Secret backroom dealing! This feels like banana republic politics!

Ho-lee shit! Via Blue Like You I just learned of the CTV news item with Robert Fife exposing the secret NDP/Bloc deal to initiate an overthrow of the Tories. Jack Layton is heard admitting the deal was cooked up long before Tory fiscal update last Thursday.

This puts the absolute lie to any claim that the on-going coup d'etat attempt has anything at all to do with the economy and the Conservative fiscal stimulus plan.

There's nothing particularly wrong with plotting to bring down minority governments. It's part of the game. Hell, oppositions have always hatched these plots, but the goal is normally to force an election not form coalition governments.

In this case the opposition has been lying to the public about its motives while secretly plotting to form a coalition government a few short weeks after the electorate put the Tories in power.

These are creepy banana republic tactics. They're a disgrace and if the government should be defeated there must be a new vote not a phony rag-tag 'coalition' cooked up on the fly.

PR anyone?

Bumped: My response to comments on the previous post on polls:

"Yeah, these on-line media polls do lack the credibility of the supposedly unbiased ones done by the professional polsters (and as Alberta Girl notes where are they on this crisis?). But in this case there's reasonable consistency (as Reid points out) with other similar polls. Also, in a small town like Victoria 300 responses (I note it's now up to almost 500) to a radio station's on-line poll is a pretty good sample - and it's against the natural local political grain.

So people are clearly seeing through the opposition BS. Even if they had reasonable justification for ousting a six week old 143 seat minority government(and they don't) there's no way that they can form a more credible or stable minority government with a mixed bag of leaderless Libs and NDP with 113 (76+37) seats between them backed up by a bunch of (50) commie separatists.

Though the opposition can't admit it, it's blatantly obvious that the driving motivation for this attempted coup d'etat is the threatened cancellation of taxpayer funded 'entitlements' for political parties - and for the NDP maybe the no-strike provision for gov't unions.

But as far as I know the opposition doesn't really need a good argument to defeat a minority government. They can do it any time they see an opportunity. However, ordinarily, they have to risk going to the polls. I can't see the GG and/or the Supremes allowing this "coalition" of idiots to form a government on such a thin pretext without a new vote . But it's possible and, as Ted says, "downright scary."

And people actually want Proportional Representation?! Permanent instability and elections every year or so? Nuts to that!"

Poll - No coalition!

Somewhat surprisingly, should it come to that, it appears that even here in lib/left Victoria there's little enthusiasm for a Lib/NDP coalition:
See also: Globe poll, NewsTalk650.

And, should it come to that, here are some catchy names for the coalition.

Push for the repeal of HRA Section 13

Ezra is pumped about the prospects for getting rid of Section 13 of the Human Rights Act. He urges his readers to write to the Prime Minister. So, I just now sent this off to the PM:

Dear Prime Minister,

The abuse of a basic human right to free expression by so-called "Human Rights" Commissions is an obvious contradiction that cannot be allowed to stand in a free society.

At their recent policy convention in Winnipeg, Conservatives voted nearly unanimously to repeal Section 13 of the Human Rights Act. Professor Richard Moon just finished his report on the Canadian Human Rights Commission and recommended the repeal of Section 13. Nearly every newspaper in the country has written stories and editorials (see recent examples below) condemning "Human Rights" Commissions' use of Section 13 to censor free expression supposedly guaranteed by our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

This is not a partisan issue. It is an issue of funadamental rights that all parties can and will get behind. It is time for the government to take action to repeal Section 13 and you are urged to move this to the top of your agenda.

Respectfully yours,

Press stories and editorials
Toronto Star editorial.
Op-Ed in the National Post.
The Globe and Mail's third editorial this year.
The tenth editorial or column in the Calgary Herald.
The Montreal Gazette for the second or third time.
The Ottawa Citizen, the Toronto Sun, the Edmonton Sun, the London Free Press, the Windsor Star, the Metro paper – the daily free newspaper in seven Canadian cities from Vancouver to Halifax.
The Brockville Recorder and Times and the Portage Daily Graphic

A similar letter, modified to praise Keith Martin, went to Liberal leadership frontrunner Michael Ignatieff.

Moon: "Repeal Section 13 of the Human Rights Act"

Unexpected good news: Professor Richard Moon released his report on the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission and, surprise-surprise, recommended that Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act be repealed.

There's lots of good commentary by Ezra Levant (also, and), Mark Steyn, Blazing Cat Fur, Kathy Shaidle, Jay Currie and others.

That's another step in the right direction. What more will it take to get the Conservative government to finish the job?

Obama's auntie

John Derbyshire relates, on Radio Derb, the hilarious lowdown on Barack Obama's Kenyan (and US illegal alien) Aunt Zeituni.... and much more.

Bail out the Big 3?

While the current global economic crisis isn't helping, the Detroit Big 3's problems are much deeper. Here are the 2007 performance figures for the Big 6:





"And of course GM’s CEO just got a 64% raise this year, presumably for the excellent performance."

[Via]