Funny Politicians on Twitter Moment

This is a copy and paste from my twitter stream:

	ElizabethMay is going home 15 minutes ago from web
	jessamyn Richard Stallman's auto-reply mesage is totally strange. Why am I surprised? 24 minutes ago from NatsuLion
	ElizabethMay is watching the news. 27 minutes ago from web
	jacklayton the interview with Peter Mansbridge on CBC TV http://tinyurl.com/3mym2v 39 minutes ago from web
	jacklayton http://tinyurl.com/3mym2v 41 minutes ago from web

I'm just imagining Elizabeth watching the news, seeing Layton on there, and getting mad and going home. Sorry, that's what happens when you take a gamble and throw all your eggs into your own riding, people forget about you nationally. I mostly just posted this because of the funny synchronisity, though.

As for the two of them, I get the impression that Jack Layton seems to grasp the potential for Twitter in keeping people interested in his campaign, I wouldn't have known about him appearing on CBC without it, for example. On the other hand he has fallen off of using it just to twitter about random thoughts like regular people use and love Twitter for. If I get the impression that they're just getting some intern to post their updates I'm going to sour on a candidate pretty damn quick.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, just seems like she is using it because someone in her circle told her it's what the kids are into these days, but maybe just hasn't crossed that line you need to to really 'get' it. There is a bit of an art to being engaging with your little updates, to the point where I would want to still follow you even after an election.

Labels: Politics, Twitter

Michael Enright and Me and the United States of America

It's very funny to listen to Michael Enright light up when he gets to talk to an American politician or commentator about the state of U.S. politics and international relations. A few years ago he did a two-part interview with Conrad Black. One part was about his legal case and Hollinger International, and the second part about the book Black wrote about Franklin D. Roosevelt, and it was pretty obvious that that was the half of the interview Michael wished would last for the whole time slot. And frankly so did I.

One thing Michael Enright is just not good at is pretending to be interested in Canadian politics. And it is rather hard to be when one has instant access to the thousands of US political blogs and news sources which sound like reports from a trench war that's been being fought since the Nixon years.

Up in Canada we get the fun of having access to all the media coverage of the high-pitched political and culture war, while getting to live in a relatively sensibly-run society. For infovores like us it's much more satisfying to dive into the deep pool of conflict and history of US politics than to try and give two shits about Stephen Harper.

It's rather obvious just how deeply immersed in American history and politics Michael Enright is. Today in an interview on the Sunday Edition, Krugman made a reference to "the macaca incident" in the 2004 Virginia senatorial election, and while Krugman did a very good job of summarizing the whole incident for presumably an audience in a foreign country who would have no idea about a state-level campaign incident from four years ago, you could hear a little bit of impatience in Enright's voice that sounded like "yes yes of course, everyone knows that" but he managed to restrain himself.

Now thankfully CBC has Rex Murphy and Kathleen Petty on Cross Country Checkup and The House to pick up the slack and actually make Canadian politics seem interesting and important, So Michael Enright can be left to play in his preferred waters and make some very informative and important radio interviews that happen to catch my interest as fellow voyeur into US public life.

Labels: CBC, Politics

Atta Boy, Canadian Dollar

Well, as I wrote back in 2004 in the post My Prediction, the Canadian dollar has reached parity with the US dollar as of 2:00pm Atlantic time today.


This makes me think I should go buy some shoes in the J C Penny in New Hampshire that is itself bigger than the Charlottetown Mall. I imagine the parking lots near the Canadian border will have more than the usual sight of discarded Canadians' shoes as people leave their old ones right in the lot and put on the new ones to get by customs and save a couple of bucks in duty.

I'm starting to think that the credit crisis, US current accounts deficits, the strong Euro are all forming a perfect storm to deflate the US dollar. Unfortunately the Canadian dollar only looks strong when you compare it to the US dollar, but the Euro and the Yen have been growing steadily against both, only slightly less dramatically against the Canadian dollar. On world markets I suspect that most currency traders still view the two currencies as good or poor buys together, buying both or selling both at once based on what's happening in the US economy. Normally this isn't a bad idea, since our trade relationship is so tight, but I really do see the credit crisis in the US not repeating here. Sure Toronto and Vancouver have ridiculous real estate prices, but I think this reflects genuine demand, rather than inflated prices based on over-eager lending to people who turn around and spend more money than they have competing for every available home up for sale in nearly every major market.

I'm not too worried about this being too harmful to Canada's economy. What will hurt our exporters more than the dollar is simply the dismal economy down South, if people aren't building new houses because they can't get loans, it won't matter how cheap our dollar is if no one wants to by any lumber at all. But at least a strong Canadian dollar will help our ability to trade with the rest of the world, increasing our economic footprint and allowing us to engage on hopefully what will become a more open basis with Europe.

I hope Stephen Harper continues to pay down our debt and doesn't bring in any drastic tax cuts. I wonder if all the staunch supporters of Bush and his tax cuts for the wealthy realize that while they just had their taxes cut by 40%, the value of the money they now have is worth half what it was before Bush came along. But at least they still get to stick it to poor people.

Labels: Economics, Politics

Dean Constable

Dean is so far the only candidate to show up at my door, which was before the election was actually called. Sabrina spoke to him for quite a while about community swimming facilities and the fact that the CARI isn't really fulfilling its mandate, and is turning into more of a publicly-subsidized private health club. He was genuinely interested in what she was saying and made a note of it to take away with him. I was quite impressed that he did a lot more listening than talking.

He was on the radio this morning talking about video lottery terminals and promising to do what he could to try and get rid of them, including exercising what influence he could in opposition. I fully support this and am glad he mentioned that the money that goes into those is money that would have gone into the economy in some other form anyway. He didn't mention it but it's not people who have a high rate of savings who use these, it's mostly people who live paycheque to paycheque, and it really is shameful that the government has come to rely on them as a form of income.

Pat Martel was asking him questions and seemed to take a bit of a condescending tone at a couple of points. Dean answered the questions well, and it was refreshing to hear a politician say exactly what he thought was right rather than couching his statements in language to not offend entrenched interests. And good for him for pointing out that the Racino (ugh) is losing money, so the VLTs really aren't helping the local harness racing industry at all.

I think Dean would do well to try and slow down his rate of speech, he came off as a bit nervous. Something I've learned to consciously do is to speak slowly and retain control over the flow of discussion by making someone wait until you have made your point rather than trying to squeeze as many words as you can in the time the other person decide to let you speak. The last thing people want to be reminded of in NDP leaders is the tendency to be excitable and shrill.

Labels: Elections, NDP, PEI, Politics

Quebec Election

Quebecers seem to have the most cunning voters around. Back in 1999 they managed to elect a PQ government but give the Liberals more total votes to spook the separatists and postpone any referendum plans. And now this year they managed as best they could to say 'wow, we aren't particularly impressed by any of you' and divide up the vote 32%, 31% and 28% between the Liberals, the Action Democratique and the PQ.

This means that there probably won't be another referendum in the next decade or so, and separatism may lose its place as the baton people grip when they feel alienated and marginalized.

Unfortunately that position may have been replaced by a weird right-wing protest vote that will bring some pretty borderline candidates into the legislature in positions to hold the government hostage if they want to.

The one thing the two main parties in Quebec have agreed on in the last 30 years is on an over-archingly socialist model for governing. That there was this backlash coalescing behind the ADQ in Quebec City and in rural Quebec that was mainly a resentment of the dominance of Montreal in Quebec culture that was picked up by right-wing radio in Quebec City and Mario Dumont sensed it and played to it very deftly.

What is worrying now is whether the former federal Conservative Party leader, Jean Charest, who may owe his political life to a gigantic budgetary bribe from his former federal party, might see the writing on the wall and realize he needs to co-opt the right-wing ADQ and bring them into a coalition against the solidly socialist PQ, and start slashing taxes (something he was critiziced for not doing in his term in power) and allowing the ADQ to play to cultural (perhaps even racial) isolationist feelings rather than be so focused on just the language aspect.

If I was Stephen Harper I'd call an election in the next six weeks, this huge protest vote in Quebec shows that the Bloc could be taken down in the PQ's wake, and that Quebecers might be ready to vote for the Conservatives again.

Labels: Politics, Quebec