Philgrim’s Blogress

Since returning from a week in the bush, I’ve been catching up on the news, and was delighted to find this clip of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.  I think he does a fine job of singing and playing piano.

Stephen Harper often comes across as cold and distant, which doesn’t endear him to the voters.  The blue-sweater ads from the last election didn’t do a lot to dispel that image, but I think this clip helps.

However his make-up department should have done something about his corpse-like skin colour at this event.  Were they aiming to attract the Goth demographic?

And speaking of friends, it seems that Harper has more of them recently, according to the latest EKOS opinion poll.

As the mainstream Canadian media continues in the Obamafication of newly-anointed Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, I must concur that he looks really sharp in his red ties.

However, am I being petty in my concern that the man has lived in other countries for most of his adult life (1978 to 2000 in the United Kingdom, 2000 to 2005 in the United States, not to speak of the stints in southern France)?.  If a messiah is to appear to save us from the evil Harper, is it reasonable to want him to come from our own country?

Obviously many Canadians don’t share my concerns, according to the most recent polls.

Ignatieff is an intellectual, so I am sure that he has researched the subject of Canada.  Actually living here before his appointed time was apparently optional.

Liberal-NDP coalition (supported by Bloc Quebecois)
Dec. 1, 2008 to Jan. 28th, 2009.

It was with mixed emotions that the death of the Liberal-NDP/Bloc coalition was announced this morning in Ottawa.

NDP Leader Jack Layton, one of the founding members, seemed saddened by the dissolution of the agreement and declared that a new coalition has been born between Liberal Michael Ignatieff and Conservative Stephen Harper.

Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe, also a signatory, was less sentimental, declaring the proposal simply “defunct.”

The Liberal party too acknowledged the death of the coalition, although some participants blamed the Liberals for their part in its ultimate demise.

The coalition lived for a total of 59 days.

In its short life it brought much political fireworks to Ottawa and thrived on its moments in the spotlight. As recently as this weekend, there were some who believed it might yet survive.

Condolences can be sent to directly to the MPs who supported it.

(source)

Apologies to those who are in mourning for that goofy Liberal-NDP-Bloc (supported by the Bloc) coalition, but I for one am glad to see its grotesque existence come to an end.

Now that their attempted power-grab has failed, can they please get on with the business of providing reasonable opposition to the government?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other Conservatives have come under fire by some media pundits in recent days for referring to the Bloc Québécois as “separatists”.  Unfairly labelling the separatists as separatists is apparently divisive.

A question for those critics … Is it OK to call the Western Block Party “separatists”?

Or is having a stated goal of separating from our great country only acceptable in Eastern Canada?

Just wondering.

In the last few days I’ve seen a few comments to the effect that 62% of  Canadian voters did not vote for the Conservatives in the last election, which calls the government’s legitimacy into question.

To put that in perspective, consider that one needs to go back to the 1984 landslide to find an election where a majority of the popular vote went to the leading party.

So were all those governments including Chretien’s three consecutive majorities illegitimate because the other parties received more votes?

UPDATE:  My apologies for the ugly table formatting. At least the table is showing up now – originally it displayed fine in Firefox but not in Internet Explorer – in fact having a table in this post made all of my previous posts disappear. If anyone knows how to insert Word tables into WordPress while retaining the formatting, please let me know.