ABC = C

Okay, so the worst thing that could possibly happen, has happened. Not only did Harper get a majority, but the opposition has been reduced to a bunch of whiny newbies from an easily marginalized left-wing party filled with teenagers from Quebec.

Gone are the days the opposition front bench is filled with experienced parliamentarians capable of keeping a radical extremist government from fundamentally changing the structure of Canadian democracy. Gone are the days when Canadians could rely, sometimes even relish, that the moderate, centrist opposition was not only preventing the War Criminal Harper from gutting our institutions for his own personal gain, but could sometimes force him to completely betray his extremist views and do something good for ALL Canadians.

From here on in, democracy in Canada is dead. Every reform that Harper implements will have the sole purpose of further entrenching his power as he continues on his march to make his version of the increasingly ironically named Conservative Party of Canada the new "natural choice party" for Canadian voters.

And sadly, I had a part in it. I fell for what I now believe is another angle of that criminal mastermind, Harper's Master plan for the elimination of all Liberal elitists. I voted and encouraged others to vote ABC.

Only now, now that its too late to do anything. Now that its too late to stop Harper from annexing Canada to that failed, bloated, economic disaster to the south known as America. Only now do I realize the error of my ways.

And oddly, it was Sheila Copps of all people who sounded the warning, nearly half way into the election when she said during a 3 person/3 party panel discussion that the only people who could stop Harper is the only other party ever to form Government, the Liberals.

So unless you want PM Harper permanently, unless you like the idea of Canada becoming a 3rd class satellite State of America, the effective 51st State if not the actual one, then you better get your head out of your a$$ and climb on the now rebuilding Liberal party. Harper proved it. Abandon the Liberals and he wins. Move to the NDP and he wins. And when he wins he wins BIG.

One of the reasons you haven't heard from me since the election on May 2nd is because I've been reviewing the information, riding by riding. There's no doubt about it. If you go riding by riding and take the NDP vote count this election, and then subtract the votes they got in 2008 (you now have what we call their SURGE), and then move those numbers to the Liberals in that riding, then the election result in 2011 would be almost exactly match the predictions made ten days before the election. That being the Liberals would've had around 80 seats, the NDP around 60 and combined they would've had enough to form a coalition government to replace Harper. But by shifting those votes to the NDP all you got was an untried opposition full of dreamers and a Harper Majority.

NDP - NO DAMN PROBLEM (for Harper that is)

Various former members of Harper's inner circle have said all along that the biggest reason he went after the Liberals is because he knew an NDP Opposition would be easier to win against. Harper knows he can easily force the NDP to the extreme left and when push comes to shove Canadians will be easier to scare away from an NDP government than a Liberal one.

Phase One was to defeat the Liberals and form Government, Phase Two was to humiliate their leaders, create chaos and capitalize on it. Phase Three was to drive enough of their supporters to the NDP in their strongholds so that the left would split the vote because that was how Harper was going to get his majority. And it worked. Now he's facing Jack Layton, "taliban jack" as the conservatives call him, and an opposition filled with people who never expected to get elected. For Stephen Harper the next four years are going to be a cake walk.

KICKING THEM WHILE THEY'RE DOWN

The next thing Harper needs to do to ensure his neo-con party remains in power is kill the vote-subsidy. The subsidy was brought in by Chretien as a way to level the playing field. It meant that parties were limited in what they could raise from private donors, people typically trying to lobby for favours with Government and curry votes to their agendas. Chretien also made it so that only people could donate to parties, but by taking out non-governmental agencies, corporations and unions from the mix there was a shortfall in funding so great as to threaten the very strength of democracy in Canada. To fix that he instituted the vote-subsidy. If you were popular and your party got a lot of votes in an election then you'd get a lot of money after the election. Approx. $3 per vote at last count.

Harper hated that of course for three reasons. 1) Conservatives are easier to scare money out of so if that was the only fundraising method then his party would immediately have the advantage. 2) Because they got a lot of votes in Quebec (in past elections) the Bloq was getting millions for doing nothing more than participating in democracy. and 3) The Liberals got money too. By killing the Vote-Subsidy Harper will ensure that only his party has sufficient funds for each election to run a serious campaign. And it will permanently cripple the Liberals leaving only the weak and unfocused NDP to compete against.

So that's where we are. In four years, if we're still a sovereign nation (and I'm not betting on it) then we'll return to the polls and have a choice. Vote Liberal and replace Harper with something from the center of the political spectrum that will run Canada with an eye to keeping us free, or vote NDP/Conservative/Bloq/Green and keep Harper in power another term. It's always been that simple and it always will be despite the pie-eyed dreams of Jack Layton and the Orange wave.

EVEN IN 2011 - AS QUEBEC VOTES, SO VOTES CANADA

AS QUEBEC VOTES, SO VOTES CANADA!

Surely that can't still be true, right? Of course it is, always has been, always will be.
"But," you say, "The last twenties years Quebec has voted for the Bloq while the rest of Canada hasn't!"
Put that way your confusion is well founded, but lets put it this way. In 1992 the Reform party was nothing. They had barely won 1 seat in the House and their membership was lackluster at best. But then Lucien Bouchard led the entire Quebec wing of the Progressive Conservatives away from Mulroney and formed their own party, the Bloq Quebecois. Almost overnight membership in the Reform party soared.
Quebec went regional so Alberta went regional. As Quebec voted, so voted Canada.

THE 1993 ELECTION
The election that saw the implosion of the PC Party also resulted in something outstanding, and a complete landscape shift in politics occurred but at each stage it conformed to the age old maxim: "As Quebec Votes, So Votes Canada."

As the separatists grew more powerful, becoming in fact the official opposition, membership in the Reform party throughout BC and Saskatchewan climbed through the roof. Long before the west shouted anything about wanting in they were clamoring to make sure the Separtists weren't the official opposition.

1997 - EACH REGION A PARTY
In the 1997 election the Reform party, still in the grips of the grassroots, became the official opposition, vaulting past both the NDP and Bloq in number of seats. But this was in reaction to Quebec voting for the Bloq and because the Bloq was basically a regional party the rest of Canada started to vote regionally.

The maritimes were dominated by what had become a regional party (the PC Party), and western Canada was firmly in the grip of a regional party (Reform), while the Liberals and NDP remained as the only parties still represented federally even if most of their power ended up becoming the regional party of Ontario.

UNITING THE RIGHT
Following the 2000 election the PC Party had finally regained its footing and was successfully muscling in on the Reform party's hold in Ontario. If the trend had been allowed to continue the PC Party was expected to win more than 30 seats in the next election, largely in Ontario and the Maritimes.
This would've been the signal to federalists Quebecois that they could abandon the Liberals without benefiting the Bloq or risking the Reform party but the hostile takeover of the PC Party by the Reformers (renamed the Canadian Alliance by this point) scared off support in the Quebec wing and left the Liberals in charge until 2006 when Stephen Harper was able to first topple the Martin government and then replace it with his first minority.

WITHOUT A FEDERALIST OPTION QUEBEC VOTED REGIONAL & SO DID CANADA
In both the 2006 and 2008 election federalist Quebecois hesitantly leaned towards Harper's Conservatives, but each time scared off at the last minute when the ultra right intentions of Harper leaked out just ahead of the polls. And both times the Conservatives were held to a minority while Quebecois largely stuck to the familiar Liberals or Bloq.

THE ORANGE DOOR
Throughout 2010 and up to the 2011 election social media began an exhaustive campaign against Harper by promoting strategic voting. It went largely unnoticed by mainstream media because there really isn't a very good system for tracking such fluid communications. But for those inside the loop the word was quickly spreading and strategies were being developed on how to work the vote in the next election so we could get rid of Stephen Harper.
But Quebec remained a problem. The Liberals still carried a fair amount of baggage there because of Adscam and the Bloq was increasingly being seen as ineffective, if not an actual impediment, to getting rid of Harper. That left the NDP.
But how could Quebec suddenly shift that direction so quickly? Well the answer lies with two major issues. The first is oil wars. Harper was quick to put Canadian troops in Libya and even faster to increase our combat roll in Afghanistan, but the NDP have always been against promoting more military actions and increasingly so have Quebecois.
The second issue has to do with opinions about labour and big business. Most Quebecois favour unions and do not trust large corporations. In this regard Harper is the most out of touch with the average Quebecois while Layton found the connect easily during the latest french language debate.

YOUTH REVOLUTION
To really understand the dynamic shift you need to step back from mainstream media and the EKOS/NANOS polling systems. For one they can only report the people who pick up the phone and answer their questions, more and more Canadians have been using call display to avoid them and their accuracy has been plummeting like a stone.
The second is that social media route is a tool of the young voters, voters who do not speak with pollsters because those archaic agencies can't figure out how to get a hold of them. Voters who are now turning out in droves, encouraged by the democratic revolutions around the world, motivated by strategic voting to cut Harper off at the path.

LAYTON FOR PM?
Before anyone gets into a tither lets now look at skewed averages. For example, most Canadians do not believe the recession is over because the job market is so bad and they all know far too many people still looking for work. But the Canadian Government keeps reporting the recession has been over for a year. Why the disconnect?
Easy, there are three industries that remain robust. Oil, banks and housing. With gas prices pushing above $1.25/litre and the price of a barrel of oil well above $100 the oil industry is artificially pulling up both the employment as well as the GDP numbers.
Add to that the banking sector which, by not loaning money to small businesses unless forced too, have been racking up record profits; and then add the still over-inflated housing market and you'll quickly see how three large balloons can make an empty bed seem like someone is in it.
This also applies to the polling numbers. If you poll only a small pool of say, 3000 people nationally it may look as though the entire country is shifting toward Jack Layton but when you get past the regional outlook and go riding by riding then you see the NDP surge is largely in areas where they were the best party to take seats. That being Quebec, BC and central Ontario.
And to make sure they take every seat possible they're polling into very high numbers in ridings that either the Conservatives narrowly took from them in the last election or Quebec ridings that were deadheats between Conservatives and the Bloq.
In fact, on a riding by riding basis nearly all gains for the NDP have been at the cost of the Bloq and Conservative party in parts of the country the Liberals simply weren't competitive in.
And while there are a few tight contests in Ontario between the NDP and Liberals, in nearly all cases they're in ridings that the Conservatives came in a distant 3rd in during the last election.

THE FINAL TALLY - MORE JACK, NEARLY THE SAME IGGY, BUT MUCH LESS HARPER
So the Liberals will not surge the way they hoped and in fact may end up nearly at the same seat count they have now, but provided one looks riding by riding, rather than region by region, they will not be supplanted as Official Opposition by Jack Layton. However, both parties numbers are expected to be higher than the total Harper gets, and possibly well into majority territory, which means another Harper fear mongering probably won't be true - the next Government of Canada won't be propped up by Separatists because they won't need the Bloq votes to command a majority.

And that's great news for Canada and fans of social media!

APATHY IS NOT AN OPTION

When this election began I stated this was the most important vote of our generation. It may in fact be the most important decision Canadians make since rejecting American liberation efforts at the start of the War of 1812.

Advance polling starts tomorrow, the Federal election is on May 2nd. By May 3rd we'll know if Canadians have staved off a back door Republican take over of our country or not. If Stephen Harper is denied a majority in this election there is no doubt among CONSERVATIVE circles that he will be gone within 12 months. That is assured. Let's help make that happen, deny him a majority.

HE'S NOT HERE FOR YOU

Despite Harper's claims that Ignatieff only come back to Canada to be Prime Minister it was Stephen Harper who returned to Parliament in 1997 for that purpose.

He returned from the National Citizen's Coalition (where he had written Alberta should put up a firewall around it to protect it from the rest of Canada) to run for the leadership of the Reform party, then engineer a reverse take over of the Progressive Conservative party, and then lead that re-united right to 24 Sussex and the Prime Minister's office.

And when that didn't immediately happen he wrote a letter to the Governor General reminding her that should Paul Martin's minority government fail that Harper, Layton and Duceppe (the separtists Bloq) were prepared to form a coalition government.

Not Ignatieff, only Harper and Layton ever formally signed an agreement with the Bloq to form a coalition. Because Harper's only reason for reentering politics was to be Prime Minister.

HIS RELENTLESS PLAN FOR MORE POWER

For five years now his Republican vision has been frustrated by a more powerful opposition and the Senate, a body his party has repeated called weak and useless but one which, until he stacked it with the most Senate appointments in a single year ever, had managed to defer, delay or outright reject every stupid bill he tried to ram through parliament.

If Stephen Harper gets his majority then Canada will have elected a man who would rather spend 3 times as much on WAR MACHINES as Health Care. A man who would intends to spend 3 times as much on PRISONS as Police. A man whose only goal is to dismantle Canada and rebuild it in his vision - a seemless sister state to America.

And he hasn't hid any of it. His border agreements, his laws relating to trade and even his trade focus has been the United States. Even while that country has slid into the greatest economic crisis since the 1940's Harper has kept his focus on US trade to the near exclusion of all others.

He thumbed his nose at the massive emerging markets in China and India. Closing 15 trade missions already set up there and dismissing their importance. Canada has now been virtually shut out from trade with the Chinese and has lost its place as first among equals in trade with India.

His plan to spend billions on jets to patrol our northern border as though we could actually go to war with the Russians if they decided to exert their dominance there is insane.

His plan to spend billions on prisons to house more of our citizens, put there indefinitely for crimes most Canadians consider petty and misdemeanors rather than Capital offences, ignorantly flies in the face of nearly every study showing that Superprisons are both horrendously expensive and ultimately ineffective at reducing crime.

His idea that he can hack enough services Canadians have relied on for generations to balance a budget seems hollow considering he's been in charge for 5 years now, run up the highest deficits in Canadian history, without making a dent in the Civil Service, without controlling any costs.

His claim that he can balance a budget without raise taxes is pure fantasy. A five year old knows you cannot spend more without earning more. And while its true there is waste in any Government, to suggest that he can solve our budget problems through cuts and by not replacing retiring workers alone flies in the face of simple logic.

Projects to upgrade and integrate Computer systems typically cost MORE not less. And the end savings are never what were promised. Certainly not BILLIONS.

In fact the only way to cut that much money is to download services to the Provinces and Cities, both of which will have to raise taxes on their end to provide those necessities. We saw how badly that worked in Ontario under Mike Harris. Can Canada survive that on a National level?

TODAY'S PRIORITIES OR A DARK TOMORROW?

So Canadians have a choice between a future Canada with Jets and Prisons or Healthcare and Police. A dark fantasy or the status quo we've enjoyed. A burdened mini-America or the Canada we've built and love. A Republican Conservative or a Conservative Liberal. Stephen Harper or Michael Ignatieff.

And if you don't think that's a very big deal then I challenge you to drive across the border and pull into any US city that's at least an hour from the border, get out of the car if you dare, and look around.

If Harper gets his majority that's what your city will look like in 5 years.

THE 9 LIVES OF STEPHEN HARPER

Remember the last Federal Canadian Election? Probably not. Well, kiddies, because you know I keep notes allow me to share with you a little story I call: HOW HARPER MANIPULATES THE VOTERS - part seven "HIS SECOND TERM".

During Harper's first term as Imperious Leader, the Parliament of Canada passed Bill C-16, an Act to Amend the Canada Elections Act. It required that each general election was to take place on the third Monday in October, in the fourth calendar year after the previous poll, starting with October 19, 2009. This was passed on November 6, 2006 and has yet to affect anything.

Around April 2007 many serious economists the world over (and in parts of Saskatchewan) were starting to wonder how one went about selling shares in unsecured debt on homes when most indicators predicted the US Housing Bubble was likely to pop soon. Except for the publishing of a few books warning the economic world was about to end nothing was done about it.

As 2008 began there were very worrying signs across the United States as businesses began failing, first as a trickle then with increasing speed. The majority of economists were largely on the payroll of Wall Street at the time and of course the surest way to bring down a stock driven economy was to incite a panic, so they tried to avoid doing that.

By September 15, 2008 Lehman Bros failed and the end began. Despite best efforts no amount of scurrying by Wall Street and Big Money was able to stop the house of cards that was (and largely still is) the US Economy from falling.

October 2, 2008 - During the English Leader's debate, Stephen Harper said Canada's economy was sound and he was the steady hand at our economic wheel.

October 14, 2008 - Months of relentless bullying paid off and Stephen Harper's party won its second consecutive minority. Stephane Dion became the first Federal Liberal leader in Canadian history not to become Prime Minister.

December 1, 2008 - Amid a complete economic collapse in American, an economic basket that the Harper Government had put ALL OF OUR TRADE EGGS in, Stephen Harper delivered a weak economic statement filled with a few token assistance programs largely aimed at marginal ridings the Harper Government hoped to win in the next election. It was soundly rejected by the majority of Parliament with a call for a non-confidence vote.

December 2, 2008 - Following several hours of haranguing the Queen's representative in Canada Harper comes out of the Governor General's residence to declare that he has been granted a stay of execution, and that Parliament had been Prorogued. During the 8 weeks that the Government of Canada is effectively shuttered the entire Corporate world of Canada holds their breath, no one is hired and stores across the land see the softest Christmas/Boxing Day season since the 89 recession as thousands wait to find out if they too will lose their job.

2009 - Forced by the opposition into doing something about the Economy the Harper Government comes out with CANADA'S ACTION PLAN. A spending proposal designed to finally deliver funds for projects already approved and budgeted for, so long as they are either in safe Conservative seats or ridings the Conservatives hope to gain in the next election. Most of the money is held up until proof is provided that CANADA ACTION PLAN signs touting the Harper Government as general savour are confirmed by party staffers to be on display.

June 19, 2009 - The Prime Minister tells a Tory crowd that "The Harper Government’s unprecedented effort to accelerate the job-creating investments contained in Canada’s Economic Action Plan is paying dividends, with 80% of this fiscal year's (2009-2010) Economic Action Plan initiatives already being implemented." Two days later he accuses new Liberal leader Michael Igntieff of "flailing around to invent reasons to force another election" because the Liberals are withholding their support of the budget bill that will actually approve the 80% of the stimulus money Harper just claimed was already at work. Ignatieff won't support the bill unless Harper starts providing regular updates to him on the economy. Harper conceeds and provides Ignatieff with the statement he demanding proving that Stephen Harper is Ignatieff's bitch.

December 30, 2009 - Harper shuts down Parliament again to avoid a non-confidence vote on the Afghan detainee affair. For those too lazy to google this: Harper's generals were told by Defence Minister Peter "My Signature Isn't Worth The Paper It's Written On" MacKay to hand over Afghan detainees to the Afghan military (polite speak for Warlords that fought on our side, most of the time) despite being told by those Generals that the Warlords had been torturing and executing prisoners without trial. The order came in direct violation of the 1933 Geneva Convention and Harper and MacKay's involvement and cover up has resulted in them both being investigated by the International Criminal Court for war crimes.

January 2010 - Harper uses the shutdown to spend MILLIONS on an anti-Ignatieff, anti-Liberal, "A Coalition will Kill Your Children" ad campaign.

October 2010 - The Harper Government responds to an official "Access to Information" request on the funding of a Quebec Hockey Rink with a 60 page document, half of which is blacked out for National Security reasons. This sort of secrecy is becoming common place within the Harper Government but has rarely occurred on reports relating to Hockey Arenas.

November 2010 - In order to better frame their successes in the minds of young Canadians the Government of Canada is rebranded the "Harper Government" on much of their literature, finally ending five years of blaming Chretien for everything.

March 2011 - Harper puts forward two bills to spend BILLIONS on jets and jails but refuses to provide Parliament with any details on how the money will be spent. He then brings out a budget thinking he can avoid a non-confidence vote. He instead gets the first ever Contempt of Parliament charge in the history of Parliamentary democracy and his government falls on a non-confidence motion over his weak budget. It's not a good week.

The next day Ignatieff attack ads appear on radio and television across the land. At no point do they mention Jack Layton or Gilles Duceppe except to link their parties to the so called Illegitimate Coalition option. Harper does not consider the Bloq or NDP an issue worth engaging.

April 2, 2011 - After agreeing to the format of the Leader's debate where Harper will face off against Layton, Duceppe and Ignatieff; the Prime Minister refuses to debate Ignatieff one-on-one unless the others are excluded. Then he demands there only be five questions in the debate.

Two points I want to make about all this are thus:
1. In 2006 and 2008 Harper was predicted to win a Majority - it never happened even though 800,000 Liberals stayed away from the polls in 2008 because of Dion.
2. The US House of Representatives - 435 elected members, face re-election every two years, meaning that since we had our election in October of 2008 the Americans have had 2 elections for their House. Because their elections are fixed their members of Congress begin running nearly 18 months ahead of each election (already there are election ads for candidates hoping to win in 2012 playing on Buffalo tv). Anyone who thinks an Election caused because a 3 year old Government lost the confidence of our Legislature is a waste of money should move south where they go through this every 24 months. They've got money wasting down to an art there.

20 MORE REASONS NOT TO VOTE HARPER

Stephen Harper and his Reform-Alliance Conservatives have waged a non-stop attack on everything Canadians value.

1. They rigged a self-serving and politicized infrastructure stimulus program so that most of the money could land in Conservative-held ridings, delaying projects so much that only 12% are in construction and creating jobs.

2. He called Canada “second-tier socialistic country” and a “Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term.”

3. They put Canada on track for a deficit before the recession hit and now holds the record of the largest deficit on record at 56 billion (and climbing).

4. They failed to plan for the H1N1 flu by delaying the order of the flu vaccine and sending body bags to remote communities instead.

5. They spent 5 times more on self-promotion than informing the public on how to protect themselves from H1N1?

6. In the past two months, he has twice failed to defend Canada’s healthcare system against outrageous attacks from ultra-right Conservatives n the United States.

7. He kept Ministers in his cabinet who called the medical isotope crisis they helped create “sexy” and made jokes about the listeriosis crisis.

8. He broke his promise not to raise taxes with a $13 billion EI payroll tax.

9. They pick and choose when to protect the rights of Canadian citizens at home and abroad.

10. He called women, minorities, the disabled, and gays and lesbians “left-wing fringe groups” and Canada’s independent judiciary “left-wing ideologues.”

11. He keeps a Minister in his cabinet who openly mused about putting 10-year-olds in jail.

12. He denied that the country was in a recession and failed to plan for it, and only agreed to provide economic stimulus after causing a constitutional crisis.

13. He said he doesn’t care if “Canada ends up as one national government or two national governments or several national governments, or some other kind of arrangement.”

14. He holds the record for unelected Senate appointments for a single year — 27, more than any Prime Minister in Canadian history – after saying he would never appoint Senators.

15. He has presided over the loss of nearly a half million high quality fulltime jobs since October, with no plan to replace them with the next generation of jobs.

16. He has pushed for amending the Canada Health Act to allow for-profit-pay-as-you-go Medicare in this country and abdicated any federal role in ensuring its guiding principles of public administration, comprehensiveness, universality, portability, and accessibility.

17. He said "There will be no special status, formally or informally, for Quebec or any other province."

18. He pushed for further deregulation and less oversight over banks and financial institutions.

19. He has done nothing to address the hollowing out of corporate Canada due to a weakening in foreign takeover rules.

20. He bragged that he was opposed to government programs to eliminate child poverty and promote cultural identity.

TORY'S BLOWING POLL SMOKE UP YOUR ARSE

Chances are that if you're following the election at all right now you think Stephen Harper is probably going to get a Majority. Well kiddies, I'm hear to tell you it ain't going to happen. Why do I know this? Simple. The predictions are based on polls and polling has lost its credibility.

In both 2006 and 2008 Harper was predicted to get a majority by most pollsters in the country. Did he? No. Even as Dion's campaign was imploding and even when, in 2008, more than 800,000 Liberal voters didn't even bother going to polls (something that isn't happening this time), our Imperious Leader barely increased his seat count (and that was mostly with a sudden 8 seat jump in Quebec that won't be repeating).

The biggest reason why has to do with the make-up of respondents to polls now. A generation ago there was a 70 per cent response rate, but now a polling company is lucky to get 20 per cent and more and more average people (ie: Voters) use call display and cell phones to avoid being bothered. What have the pollsters tried to replace this with? Voluntary listings for polls. But who volunteers? Activists who are trying to influence the numbers in their favour.

And the few non-voluntary homes the pollsters do get a hold of are faced with hostile questioners, particularly when they get whiff that the respondent is undecided. And pushed to pick someone the respondent frequently goes with... the name they think is winning because of the polls they're hearing. But here's the rub, those people aren't likely to go out and vote!

And in case you don't believe me, check this out.

“I’m totally depressed,” Frank Graves of Ekos Research is quoted as saying about their research. “We’re trying to explain the underlying social forces that are producing political change, and the media, despite protestations to the contrary, are much more interested in the horse-race side of things.”

This is why party insiders are focusing so much attention on 'social networking', both facebook posts and more importantly newspaper comment pages. Check out the comments section for any story on the National Post, Globe and Mail or Toronto Star website (I don't include the Star papers because their editorial staff notoriously delete any non-conservative comments) and you'll appear to see a large number of Conservative supports chiming in on every story, attacking the "Fiberals" and "Ignatieff" and quoting Harper talking points.

But check out the screen names and a different story appears. Almost 90% of the pro-Conservative are coming from the same 50 avatars, while the anti-Conservative sentiment is being posted by hundreds, and in most cases thousands of different posters. It's very telling that typical Globe story has repeated comments from the same twelve conservatives attempting, like Harper MP's on a Commons committee going in the direction they don't like, to drown out the dissenting voices with the digital equivalent of a Charlie Sheen level, incoherent rant.

Well, they're rabid, they're frothing and they obviously don't have lives (or leave their parent's basements often) but at least they're consistent.

And not in the least bit reflective of the real discussions going on or the true sentiment of the average Canadian voter, which is increasingly distrustful of Stephen Harper and not the least bit dissuaded from supporting Dion's replacement, Michael Ignatieff.

But as Shakespeare wrote:

"a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

or in other words, a typical Harper supporter.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

After hearing HARPER's latest set of promises I'm convinced that Charlie Sheen's character on "Two and a Half Men" - CHARLIE HARPER, and Canadian Prime Minister STEPHEN HARPER are twins, separated at birth.



How else can you explain the semi-incoherent ramblings? And I don't mean Charlie's, I'm talking about Stephen Harper's blathering here.

We've known for a long time now that Prime Integer Stephen "YOU CAN TELL I'M LYING BECAUSE MY LIPS ARE MOVING" Harper will say anything that his research staff tells him will get a majority, but surely someone stopped him at some point today to ask if he was really going ahead with today's whopper! Someone?

Here's what it comes down to.

The Reformers only talk populist. We know that, you know that, he knows that. So what are the hottest populist buttons to hit? You should know them because they're the CINO's greatest hits.

DEBT REDUCTION

The core Conservative isn't happy that Harper and his Finance Minister, Jim "NINE TOES AND COUNTING" Flaherty, who have racked up the largest per year deficit since World War II and completely wiped out the 12 years of Chretien/Martin belt-tightening, debt payments in a scant two and a half years. So one of the promises is to balance the budget. He's shown no ability to do anything like that in 5 years of leading but hey, anything's possible, right?

SMALLER GOVERNMENT

It ain't hard to convince the average voter that Government Employees have it too easy and there are too many of them, until you start gutting the services and the lines mushroom like a nuclear bomb blast. But that's "later talk" for now, Harpie wants his Majority so he's promising not to replace the majority of the soon to be retiring civil service jobs, which he claims number some 80,000 positions over the next 'few years'.

TAX BREAKS

Yup, Harpie's promising tax breaks. Not right away mind you, not even during this next term, and that's where the Prime Integer slips into Charlie Sheen - rambling while on crack territory.

Presuming its even possible to cut the government as much as he promises, without downloading services (which anyone in Ontario during the Mike Harris years will tell you is still causing problems), presuming he can cut costs, cut jobs and cut services enough to balance their overinflated budget, presuming all that, the promise comes with not 1 but 2 conditions... You've got to give him a majority now, and because the promised tax breaks won't come for 5 years and each term only lasts 4 and a half, you've got to give him another majority just before payday - 4 and a half years from now.

If that didn't make you say WTF then you're either brain dead or heading to a Harper Superprison. And you'll deserve it.