Will Sept 15, 2008 Go Down As Black Monday?

TheGreenspansComeHomeToRoost
PutVille


(Writing this Sunday evening, Sept 14.....)

Well, I guess now we know why Alan Greenspan went on Snuffalufagus earlier today to fling a little Doomsday Deflector Spin into the Wurlitzer:

Lehman Brothers, the 158-year-old Wall Street bank, has announced it would declare itself bankrupt after a weekend of rescue talks masterminded by Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, failed.

The end of Lehman Brothers, which owns an investment bank, a fund management business, and a $30 billion portfolio of real estate assets came as its larger rival Merrill Lynch agreed a sale of itself to Bank of America for $44 billion.

I could be wrong about this, but one thing I do now for sure.....

I am darned glad that I don't have to cash in the RRSP's anytime soon (and I pity the poor souls amongst us that do).

Hang on everybody.

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Update, Midnight Sunday......CNN is says Wall Street is bracing for a big sell off......Robert Peston of the BBC says he's never seen anything like it.....Central banks are already starting to announce their injections and lifelines.....Me, I'm still waiting for Billmon to weigh in.


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All Hail The Arrival Of....

Don'tMessWithTheMethodsOfThe
MorrowManVille

.......The democraticSPACE Election 2008 site!

It's the only place to go to get an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of all the trends, and all the numbers.

And the kicker is that proprietor Greg Morrow provides breakdowns on every single riding in the country.

Check it out, you will not be disappointed.


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Oh, and this time out he's even got bloggers, both partisan (clearly labelled) and not!


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Boss, Boss, The Bots!

AccentuateTheNegatives
CCRAPtacularVille


Quick!

Scramble the Flyin' Segretti Squadron.

Elizabeth May is on with The Curmudgeon and she's making sense.

Worse than that she's sounding reasonable.......


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Post-Show Update: Correspondent GWest sent along the link to the podcast.

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Here's Something I Don't Get....

WhyIsn'tTerryO'ReillyWorkingForUsOnThisOne?
CanuckistanmikitaVille


So.

Stephen Harper turned a $12 billion dollar surplus into a deficit in the BEST of times.

And now that things are going sideways he's telling us that, in these times of 'uncertainty', he's the best man for the job?

And we're believing him!?

Guess that's what happens when a country is bamboozled by Admen into becoming more 'conservative'.

Sheesh.


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Update: Scott Tribe nails it on the follow through.

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Time + Space =

......Activism?
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WayMoreThanJustThe5W's
WordWizardVille


Here's something interesting, hot off the pixel press of Vancouver's most popular (20K hits in the first month?....in the Dog Days of Summer?!), not to mention best, civic politics website:

".....for those who have called to ask, it doesn’t mean everyone should stay home on Monday night (the public-delegation night on the capital plan) and count on councillors to do the right thing. Best to show up and thank them profusely in advance, making it awkward to back out and convincing councillors that they are really doing what the community wants....."

Yup.

Those are the words of former Vancouver Sun reporter, turned kinghell freelancer/turned-loose blogger, Frances Bula, telling folks who are fighting to get the redevelopment of the Trout Lake Community Centre back into the city of Vancouver's capital plan not to give up now on this the eve of what smells like, as Robert Duvall once put it,

Victory!

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On a related note, today is the day when COPE decides to either grab hold of the lifeline from Vision or go down for good. Here's hoping it's the latter so that they can help push from the left on the inside of that gigantic 16,000 member strong centrist tent. Otherwise the poles and stuff really get in the way. OK?

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This Just In!

AllTheClubsThatFit
CaddyshackVille


Well, well, well........

The NPA has decided that the very fine fellow who, based on his own words, appears to place more value on private golf courses than Vancouver's public parks, will indeed once again be running for Parks Board on what, rumours suggest, some members of the 'Friends of Pacific Spirit Park' may calling the Ted Baxter ticket.


Ms. Bula has the details:

NPA park candidates: DeGenova, Shukla, Zlotnik
September 13th, 2008 · 3 Comments

It took a lot longer to count the votes than anyone expected, but finally the results came in at 2:24: Wai Sin was the candidate dropped from the four, losing to Marty Zlotnik by only eight votes. The results: Melissa DeGenova, 214; Naresh Shukla, 189; Marty Zlotnik, 15(6?)1; Wai Sin, 153......

What the heckfire am I babbling on about?

Well, it all comes back to an astroturf group set up by Mr. Zlotnik and friends that ran a nice bit of deflector spin that made the unthinkable first possible, then probable, and finally, a lock.

Or, to be more specific, made it possible for Gordon Campbell (for whom Mr. Zlotnik has also acted as a bag man/political fundraiser for in the past) to act unilaterally to solve a totally manufactured crisis by passing legislation in which the heart will be carved out of the very public Pacific Spirit Park so that it can ultimately be offered up to developers rather than a sliver of land along the edges of the very private University Golf Course.

Here, in his own words, is what Mr. Zlotnik had to say when the public finally started to cotton on to the scheme:

"The government doesn't want to offend the greater community. It's easier for them to offend the rich golfers who play out at the university golf course."

I don't know about you, but as a member of the 'greater community' who uses and loves Vancouver's public parks I feel very strongly that a person with such a stated bias against the 'greater community' and its desire to keep its urban parks intact in perpetuity should never, ever be allowed to make decisions regarding that community's public parks.

But, then again, what do I know - the voters will have to make that decision come election day later this fall. I just hope the media in this town links Mr. Zlotnik to the denuding of Pacific Spirit Park in every story they write and every segment they broadcast that involves any discussion of important Parks Board issues from now until then.

Because if they don't, in my opinion, they are not doing their job.

OK?

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In the beginning the Astroturfin' by the Ted Baxter Bund seemed laughable in the extreme, but in the end, I guess, one should never underestimate the power of a potential billion dollar windfall. As for the original webturf website? Well, it no longer exists and has been sucked up by an 'online meds consortium (ha!). But it can still be lassoed and hauled back in from the farflung fringes of the google cache.


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Now, for those who would say.....ya, but this is the only way to make everybody happy....given the land claims issue and everything, please read the following that I wrote a while back....

...Remember, this not a fight against First Nations land claims because there are alternatives that were fully in play before former Vancouver Point Grey fundraiser Marty Zlotnik and his band of Merry Pranksters started a deflector spin campaign last summer that made the previously unthinkable (ie. the loss of urban parkland to even more condos) a fait accompli. And what is the best alternative? Well in my opinion, they would include limited development along the edges of the golf course (ie. reshaping it without destroying it) right here, right now. The result?........ The Musqueam would get their money, UBC would get it's money, and the Public would get to keep it's Park. As for the Developers? Well, they'd likely make oodles of money too - just not quite as much. And why, given that they have absolutely no stake in this whatsoever, should the Developers be the big winners here? Huh?

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What Was The Question Again?

AndWhenDidFiveBecome
TwoPlusTwoVille


Again, in case the Lotuslandians have forgotten it, the question is:

Why did Gordon Campbell cancel the fall sitting of the British Columbia Legislature?

Is it because he's afraid of increasingly unflattering comparisons to Carole James, the leader of the opposition NDP?

Or.

Is it because he is afraid to debate his increasingly unpopular edicts and commands from on high with the NDP?

Or.

Is it because he is afraid to answer for his actions in response to queries from the NDP during question period?

Or.

Is it because he is just plain afraid of the NDP?


Well, it turns out that the answer may, at least in part, be none of the above.

Because, according to Stephane Dion at least, Mr. Campbell can't run a legislative sitting in which the NDP would very likely rip him to shreds due to the fact he is too busy pretending to be the patron saint of, get this.......

The NDP!


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*For those of you scoring at home, that would be Tommy Douglas.


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Friday Night In The WestEnd And The Doctor Is In...

CandidatesInTheHoods
LocalStumpVille

When I have to go to a function in Downtown Vancouver, especially when I'm driving the VW (notso)Microbus, I like to park in my secret spot in the WestEnd (and no, I won't tell you where it is unless, of course, you tell me where yours is).

Anyway.

Last night I had to go to a fundraising thing in the downtown core that had absolutely nothing to do with politics (although there were a few pols there of the non-federal variety).

And I was running late because one of the gradual students called just as I was getting ready to leave.

The student is in Calgary doing some realtime microscopic imaging of tumor cells moving through capillaries which, for me at least, is way more exciting than speeches, soylent green chicken and silent auctions, so I hung around for a while longer to talk about how we could get even better images, finally settling on a little chunk jelly fish protein stuck to a hunk of the tumor cell's internal skeleton that fluoresces when you zap it with a laser of a very specific wavelength.

But I digress and wax geek-speak (again).

The point is that, even though I was late for the fundraiser, I walked through the WestEnd anyway.

And here's the thing.....

There's nothing quite like walking through that part of town early on a warm Friday evening when the streets are packed with both people from all over just getting along.

And when I crossed Davie heading north up Thurlow towards the backside of St. Paul's while simultaneously trying to knot my one and only tie, I passed by that old house on the eastside of the street where Hedy Fry's campaign headquarters is located (you can't miss it for all the really big, really red signs).

And they were having an open house, with music blasting and all manner of folks, young and old, having a pretty good time. I'm pretty sure I even caught a glimpse of the good Doctor in the front room shmoozerizing.

And nowhere did I see a look of panic on anyone's face.

Not that anyone might be gaining on their candidate or anything.


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That last link is to make sure Bob doesn't sic the dog on me.

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What Is Gordon Campbell Really Afraid Of?

HidingInPlainSight
LINOVille


Yesterday, we learned that Premier Gordon Campbell has cancelled the fall sitting of the British Columbia Legislature?

So.

What is he really afraid of?

Falling poll numbers?....Huge pay raises for Class Apparatchika?....Plummeting personal approval ratings?....Disappearing resource revenue?.....Content consultants gone wild?....The continuing disaster that is the Child and Families Ministry?....Soon to spiral out of control Olympic costs?.....The end of good times for a user fee-driven provincial gov't infrastructure built for just that?....The potential bankruptcy of BC Ferries?....The spectre of the Railgate Rising (again!).....Forestry company sweetheart deals that are rotting the public's teeth....The privitization of everything?

Hmmmmmmm......

Maybe one, or maybe all.

But, if truth be told*, we figure it's just as possible that Mr. Campbell is really running from the Outhouse Sponsorship Conspiracy Scandal:

B.C.'s environment ministry has taken a page from municipal parks managers, inviting the public to sponsor benches and picnic tables with personalized plaques.

It's not cheap. A bench will cost $3,000, including installation, dedication plaque and 10 years of maintenance. A picnic table is $4,000.....

{snippety-dooh-dah)

For a more ambitious contribution, consider a solar heating system for a shower building at $15,000. Or the Cadillac of B.C. Parks dedications, a Phoenix composting toilet with lifetime maintenance for $42,000....

I mean, what's next, a chance to sponsor your nextdoor neighbour's colonoscopy?

Sheesh.

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*But not really.

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The Empire Of Doom?

TheDeathKnellOfAnyAndAllRemaining
AmericanExceptionalismVille


How could anyone possibly suggest such a thing?

Because, well, the following is not actually a joke:

Sarah Palin action dolls, showing the US vice-presidential candidate in a variety of outfits, have gone on sale.

Emil Vicale, the president of herobuilders.com, explained the range of models and claimed they would end up being one of their biggest sellers.


Hit the link.

I mean it.

Hit.....the..... link.

It's the endtimes I tell you.

Endtimes!

OK?

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If I Was A Conspiracy Theorist.....

WhoNeedsAWeathermanToKnowWhichWayTheSpinBlows?
PollVille


Well, well......

It looks like folks of a certain bent (ie. folks like me) might have to think hard about 'Strategic Voting', again,* this time around.

After all with a lead like the following, from the Globe and (nolongerEmpire) Mail's Omar el Akkad, how could we not:

OTTAWA -- The New Democratic Party has nearly doubled its support in British Columbia battleground ridings in less than a week at the expense of both the Liberals and the Conservatives, a poll shows.

The NDP has the support of 30 per cent of voters in those key ridings, according to a poll conducted Sept. 7 to 9 for The Globe and Mail and CTV News. That's up from 17 per cent in a poll conducted Sept. 4 to 6.........

Now, this is good news for left-leaning folks (ie. folks like me), right?

Of course.

But then you've got to ask yourself - who else benefits?

I mean, it's not like those votes are going to be torn from the grip of the gnarled fingers of the ConBots, right?

Which got me to wondering who actually did the polling:

"This is a trend line," said Peter Donolo of the Strategic Counsel, which conducted the poll. "It's the strongest trend we've seen develop.".......


Of course, the Strategic Counsel has seen sudden 'strong' trend lines develop just before elections in the recent past that suddenly disappeared, surprise!!!, immediately after those elections.

And, who, you might be asking yourself, benefitted then?

Well, let's just say that it wasn't the left-siders......


Exhibit 1: The 2005 British Columbia Provincial Election, as reported by Monte Paulsen in the Tyee:

On the Friday before the tightest provincial election facing British Columbia this decade, Canada’s most influential newspaper published dramatic poll numbers that appear to be based on biased methodology.

“This is unethical," Vancouver pollster Angus McAllister told The Tyee. “The Globe and Mail ought to be responsible enough not to publish a poll where the ballot question is preceded by 14 questions that influence people’s answers.”

The poll, which was released on Friday the 13th, predicted that the BC Liberal Party would beat the New Democrats by a 13 per cent margin on May 17. Co-sponsored by The Globe and Mail as well as CTV, the poll was conducted by a Toronto firm called The Strategic Counsel.

The wide lead found by the Strategic Counsel poll not only exceeded both the 8-point lead predicted by an Ipsos-Reid poll and the 5-point lead predicted by a Mustel Group poll (both of which were conducted the same week), it also differed from those polls in that its Liberal lead exceeded its margin of error. At a critical moment in the campaign, the Globe’s 13-point prediction provided an appearance of invincibility that buoyed BC Liberals and demoralized New Democrats.

Exhibit 2: The 2006 Canadian Federal Election as reported by myself following up on the work of good folks like Mahigan at POGGE:

From Jan 16, 2006 (ie. one week BEFORE the election)......

I think Nik Nanos at SES just delivered a subtle spanking when he published this.

Poll	Date	Lib	CPC	NDP	Bloc
SES	Jan 14-16	30%	37%	18%	10%
Ekos	Jan 15-17	27%	37%	20%	11%
Decima	Jan 12-15	27%	37%	18%	11%
SC	Jan 14-16	24%	42%	17%	12%

Can anyone spot the outlier?

Posted by mahigan at 07:09 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

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OK?


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*Linked is my Jan. 2006 Election Eve Lotuslandian StratVote Report from last time around (please be kind, because at that time David Emerson was still the Liberal he now says he never was).
If you want numbers that have a track record of actually being predictive of reality go to NNanos' place. If you want analysis and discussion that is top notch, go to Greg Morrow's.

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Why Does Gordon Campbell Hate Democracy So Much?

QuestionPeriod?
WeDon'tNeedNoStinkin'QuestionPeriodVille.


And on this one the snarkolepsy button is most definitely set to 'off'.......

From the CBC, today, Sept 11, 2008

The B.C. Liberals have cancelled the fall sitting of the provincial legislature, sparking outrage from the opposition NDP.

Liberal house leader Mike de Jong confirmed Wednesday that the legislature wouldn't be recalled until February, when Premier Gordon Campbell's Liberals will introduce a throne speech followed by the provincial budget.

Man.

If the dogs on Mainstream Media Street don't howl long and hard on this one we are well and truly doomed.

OK?

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Wards Without Boundaries

(K)No(w)SammyNow
Lotuslandia

I don't know about you but I'm ecstatic about this newly announced "Political Power Trio" that extends from the center all the way out to the far left fringes of Vancouver civic politics.

What the heckfire am I talking about?

Well, it's a power/ticket sharing agreement in which the centrist Vision party gets big play on council and parks board, while leftist COPE gets a majority of schoolboard nominations, and the Greens get in on the action too.

****

Why am I so happy about this?

Well here are my top five reasons (amongst many):

1) It ensures that the center/left vote will not be split.

2) It gives Vision a chance to really use it's big tent approach to help others get elected or, at the very least, get noticed so that they get a shot next time around.

3) Vision's big reach (ie. massive membership sign-ups) might even help them raise money the Obama way - ie. one dollar at a time, but in total amounts way larger than than COPE alone ever could garner.

4) It shows that Vision Mayoral candidate Gregor Robertson can get things done and really bring people together (even if it was really the team around him that made it happen).

5) And this is the biggest one - I hope it means that somebody like Andrea Reimer, somebody who did a fantastic job and arguably was the most effective progressive school board member we've had in a longtime, will never lose an election again just because they are not on a big money, backroom boy-driven ticket.

And besides, it kind of smells like 'Ward Spirit' to me.

Except these wards aren't geographical.

Instead, they represent different, but fundamentally like-minded, constituencies that, by working together, have a shot at affecting change all over town.

Am I gushing too much?


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Frances Bula has the fair and balanced version in the Globe (and no longer Empire), but not over at her place, which is new and unusual (due to the start of a clampdown on freebies?).
However, over at the site that is Absolutely Fabulous, the proprietress, b/w the work of Monte Paulsen over at the Tyee's SuperGroupElectionBlog, does have a report up about how Tim Louis is making noises about how he wants to blow it all up ......Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrgggggggghhhhhh! This reminds me of a pretty good conversation I had with The I Ching King not long ago in which he convinced me that one of the reasons Jim (not James) Green was abandoned last time around by just enough folks on the left fringes to make a difference was because he was willing to go the pragmatic route to actually get things done.

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The Revenge Of REO Speedwagon

OldMediaResurrection
ConsolidationForABloggodomedNationVille


Sure, they were simultaneously bombastic and insipid.....




But for awhile there they rode the magic carpet ride of kings that trailed behind the bloated PR machine driven by the big media screwheads.

It's something that Jane Hamsher wrote about a while ago, back when Firedoglake was still running on Blogspot and a couple of AA batteries:

The music business in the 70's had grown bloated and moribund and disconnected from its audience. Record executives busied themselves buying Rolexes for REO Speedwagon and paying millions for Casablanca records and nobody cared......


Then, suddenly, all hell broke loose:

They (the record company screwheads) were perfectly horrified at the spectacle of kids paying $3 to see the Clash play a benefit for Marxist youth at the Geary Temple in 1978, but even as a kid it was perfectly obvious where the energy was, where the zeitgeist was shifting. Punk rock became a beacon for creative people of all walks, and oh so many years later the shadow it casts looms far greater than the corporate culture merchants of the time were able to envision......


Which is not something I could disagree with, even if my own involvement, unlike my younger brother's, was peripheral to that scene.

Anyway, writing from the perspective of early 2006, Ms. Hamsher had the same feeling about the bloggodome at the time, especially that upper left quadrant that would soon become known as the 'Fever Swamps':

It's not that the movie business or the book business or the magazine business is dead, or that the blog world is any challenge to any of them, but creativity is a very fluid thing and when it becomes difficult to achieve any kind of satisfaction in a particular medium the quality talent will siphon off into an arena that allows it expression. I could stand at a magazine stand for 24 hours straight, reading every issue on the racks and not come across the clever, relevant, insightful things I know I can find in a half hour on the blogs......


And, as someone who has had their own little bloggobubble hidden deep within the northern swamps over the ensuing period, I can't disagree with her there either.

But here's the thing......

Since the writ was dropped in the country formerly known as Canuckistan a few days ago it has suddenly dawned on me that the amateurs are no longer out front all on their own.

I mean, heckfire, I could sit in front of the screen for 24 hours straight staring at this and wouldn't be able to get more in depth election analysis anywhere - dead tree edition or otherwise.

And because the Pro-Blogs are still pretty much free-wheeling and fancy-free it is, at this point at least, still a pretty good thing indeed.

But, clearly, the screwheads are gaining on us.

OK?


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For the record Ms. H. knew, right from the start, that the salad days were going to be short lived.
So here's a question.....Can the hybrids like say, The Tyee's 'The Hook' keep us (ie. the amateurs from getting elbowed out completely?
Ever the optimist, Kady O thinks that everybody can get along (fast forward to the 51st minute, oh the irony!, if you want to cut to the chase). Just to be clear, I'm not worried about the pro-journos themselves that are doing a king hell job of blogging (And I put Sean Holman and Frances Bula in that category locally) that I'm worried about. Instead, it's the big Corps themselves, who I'd take very short odds have business models incubating that they figure will re-establish their hegemony, that I'm worried about.


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Not A High Traffic Leader.con

click on image above to enlarge

AllThePoopThatFits
WarRoomapaloozaVille


Here is what Mr. Harper's off-the-reservation propagmmon platform says as of 11:07pm Tuesday night here in Lotusland......

Do you think it's easy to maintain websites?

We apologize for the inconvenience. High traffic levels are putting (our book of crap) over it's (sic and sicker) bandwidth allotment.

Sure thing.

At 2:07am EDT?

Could it be that, in addition to being lousy spellers, their mission, which they've clearly chosen to accept, is to trivialize everything?



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