36% is apparently a majority, but not for a whole day

The daily polling is suspicious. Every day the media publishes what the electoral outcome is going to be. And every day it changes. They keep saying there’s going to be a Harper majority. Saying it won’t make it so, but it might contribute to it.

Earlier today I saw an article on CityTV.ca through Google News headlined: “Majority of Canadians want Harper majority.” I looked at the story and it said 36% wanted a Harper majority. That’s no majority I have ever heard of.

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Canadians are annoyed – deliberation vs. engineering in elections

Pollsters now get people to press buttons about how they are feeling as they watch debates, and have discovered that Canadians are annoyed. This then feeds back to politicians, who try to, presumably, be less annoying, or, perhaps, try to blame other politicians for the annoyance.

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I went over my twitter limit…

So I’m just going to make a few notes:

-Ignatieff was right when he says Harper’s offering “fantasy economics”. He also answered the financial question directly. And Harper seemed to make eye contact for the first time. And then went back to the camera. Harper: “Every credible economic analyst” says taxes kill jobs – in Harper’s words, that’s “simply not true.” Ha-Joon Chang & Joseph Stiglitz come to mind, but of course if you exclude those who disagree with you as “non-credible”, then you’re in a perfectly logically valid circular argument, which is where Harper lives.

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Cancer is sexy

I don’t have a TV, so I just checked if my livestreaming CBC is working and it seems to be, so I will be able to watch the debate tonight.

Two chapters left to go in Lawrence Martin’s “Harperland” and I also just picked up Christian Nadeau’s “Rogue in Power” yesterday and have read chapter 1. A very different kind of book, Nadeau’s book is a piece of living political philosophy. I look forward to blogging about it.

But first, Harperland before I get to tweeting the debates.

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Yes, you can be too nuclear-safe

Before there was Bruce Carson, there was Maxime Bernier, who left government documents at his girlfriend’s house. To put this in context, I don’t think that these state documents should be treated with tremendous mystical secrecy – that isn’t the point. They are probably mostly banal. The point is that here’s another instance of the Harper people treating the government like it’s their personal property.

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Harper’s Foreign Policy

Lawrence Martin’s “Harperland” discusses Harper’s foreign policy. It isn’t really distinguishable from Liberal foreign policy, except that it is a little more paranoid and secretive.

Throughout the West, there is fairly unconditional support for Israel. Some explain this with lobbies, etc. For the Harper people, Israel is a principle, above all others – certainly above human rights, equality, or fairness, anything Israel does is correct, whether it is starting a war of aggression, massacring civilians, or torturing children.

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Stephen Harper, Bruce Carson, and the Environment

The quote of the day is definitely from Stephen Harper about Bruce Carson’s fraud convictions: “I did not know about these revelations that we’re finding out today. I don’t know why I did not know.”

Anyone who doubts Carson’s importance in Harper’s team should definitely read Lawrence Martin’s “Harperland”. He’s all over the book.

In this light, I think Harper’s quote about Brian Mulroney might be of interest (pg. 73 of Harperland):

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