Politics Blog

The Liberal Party of Canada, which has been in power for the past 11 years and plagued by various scandals and allegations of corruption, managed to pull off aminor upset and narrowly retain power. The big losers in this election were the pollsters who had projected that the newly revitalized Conservative Party would win a plurality of seats and enough to form a minority government. As it stands currently, the Liberal Party will have 135 out of 308 seats, a big loss from their previous position but enough to hold on to power. The Conservatives won 99 seats, enough to provide a strong opposition but not nearly as good as the projected 120 seats most pollsters had them at. The Liberals will likely work closely with the New Democrat Party, which is the hard left wing party in Canada, who won 19 seats, to provide Canada with an even more left wing government then they do currently.
What does this mean for the United States? Probably not too much, though as we have learned many political ideas, like objects drop downwards. Paul Martin, the Liberal leader besieged by scandal, seems to have successfully played the social issue card as soon as he fell behind in the polls, accusing Stephen Harper and the Conservatives of wanting to criminalize abortion although Harper has a pro-choice stance. The Liberals also implied that Harper was too pro-American running commercials criticizing his moderately pro-Iraq War stance. Perhaps the biggest lesson is how totally wrong polls can be. But Canada is a very different country from the US and nothing highlighted this more then the absence of a serious discussion on the War on Terror, the single most important issue facing the Western world, but Canada with its left wing mindset has demonstrated its isolation and continued decline with this election.

– Mark

Mainstream Americans are so livid at George Bush over his domestic and especially his foreign policies, so nervous about“record high” gas prices, and so skittish about the “jobless recovery,” that . . . THAT . . . THAT!!!. . .

that the Conference Board’s closely-watched Index of Consumer Confidence rose sharply in June, and reached, in fact, a two-year high.

Brother, can ya’ spare a dime?

— Jayson

One reason to hate the end of June:

I’ve come to loathe late June

Instapundit reports this new book about Michael Moore is #20 at Amazon.com. It will be interesting to see how many copies it sells without the benefit of all the publicity the Moore and Franken books get at Today, GMA, Larry King, etc.

Can any of Polipundit’s readers tell me which places of purchase get counted for sales on the NYT bestseller list and which don’t?

— Lorie Byrd

Sometimes my stream of thoughts becomes so convoluted that I can’t remember how I ever got to the subject I am pondering. Today, however, I can trace the progression of thoughts, but it still seems a little surreal.

I spent most of the day at my mom’s house where conversation turned to the helicopters continuously flying overhead. My mom tensed up every time she heard the choppers because she said she suspected they were looking for a 17-year-old girl who went missing last night. We found out an hour or so later from a friend who knew someone in the family that the girl’s body was found in a field behind an apartment complex about a mile from my mother’s house.

My thoughts turned to the other recent horrors of the terrorists kidnapping and beheading Americans in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. I wondered how long they would continue the tactic. Besides the fact that the shock value of the beheadings diminished somewhat with each new occurrence, I wondered how the fear of an American being snatched and murdered halfway around the world could be any more terrifying than one being snatched and murdered a mile from my mother’s home.

The crimes were equally heinous and horrifying, and except for the political element and video “ransom” demand, would be indistinguishable in terms of the way they were investigated and prosecuted. I thought of all the true crime shows (A&E and Court TV alone air dozens of hours of them a week) and news coverage of crimes on television, and wondered how long it would take before the shock felt by Americans in response to the latest method of terrorism waned. When I got home and checked the news on the web, I found this NYT article and couldn’t help but wonder whether that time had already come.

UPDATE: Lest I leave the impression that I think the beheadings are all of a sudden going to stop, I want to make clear that I don’t. I do believe that the terrorists will become more selective in their use of this particular method of terror. I also fear that the upcoming political conventions and the Olympics, with their large audiences and heavy media coverage, present the potential for a spectacular 9/11 style attack that terrorists will find hard to resist. I personally will be holding my breath and saying quite a few prayers between now and November.

– Lorie Byrd

Okay, folks, who uttered the phrase quoted immediately above?

Karl Marx?

No.

Vladimir Lenin??

Um, no.

Josef Stalin???

Nope.

Mao Zedong????

Uh, nyet.

Pol Pot?????

Not.

Ho Chi Mihn??????

No.

Well, who, then?

It happened two days ago, Jack, and it was New York Senator Hillary . . . Rodham . . . Clinton.

Note: Hat tips - Eagle-eyed and large-brained commentator, Charles, and The Hedgehog Report (www.davidwissing.com).

— Jayson

Well, it’s Monday, and over the weekend, I heard a lot about opinion and polls. At least one of the Sunday talking-head shows devoted a full hour to discussion of the political polling for the fall Presidential Election, showing that for many people, polls have moved from reflecting reactions to the news, to making the news themselves.

So, I wrote up a little primer on polls, over at Bill Roggio’s site, TheFourthRail, and at the risk of sounding a bit happy with myself, I recommend “the Poll Vault” to anyone curious about how a poll’s numbers are really driven. There is a line about people not really wanting to know how sausage or laws are made. The same can be said for opinion polls.

Read the whole thing, as they say…

— DJ Drummond

The AP reports that:

The U.S.-led coalition transferred sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government two days early Monday in a surprise move that apparently caught insurgents off guard, averting a feared campaign of attacks to sabotage the highly symbolic step toward self-rule.

What an incredibly smart move. I am sure the violence will continue for some time, but the fact that the terrorists were not able to prevent the transfer from taking place at a time of our choosing, is definitely a victory.

— Lorie Byrd

Betsy’s Page has links to some excellent assessments of what is going on in Iraq and how our efforts there compare to past conflicts. This should be required reading for every “journalist” reporting on Iraq.

— Lorie Byrd

Remember the Roe Effect, the theory that abortion costs Democrats votes? Larry L. Eastland ran the numbers and came up with startling conclusions about the large - and growing - impact legalized abortion is having on the political landscape:

More than 40 million legal abortions have been performed and documented in the 30 years since the U.S. Supreme Court declared abortion legal.

…