Do attack ads really work?

Many pundits, scribes, and scriveners alike continue to say attack ads work, and several have today suggested that Iggy went down because of the attack ads. Show me some hard evidence, please. I simply don't buy it: you have to be dumber than the proverbial door knob or Big Bobby Clobber not to see through these and any other attack ads. The Harperite base obviously enjoys them, but they're not aimed at that base. They're aimed at the undecided and opposition party voters. Who really watches these except for amusement and maybe to exclaim in mock indignation, "how naughty of them" or, from the base, how "dead on"? Or am I overestimating the average intelligence of Canadians? Perhaps.

The Day the Liberal Party Died

The day Iggy was anointed by the Liberal cabal without input from the grass roots was the day the Party died, though some in the Party might have marked Iggy's arrival from distant shores on Canadian soil as the day the music died. (Some called him the Unity Bomber: not a rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem but Ottawa.) What was both the original cabal that brought him to town and the new conclave that beatified the Count smoking? Whatever it was, it wasn't good for the health of the Liberal body. It will take a decade to rebuild this party if at all, and the first thing to do would be to let the ordinary people of the Party instead of the brain trust actually have a say instead of the illusion of input that has existed up til now. (What a waste of time policy conferences are for the grass roots!)

They would do better thinking about a merger with the NDP, but since they've moved so firmly to the centre and frequently across that line to the right, would the NDP even be interested in such a possibility? Red Tories, if any are left, have more in common with the NDP than the LPC. And, besides, such a merger would never happen because of Liberal pride. Understandably but nevertheless sadly so. There ought to be much weeping if not downright gnashing of teeth going on today.

Iggy Has to go: Kinsella 

P.S.Just a note to add that Iggy has resigned this morning and is going back to school -- my guess,somewhere in the U.S. So that's a beginning.

And some have suggested that because the LPC campaigned left of even the NDP in this election, the centrists in the party abandoned them and voted CPC. Maybe, but some certainly migrated to the NDP contributing to the orange crush.

Polling ain't what it used to be

For one thing, dwindling numbers of people, given our abhorrence of telemarketers, answer their home phones, much less agree to take the time and energy to complete an interview, says Scott Mathews, co-director of the Canadian Opinion Research Archive at Queen's University. And pollsters rarely report response rates, he says, but the reality is that the 75 and 80 per cent rates of a generation ago have slipped to as low as 15 to 20 per cent today. And it's not a random 15 or 20 per cent of that random sample; instead, " it's the people who are easily contacted and these tend to be people who are unrepresentative in various ways, maybe older, maybe unemployed, just something that makes it more likely that they'll be home to pick up the phone and complete a survey."

Add to Mathews and the Citizen reporter's observations here is the fact that cell phone users, many of whom are the 18-24 demographic, seldom get calls or pick up if they do, and we have a very suspect process in all the current polling. The votemob crowd has not been participating significantly if at all in this polling, in other words, and they appear to be a serious factor in this election. Will we be surprised on Monday night if the numbers are radically different from what the pollsters have been hyping all week? They could be higher; they could be lower. In any case, nothing will surprise me.

In the Ottawa Citizen: http://bit.ly/ixXn0f

Suburban Voters and Voter Suppression | rabble.ca

I hate to admit this but John Ivison in his piece in The Post on Saturday could have a point: “There is anger in the herbivore community about Stephen Harper’s failings — some of it is even justified. But the evidence on the doorsteps suggests it does not extend beyond the politically engaged into the suburbs, where people have to get up in the morning.” Two questions: does the apparently large turnout on Friday at the advance polls suggest a newly engaged voter constituency or was that the already committed who showed up? Will the votemob constituency have any real voting power now that the University year is coming to an end?

The answer to the first question is we simply don’t know whether these are newly engaged voters or what their voter preference might be, but if they are they could potentially  make a difference for any of the parties.  As for university students. there are 3 million elegible votes under 25, and pollling suggests that their voting preferences would probalby favour the Liberals, NDP, or Greens over the Harperites. But did they vote on Friday in their campus ridings, and if not, will they vote today?  If they do vote over this holiday weekend on campus, what percentage of support would there be for each of the three favoured parties, and how split would that vote be? And will their votes make a difference?

There does not appear to be much room for optimism.  Now that through the not so subtle voter-supression tatics of the Harperites to shut down special voting polls on university campuses has occurred, students would have had to remain on campus this holiday weekend to vote in their university riding in the advance polls, but most univerisites are in the process of wrapping up the semester, and preliminary estimates of students who did remain are that one-third of  the student body have remained on campus. How many of those plan on voting, and even if all did so, how much of a difference is there in effect between one-third and a full student body? For those who did not remain on campus and still wished to vote, their  only option is to vote in their home riding today or on May 2 where their vote,  because unconcentrated and spread as it would be across many ridings, would count for much less.

It remains to seen how all this plays out.  but one thing is certain:  the shutting down of the special voting stations on campus by elections Canada in complicity with the Harperites might turn out to be far more significan than first thought.

via Suburban Voters and Voter Suppression | rabble.ca.

Earth Day is April 22. Will its Celebration Change Anything? | rabble.ca

A recent Ipsos Reid poll for Postmedia News reveals that only 5% of Canadians think of the environment as a key issue that our federal parties should be discussing, and even poll figures from Day 22 of the campaign from Nik Nanos rank it well below heathcare and jobs/economy at 4.3%, a drop from 5.1% on April 16.   These are shocking numbers for a variety of reasons, among them that respondents to the polls are apparently unable to see a connection between health and the economy, on the one hand, and the “health" and “the economy" of the planet, on the other. So who can blame the four federal parties for ignoring this issue? To them, obsessed with trying to win as many seats as possible, it’s just one of many issues in a long list.  Political expediency, as is so often the case,  trumps both principle and, in this context, reality.  The  absence, in varying degrees,  of a meaningful strategic policy initiative in  three of the four federal parties and in all four the recessing of serious discussion on the most pressing issue our world has ever faced  during this federal campaign is a direct result of such ordinary Canadians’ apparent indifference to it.

I write of course about the crisis in our biosphere — the rapid and now, it would seem, inevitable  movement towards the total destruction of our planet and everything in it through the unconscionable industrialization of the planet over the past century and a half that manifests itself in countless ways, not just in the global warming phenomenon.  Unfettered industrialization and indiscriminate economic development have led to global warming and, in turn,  the climate change phenomenon.  But the environment is not just some “natural” realm external to ourselves, as David Suzuki continues to remind us with greater urgency every day.  It’s everything, and we –plants, animals, humans, water, land, air — are in this together.

To name only a few disturbing trends in which we now find ourselves in 2011:

• Unsustainable population growth throughout the world from roughly 3 billion in 1960  to approximately 7 billion in 2010 (Malthus haunts us: while the rate of growth is declining, the absolute numbers are increasing unsustainably)
• Corporate and other forms of industrialized farming with the widespread use of toxic chemicals  (Where have all the bees gone?) and,  as so many economists have been telling us for months now, a massive food shortage looming throughout the world and, as a result,  rising food prices
• The commoditization of water ( Jean Chrétien had the audacity to talk about that possibility two weeks ago.)
• The massive destruction of wildlife habitats and the extinction of countless species
• The irresponsible clear-cutting and destruction of forests that still happens through the world
• Our very own Canadian embarrassment: the tars sands operation and  its out-of-control carbon emissions and now scientifically proven  toxic waste leaching into the  land and water around it  (Despite aggressive Canadian lobbying, we learned very recently the EU is about to slap a “dirty fuel” label on the tar sands.)

What continues to astound and appall me is the total absence of a focused discussion about the erosion of our biosphere from any of the federal parties.  Even the Green Party, which does indeed have a comprehensive and meaningful policy on a sustainable planet, is not talking about it much, though it does form the ground of its platform.  Hard to fault the Greens given the politics of exclusion exercised against them by Big TV’s federal debates consortium.  They have a good excuse. But it would seem that, in general,  politics takes precedence over the destruction of the world during this federal election.   Everyone wants  political  power -- some because they think they may accomplished policy with it; others, alas, for its own sake.   Who can blame them?

Well I, my children, and my grandchildren can. This is the pre-eminent issue of our day. For  job growth, health care, pensions, education, tax credits, the ethical behaviour of politicians — these mean nothing as issues of concern  if we are on the way to self-extinction.  Many scientists have been arguing with increasing frequency that we may already be beyond the tipping point, that the process of self-destruction cannot be reversed but only inhibited.

We are currently spewing 388ppm (parts per million)  of CO2 in the biosphere, a disturbing notch on an escalating  trending pattern of 2ppm a year, way past the tipping point of 350ppm that scientists maintain is the real tipping point.   This is what James Hansen of America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the first scientist to warn about global warming over two decades ago, wrote recently:  ”If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.”   In other words, this is our last chance: if we don’t reverse that trend in the next ten years, we’re done.

via Earth Day is April 22. Will its Celebration Change Anything? | rabble.ca.

P.S.World Environment Day, June 5: http://bit.ly/iiu0pu http://bit.ly/jqz9VY
CO2 emissions reach a record high in 2010; 80% of projected 2020 emissions from the power sector are already locked in: these bleak findings from the International Energy Agency in a recent report suggests the crisis is even more intense than we have imagined.

Students Just might Make a Difference in this Election | rabble.ca

Students Might Just Make Difference in This Election

“Ratings monitor BBM Canada said that 3.85 million viewers watched the debate Tuesday night, an increase of 26 per cent compared with 2008’s showdown. The number jumped to 10.6 million viewers once those who only watched a portion of the debate were included.”

The question is who are these viewers? Are they the already entrenched partisans of each party combined with the usual political junkies, pundits, and journalists — the usual suspects — or are they that cabal in combination with the undecided and the uncommitted? It would be intriguing to think the latter, and the 10.6 figure for those who only watched a portion does indeed suggests a fairly substantial level of interest if not engagement. If we take these numbers, then, as a postive trend towards engagement and thus, as a result, a potentially larger voter turnout and link them to the large increase in Twitter traffic on the election and to the Rick Mercer energized votemob initiative expanding every day, we may indeed have a radically different election than 2008. The result may surprise us.

The second question, then, is who gains from this increased matrix of activity if it’s real? We can’t be absolutely certain it’s Harper, who is obviously counting primarily, as many have pointed out, on his base, targeted ridings, and of course voter apathy, indifference, or ignorance to get him his coveted majority, though at least some of the undecided will swing his way. But countering that movement is the increasing number of whack the Harperites websites and videos, the extremely pumped Green supporters since Elzabeth May’s exclusion from the debates, whose numbers are also expanding, and, most significant, the increasing participation in studentvote-votemob movement, which I strongly suspect is not travelling in the direction of the Harperites.

Driven by the leadnow.ca intiative, this group refuses to lie down and roll over even after Elections Canada, pressured by the Harperites — a blatant Rove-like voter suppression tactic — has shut down campus voting. Leadnow.ca has started a petition to have campus voting reestablshed, and sudents all across Canada have said if they can’t vote on campus, they will vote in advanced polls and in their home riding.  Apathyisboring has already heard from 60,000 students pledging to vote.

But the last question remains the very first one everyone asked:  has either debate make a difference, changed anything, or were they just a little stop on the way? The polls suggest the latter, but, remember, students, whose communciation matrix is social media and cell phones, are not a significant part of the polling sample if at all. We may indeed be having a different election, and on May 2, the results may just turn out to be  much more than simply intriguing.

via Students Just might Make a Difference in this Election | rabble.ca.

Hockey, Politics, Corporations | rabble.ca

Last week we once  again witnessed politics trumping principle in the swift, complete co-operation of the four main political parties in agreeing to shift the french debates up a day to allow Canadian viewers to watch the Habs game. What does this say about the parties' underlying  attitudes towards and trust of the Canadian public?  Something sadly cynical, I'm afraid:  that Canadians can't be trusted to choose the potential good of their country over a mere hockey game, that "sports" means more than the fate of our country, that the parties fear viewers might just not tune in because most would prefer hockey to the debate?  Alas, they're probably right.

But who else benefited from this particular shift?  RDS and Mother Corporation, of course, both of whom are now probably overjoyed at this opportunity to have  recovered potential lost revenue.  Had the game and the debate taken place on the same night, potentially splitting the viewing audience, the already reduced revenue because of the ad-free debate would have been further eroded, though one could argue that the bulk of that audience for the debate would be Quebec, not necessarily an increased across-Canada viewer-ship, who could still watch the game in comfort if they're not bilingual or interested in the debate. But since it's the Habs, that viewer-ship in Quebec had the potential to be very large.

The financial  relationship between the CBC and the other hockey corporate broadcasters  and the NHL, itself a large  corporation, is also foregrounded here in this decision, and the story in theglobandmail today about the NHL inking a new contract with NBC TV -  a contract, by the way, that might prevent the move by the Coyotes back toWinnipeg - reveals just how insidious that relationship is. Hockey of course is a big ad revenue generator for Canadian broadcasters, but the larger U.S. markets generate much more revenue for both the U.S. broadcasters and the NHL in absolute numbers.  And this corporate driven thinking is the main reason the NHL is resisting any move to the tiny TV market of Winnipeg.

On a personal note,  I have relatives who work in profession hockey operations (who, as Jack Webb would say, shall be nameless to protect the innocent),  and I myself once played in the Leaf organization for a few years when I was a teenager until I got sick of playing what I now see as propaganda, recruiting games in North Ontario in  addition to regular games and practices -- seven days a week.   I wasn't very good, so no big loss for the Leafs. But we all know - that is, my relatives who are still working in professional hockey and I - that the illusion of professional hockey as a “sport” dissipated years ago.  I mark the original expansion from six teams as the day the music stopped.

And aren't most such expansions quite obviously driven by corporate agendas to expand the market and therefore make more money?  Isn't it always about money?  We all know, my relatives and I - especially because of the massive expansion into the U.S. -  that professional hockey, like most professional sport,  is positioned for marketing purposes as undignified entertainment, not sport, and that corporations and their bottom line  agendas are what really matters.  Plain and simple, hockey is deeply inscribed in capitalism:  NHL teams are designed to make money - sometimes they’re successful and sometimes they’re not -- and the players with their outrageous salaries are, as in all professional sport, bought and sold  commodities.

I haven't watched a game since that original expansion.  And I'm just as proud of that political gesture as the fact I never shop at Wal-mart, for, as I learned a long time ago, all shopping is political, and so too, one might argue, is all television watching.

via Hockey, Politics, Corporations | rabble.ca.

Ethnic Voters Unite: I Was Lost and Now I'm Found

Why don't all of you who seem so upset with the mainline parties take a good look at the Greens?   I simply can't vote for potential power anymore. Every time I have -- whether for the LPC or the NDP, never the Harperites -- I've compromised myself morally on some issue or other. I've found my way to the Greens in this election, and not just because of their clear recognition of the crucial condition in which planet earth finds itself on this Earth Day but also because they respect all Canadians and, unlike the mainline parties, respect the members of their very own party. Real input from the grassroots in the mainline parties is an illusion. A cabal at the top still calls the shots, and, in the case of the Harperites, an autocrat if not an implicit dictator - some would say explicit - controls everything.

Remind yourself of what sort of input the rank and file had the day Iggy was anointed and ascended to the LPC throne. That was the day many rank and file quit the LPC. Remind yourself of how man times, despite some half-decent policies, the NDP actually propped up the Harperites in order to gain a little bit of pathetic power and prestige. Remind yourself that the BQ is selfishly concerned about the welfare of  only one province, not Canada as a whole. And of course  you need no reminder of the endless abuses of the Harperites.

P.S. I am not a member of the Green Party. I just see full moral value in everything they do.

7:36 AM on April 22, 2011

Ethnic’ voters, unite! You have nothing to lose but your temper

Implicit Voter Suppression: Are we Witnessing the Opening of a New Bag of Dirty Tricks?

Pressured by the Harperites, Elections Canada played perfectly into their Rove-like voter repression strategy yesterday in suspending special ballot voting on campuses across the country. If I were a university student, no matter what my voter preference, I’d be appalled if not outraged at such an ant-democractic tactic, and it amazes me how few pundits and media types have twigged to what’s really going on here. Aware of well-established voting trends on campus, the Harperites know that this potential campus vote is not, in general, going to favour them; it’s going to be for one of the other four parties. And so, in addition to all the strong-arm assaults against students at Harperite rallies, we now have another manipulative, unethical way to work towards that coveted majority. What further imported Republican-style dirt tricks are we now going to witness during the remainder of the campaign?  This is really scary.

I urge all those students who want to vote on campus but will not be able to do so to bring your energy and passion for voting to your home riding or advanced polls, which begin on April 22. The future is yours to lose.

The importance of youth voting

Elections Canada puts end to ‘special ballot’ voting

Elections Canada rejects Tory bid to quash student votes

Casting for a New Film About the Prime Minister of Canada

As I mentioned in my opening entry, I lived the life of a film producer for a number of years  -- even did a couple of projects for Mother Corporation, hoping to meet Pastor Mansbridge or, at the very least, Evan (let’s beat-this-story-to-death) Solomon,  and that experience got me thinking about a new film project called  Prime Minister of Canada:  How to Become a Dictator in a Democracy, which I intend to pitch to the new Sun Media channel  since I’m pretty sure the other big three national networks simply wouldn’t be interested in that so much of their programming is either in-house production or U.S. shows, apparently what Canadians want to see. You know,  things like Pastor Mansbridge ministering every night, and Lisa Laflame now pretty well every night for your viewing pleasure or Dancing with the Stars, though I could see one or two of those who came to the audition on that show waltzing or bumping around the dance floor.   Can’t you just see Iggy and Hair-in-the-Fridge (John Doyle’s phrase for OGL [our glorious leader]) doing their thing and getting all those on-line votes from giggling female viewers.  But Sun claims to be true blue Canadian, so I’m going with them.

So far, the agents of five potential actors have approached me, getting wind of the project through my Twitter account of course: Gilles Duceppe (many years of performance on various stages in la belle province), Jack Layton (very big on the Toronto stage), Michael Ignatieff (many years in front of the TV camera in Britain), Steve Harper (who’s been doing his one-note over-the-top angry bit  in Alberta political theatres for quite some time and has recently brought his act to Ottawa trying to go national but hasn’t been all that successful so far), and Elizabeth May (who is a less seasoned performer but a fresh face).  Now in the film business, when you’re casting, two considerations mean everything:  what we call less-is-more and screen presence, not really mutually exclusive categories.  Who does the camera love, who’s infinitely watchable, who does the small things well, who’s “natural?”

I’ve seen all five now, and, in consultation with the Director (who shall be nameless since he used to be a journalist) I’ve hired, we think we know who might sell this project with viewers.  Here’s our assessment of each:

Giles Duceppe:  No charisma and no acting talent whatsoever, too matter-of-fact in his delivery of lines, scripted or not.  Natural, but no screen presence.  Difficult to know how he got into the business or how that agent of his could possibly imagine we’d be interested given his limited Canadian experience.

Michael Ignatief: Apparently has two nicknames, Iggy and the Count.  I never know which of those to use. There’s a certain charm -- I think it’s called the crumpet motif that derives from old British ladies’ affection for certain TV types or Opal’s infatuation with Alex Trebek.  Not sure which. Has become adept at delivery, getting slicker everyday, and not bad at improvising lines, which does, however, get him into trouble with other cast members occasionally, but unfortunately the camera knows that HE’S PERFORMING.  In his case, less-is-more is just not working because it’s far more dramatic than it should be.  That desperate urgency just doesn’t work these days except in soap operas.  I’ve recommended to his agent that he give Days of Our Lives a call.

Jack Layton:  Slick, well-oiled, clichéd delivery but interesting look, especially the moustache and baldness.  Good teeth too. Unfortunately, all his performances are routine or predictable.   He’s one of those actors who just doesn’t know how to surprise us, sad to say, and it’s unlikely he’s ever going to make the big time.  Still we wish him luck in the small theatres, for his heart would seem to be  in the right place.

Stephen Harper:  Far too many nicknames to list here, especially since some children or the parents of children might be reading  this, but I am fond of Hair-in-the-Fridge.  It has a certain ring to it.  Not sure how to describe all the problems of performance here. The Director and I, having both steeped ourselves in Freudian analysis years ago, think there may be some issues haunting this actor from the past -- probably something to do with loyalty and trust.  We think that perhaps, some time ago, one of his fellow actors whom he thought was loyal betrayed him and that  incident has generated a distrust of everybody in the cast, not to mention the viewing audience itself.  His performances are edgy, true, and that makes them watchful, but they drift towards resentful in tone far too often.  And he cannot deal with the paparazzi or fans that might want to get in and see him at all.  But he’s natural, too:  we do see the man for what he is; there’s no performance here for the most part.  In fact, when we do see a performance, especially when we see him working at his desk, playing the piano, or wearing a sweater, unfortunately we know he’s performing.  I haven’t told his agent yet that we’re rejecting him.  To tell you the truth, I’m a bit scared to do so.

Elizabeth May: a fresh face, an up-and-comer, getting better known all the time, but not as well known as Charlie yet.   We producers are always on the look-out for fresh new faces, and we think she might be able to pull it off.  Totally natural, what you see is what you get performances in all her other stage and film work, a total absence of artifice, no acting tricks, smooth articulate delivery and a great sense of working  with the other actors comfortably -- which sort of surprised us -- and the viewing audience, whom she seems to respect for their discerning abilities -- not something that can really be said about the others who auditioned.

But we do see a possible problem with the project.  Sun, it turns out, might be having second thoughts, especially since we said we were going with Elizabeth.  Turns out, they thought we would automatically cast Hair-the-Fridge.  Seems like we might have to wait for a while to get the film up and running.