an absentee MLA that isn't even from this area?...

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And, just in case you missed it, Ms. Van Ryswyk was not a factor in Kelowna-Mission during the General...

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Although, to be fairly fair, 43% of the fine folks who hang out at the 'Castanets' online thingy are being made 'happy' by this story....Which isn't too surprising, I suppose, given that it was the C'Nets threads where the moving riding 'Look at me!' candidate first pulled the bars of nuts out of her bag for all to try.
Then again, if you're always campaigning...Well...Who knows...Sometimes you can win really, really big in the end...But maybe only if you're doing it with the super fine folks from Campaign Research...Maybe.


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Friday Afternoon Of The Long Knives

Don'tGoInTheWater
SycophantsInTheLakeVille


So.

Let me get this straight...

Lynda Cranston was fired for doing exactly what Christy Clark did a few weeks ago?

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Inappropriate wage increases for the people who run the province’s specialized health care services has cost the agency’s president her job.

The pay hikes came as a surprise to the Provincial Health Services Authority’s board of directors.

Board chair Wynne Powell says the salary increases were implemented without their knowledge or their consent.

Pay hikes were issued to 118 managers in the PHSA only months after the province announced wages for all public sector managers were to be frozen.

Powell says as a result, the agency’s president and CEO Lynda Cranston has stepped down...


Hmmmm....

Something tells me things are not as they appear.


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Laila was first on the scene.


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The Long And Short Of The Odds Of Another Loss For Ms. Clark.

AllTheFact-FreePrognosticating
ThatFitsVille


Trevor Lautens is at again.

And this time he's suggesting that Christy Clark could lose her Bye-Bye on July 10th.

Here is Mr. Lautens lede in the Northshore News:

"BLOATED with vanity for having shocked millions with my accurate May 14 election soothsaying, I now recklessly sooth more:

Premier Christy Clark will be humiliated by a very narrow win - grab a long-odds bet that she will actually lose - the July 10 Westside-Kelowna byelection. She's riding for a fall. A big kick in the seat. Little punning there. Oh, you got that..."

He then goes into a whole bunch of reasons why he has come to this weirdly simultaneously bold and tentative conclusion/prediction.

All of which is entertaining.

But there are no hard numbers.

And I'm not going to concur with any prognosticator's prediction about anything electoral in the absence of hard, on-the-ground and, especially, in-the-riding numbers.

Ever.

Again.

OK?


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John Baird's Friends And Their Benefits.

ThrowDownTheNeedlesAtAllThoseFreeloadingWelfareDrugCriminalJunkieCheats
ButI'mCleanVille


Well.

Actually, to be more precise (at least in the vernacular of the flack-hackery), today we're talking about Mr. Baird's friends with 'favours'.

The Globe's Campbell Clark has the story.

Here's his lede:

John Baird is defending his New Year’s holidays at Canadian official residences abroad, arguing they were a favour from friends, rather than a perk.

The Foreign Affairs Minister took a group of four friends to New York for five days for New Year’s 2012, staying at the official residence of Canada’s consul-general. It was eight days in London for the arrival of 2013, with six friends, at the residence of Canada’s High Commissioner...

Of course, one of those friends who helped Mr. Baird and a bunch of his other friends live in the lap of luxury for five glorious days during the dawn of 2013 was....

Yup.....

You guessed it:

...Canada’s High Commissioner to London, Gordon Campbell, invited Mr. Baird to borrow his place while he was away...

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Now.

Here's the real thing.

While Johnny the Needle Thrower, as he is officially known around here due to deeds past done, may be a friend of the good Mr. Campbell he is also, in his capacity as Foreign Minister, Mr. Campbell's boss.

And every single penny that Mr. Baird allows Mr. Campbell spend on his laps and his luxuries (and the laps and luxuries of his friends) while he is in London is ours.

OK?


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The NDP Campaign Just Past...More Shambolic Than You Ever Imagined?

WorseThanAnythingPeteAndKatie
EverDidVille


According to Ian Reid it was, indeed.

I suggest you go and read Ian's entire piece, and if you are an insider please weigh in yay or nay (or a combination).

Regardless, one passage from Ian really caught my eye:

"...I’m told the campaign pollster was fired part way through after telling Dix the polling didn’t support his pipeline strategy. Firing people for telling you the truth is a very bad sign in a campaign. On top of this, there was no targeted riding polling done in the campaign. At the end they had no clue which constituencies were in play and where they should assign resources..."

Now.

If true, this is really flabbergasting to me.

Especially the part bolded, above.

Because, again, if true, it strongly suggests that the Dipperian Braintrust had absolutely nothing solid to go on if they were relying on all the meaningless gibber-jabber that everyone concerned, including dufus outsiders like myself was watching and trying to make sense of.

Which I honestly cannot believe.

Because even Nathan Silver, never mind Eric Grenier, can't make golden nuggets out of non-stop sampling-biased codswallop.

OK?


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Subheader?.....This.


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Was The Entire PMO Working On The Trailer To Their Upcoming Blockbuster...

...'SmearGate Three, The Justining'?

Perhaps so.

At least according to the TStar's Susan Delacourt:

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And, just in case you missed it in the wake of the original outing of the PMO's smearworks project, Ms. Delacourt actually turned Ms. Meekes when she came to her proffering her shop's vile 'off the record' codswallop....


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Christy Clark's Big Climbdown...Are Those OIC's Even Worth The Paper They're Printed On?

There'sNoPaper
LikePre-ElectionPaperVille


The Tyee's Andrew MacLeod has the actual OIC's up wherein the Premier without a seat rescinds her sycophants seats at the golden loyalty trough.

But here's the thing....

What will she sign on July 11th?

After all, as Ms. Clark herself said not so long ago:

"We all say (and do) things when we are trying to get elected." 

OK?


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The paper is here, here and here...



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The Cigar-Tube Almost (But Not Quite) Talking Blues.

RoadWhat
RoadVille

I got an E-mail from C early yesterday morning.

At the time I was locked up, once again, in yet another science-geek bunker.

Turns out she wanted to know where I was.

Not which bunker.

But, instead, which city.

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Today, after bashing ourselves over the head while arguing, biting and trying to gouge each others' eyes out over 56 grants, only 8 or 9 of which will be funded, we were let out of the bunker early.

Which means I had a couple of extra hours in downtown Montreal.

So I headed down to the old town and the port.

And all I did was wander around not really thinking about much of anything.

Which, of course, is part of the disengagement that is so easy to bring on when you to somewhat strange, yet comfortable, cities all alone.

And now I'm sitting in Dorval Airport in the middle of my own private melancholy while all around me the madness of people and families and business guys going everywhere off in a thousand directions swirls.

****

Now....

I'm not entirely sure who I heard talk about it first.

I think it might have been that evil dastardly wordsmith Mr. Sedaris.

Regardless, there really does seem to be something to the melancholy that can overcome you in airports and/or airplanes.

I'm not sure what triggers it really.

Although, of course, I can (and pretty much always will) hazard a guess.

I think it might have something to do with the compression of it all.

Because, essentially, you're one place one moment and an instant later you're a world away in every way imaginable (i.e. not just the place, but the setting, and the people and state of mind too).

And in the middle of that instant you plug the buds into your ears and even something as ridiculously cliched as, say, an old Bob Seger song on the Sirius thingy can make your eyes well up like a geyser in the middle of a Cohen Brothers film.

OK?

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This isn't the bit I was thinking of...But here's a very good take from Mr. Sedaris on airplane travel and just about everything else imaginable, including serving spoons and fathers who hate dinner table laughter.

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How Mean Can The Never-Ending Golden Era Get?...

...Making The Seniors That Need Our Help Most Buy Their Own Wheelchairs.

As Bill Tieleman points out, independent MLA Vicki Huntington has posted-up a letter that Keith McBain, Executive Director of Residential Care, Assisted Living, Specialized Populations, Fraser Canyon Hospital And Hope Community, Fraser Health Authority, wrote to the residents of Mountain View Manor seniors home just seventeen days after the re-election of the BC Liberal Party on May 14, 2013:

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So it's not just the $25 per month rental from the Health Authority for wheelchairs for the old and the infirmed that's coming down.

In addition, soon many of the seniors that need our help most will also be shelling out big-time to help get Ms. Clark and friends off the budgetary hook of their own making while they simultaneously fork out a little more to make sure that a few well-connected greed-headed middlemen can scalp a little more off the top from them.

Which is a win-win for Bogus Bollywood Bonanza's and BCL-Connected Greedheads everywhere.

Right?

****

Now.

Here's the thing....

When I wrote the lyrics to 'Here's To The State Of The Golden Era', a year-and-a-half ago I never figured that the third verse would, quite literally start comin true all over again in the late spring of 2013:

"Here's to the Lies of the Era's Spinners...

In the midst of all the plenty....A decade of children going down...

And the Seniors who need our help most...Get shuffled round and round...

While the Helpless and most Vulnerable are shouted down by Clowns...

Here's to the Land they tore the out the heart of...

Era's Liars find yourself another Province to be part of..."

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Gosh....That's some title the very fine fellow, Mr. McBain, who wrote the letter to the residents sure has some title, eh?


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Hey Media!...How To Stop The Spin And Have Your Story Too.

AndTrudeauMakesThree
ThePoliticsOfDestructionAreSteveVille


Just in case you missed it in all the kerfuffle over the release of the trailer for 'SmearGate3, The Justining', here is the actual lede from the Barrie Advance story under Laurie Watt's byline:

The Prime Minister’s office sent information yesterday to The Advance regarding a money-losing speech Liberal leader Justin Trudeau made in Barrie in 2007.

On Monday, PMO communications officer Erica Meekes sent The Advance details of an engagement that netted Trudeau a $10,000 fee, but left Georgian College with a $4,118 shortfall. The information was sent via email with the caveat it be referred to as coming from a “source,” not the PMO, when used.

“As a follow-up to the growing controversy over the weekend on Justin Trudeau charging charities for his speaking services, I have enclosed further materials that demonstrate the scope of this practice, cost on the organizations, and in many cases, poor outcomes and large deficits as a result of his speaking tour,” the email stated. “As discussed, these materials are provided to you on background, and should be attributed to a ‘source.’”

The material included invoices, a promotional poster and an accommodation receipt for the Toronto Four Seasons. Meekes wrote, “To be fair, there is an in-house yoga studio at the Four Seasons!”

When asked in a telephone interview why Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office was sending out unsolicited documentation, Meekes said the PMO routinely reaches out to the media...

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Now.

The real story in all of this is in that last line of the lede, above.

Because it explains the mechanism by which all this toxic, infectious crap has been inserted into pretty much every cavity and crevice of our collective body politic.

And once you know the mechanism by which an army of vile, sleaze-ridden infectious agents attack?

Well....

With that knowledge in hand you can very easily figure out how to effectively neutralize them before they can successfully smear again (see Ignatieff, M and Dion, S for the first two smearing).

And if every media outlet and reporter were to follow the Barrie Advance's and Laurie Watt's miracle drug-type lead the politics of the totally destructive disease vectors that are killing honest discourse in this country would be stopped, like, dead.

Immediately and forever after.

OK?


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Mr. Willcocks weighs in with a little more nuance, sans political pandemic metaphors....here.



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For My Dad.

AllTheGamesThatFit
SportsDadVille


When I was a kid my brothers and I played all manner of sports.

Everywhere.

And we often did the playing with our Dad.

And the playing of said sports, some real, some made-up, was often on beaches, in lacrosse boxes, on fields and in ice-rinks.

And sometimes those fields and, more than once, those ice-rinks were in the backyard of the house where we all grew up.

So...

First up is a song about houses and Dads and such that you can listen to while you read, if you like, something that has become a bit of a tradition around here down below....

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My old man was a Union man.

And the folks in the Union fought like bastards...And they fought constantly, usually for the tiniest of things in each successive contract...things like an extra quarter percent on a COLA clause, or one little add-on like an extra free filling per year on the dental plan.

And when I was a kid, especially during that time when I was a barely no-longer-a-teenager-aged kid, I thought the folks from the Union were just a little bit off their nut....All that energy going into what, exactly?

After all, it was the 80's, and Dave Barrett and the Socialist Hordes were long gone, and the Wild Kelowna boys were rolling along, and Unions were bad, and Expo was coming, and Trudeau was going, and John Turner was hiccupping, and Mulroney was lurking, somewhere off in the distance....

....And if you were a half-bright, apolitical science-geek kind of kid like me, breezing your way through college and thinking about graduate school, you laughed when you saw the boy wonder from Burnaby, Michael J. Fox, shirk his Family Ties and ape the young Republicans while making fun of his willfully neutered Leftie of a Dad on the TV screen...

....And if you were that kid, you thought that you were living in a golden age that was tied, not to the social democratic reforms of the past, but to the coming of Free Trade and the promises of the Reaganites from the South...

...And from that perspective you sure as heck didn't always get the irony of Bruce Springsteen singing about the plight of the working class in 'Born in the USA'.

But now that I have spent a good chunk of time in USA where I started a family of my own before coming home, I do get it.

I understand that my Dad spent his entire adult life hauling logs up and down the West Coast, working his guts out to help keep the robber baron families rich because he had to make a living to support his own family....

....And I get the fact that, because of the Unions, my family's standard of living gradually improved, bit by bit, over the years so that by the time I had grown up to be that callow young man described above my parents had saved enough to help me go to University....

....And I get the fact that I was the first one in my family who got to go to University....Ever.....And it wasn't because I was so damned smart....

....And I get the fact that, while my parents' limited financial help and support was important, it would never have been enough to get me into the same good schools if I had arrived on the scene a single generation earlier or, perhaps, later....

....And I get the fact that those Wild Kelowna Boys, and all the other neo-conlibcorp types that have come and gone since, have been doing their damndest to destroy the dream of a University education for all, and instead have instituted an elitist education for some and one-trick-pony Technical training for everybody else.....

....And I get the fact that, if it wasn't for folks like my Dad and the other lefties of his time, my current world, one in which I make a living with my eyes and my mind wide open, would not be what it is today.....

....And most of all, I now get the fact that my Dad was, and is, my hero.


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One of the sports we rarely played as kids was baseball....It was not our Dad's best game...It also had a very low 'cream-'em' quotient which was high on our list back then...Weird then how much fun I've always had playing the game with my own kids...Sometimes at the beach, sometime not (please note our most excellent non-human guys behind the plate...
And the backyard ice-rink thing was not easy growing up in Victoria...

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Woody At 100 Going Down.

AllTheTroubadoursOfThePeople
ThatFitVille


My favourite Twittmachine follower, for now and evermore, is @WoodyGuthrie.

And this morning he tells me that the big 100th year celebration concert at Kennedy Center  of other folks doing his stuff is on a whole bunch of PBS stations tonight.

Now.

When it comes to Woody there were no crossroads for me.

Unless you count reading 'Bound for Glory' thirty-seven times.

(Approximately)

Truth be told, many of the Woody tunes that are most stuck in my head actually sound like Arlo because that's what my Dad bought for us when we were kids.

Here's my version of one of my favourites (sorry Pops)...

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Working on the next Sunday setlist right now...Think it might have something to do with Yearbooks (littler e. brought her first one from highschool home the other day).


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