Stephen Harper goes AWOL

CANADA - Somehow the urgency of the recession has eluded Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who needlessly provoked a constitutional crisis in the midst of global economic peril unmatched since the Great Depression, and a governor general who last week abetted the PM's recklessness by overturning precedent in granting him the parliamentary adjournment he sought in order to save his skin.

So now he, and his government, are effectively on vacation until January 2009, while the country slides deeper into recession. A recession that some forecasters expect will claim 600,000 jobs, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of Canadians thrown out of work in the manufacturing, auto, forestry and other sectors in the last two years.

Relief will have to wait at least the better part of two months, until late January, when Stephen Harper's government finally tables a stimulus budget, which must then be debated and might well be defeated if the opposition parties conclude it lacks sufficient economic stimulus.

That's seven lost weeks, at a minimum, when Stephen Harper's political career will assume primacy over the economy.

A lot can happen, we've learned this year, in seven weeks. Entire national banking systems have been exposed as insolvent and in need of a state-financed bailout lest the global system collapse. Oil, wheat and other commodities have rapidly plunged in value, taking oil patch and farm incomes down with them. Everyday Canadians have endured huge losses on their retirement nest eggs invested in the stock market. The North American auto industry teeters on the brink of extinction. Iceland has declared bankruptcy. Hungary and Pakistan are hooked up to fiscal IVs provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

That's seven weeks of neglected measures to curb further job loss. To soften the blow for those who have been put on the street. And to create new jobs by investing in a sustainably prosperous 21st century economy. One based on knowledge rather than brawn industries. That develops and exploits alternative energy sources.

The contrast with our fellow industrialized nations could not be more stark. Collectively, the U.S., Europe and Asia have committed $2.6 trillion (U.S.) to jump-start economic growth, in addition to more than $2.7 trillion so far to bail out a crippled global banking system. The pump priming and financial-system bailouts are huge, in part to inspire consumer and business confidence – equal to 7 per cent of GDP in Germany, 16 per cent in China, 21 per cent in Britain.

The figure is 6 per cent for the U.S., where president-elect Barack Obama says: "We are facing an economic crisis of historic proportions ... The truth is we do not have a minute to waste" in restoring economic health. Obama pledges federal spending aimed at saving and creating more than seven million jobs.

Ottawa boasts it has put stimuli in place equal to 2 per cent of GDP. It is referring to $2.5 billion (Canadian) in tax cuts implemented last year before the world economy went haywire, and that were accompanied by $4.3 billion in spending cuts, for a net stimulus that is in fact negative.

Rather than jolt new life into an economy slipping into what Ottawa acknowledges will be a recessionary period over the six months, ending next March 31 – itself an overly optimistic forecast in the opinion of most economists – Ottawa's economic statement, or fiscal update, of Nov. 27 actually called for $2 billion in reduced spending. Advertised as a document to reassure Canadians, the statement recalled Abraham Lincoln's dismissal of a debating rival's argument: "As thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death."

Robert Fairholm, director of economic forecasting at the Centre for Spatial Economics, one of the four companies the federal finance ministry relies on for its economic forecasts, calls Ottawa's rosy projections a "fantasy." He says in the absence of substantial new federal stimulus, the Canadian economy will shrink 0.1 per cent next year, in contrast to Ottawa's stated expectation of 0.3 per cent growth. By contrast, boosting the economy by even $15 billion worth of federal investment would likely yield 1.6 per cent growth next year.

The IMF, an agency traditionally averse to deficit spending, last month exhorted affluent nations to invest in their economies by an amount equal to 2 per cent of GDP – about $30 billion in Canada's case.

Canada joined the consensus of Group of 20 summiteers in Washington in November that signed on to that target. Yet a day after delivering his Nov. 27 stand-pat economic statement, the strongest tonic federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty chose to offer was, to paraphrase William Lyon Mackenzie King on conscription, stimulus if necessary, but not necessarily stimulus.

Flaherty's response Nov. 28 was: "I hope the economy will be strong and we won't need to have any additional stimulus in the Canadian economy, but if it's necessary to do so, we will do so." Hope? That doesn't sound very optimistic, and it also sounds like he doesn't plan to do anything about it but sit back and "hope" things change.

What parts of a global economy in turmoil is the minister unable to see when he draws back the blackout curtains at the Ministry of Finance? Not his Oshawa riding, apparently, where year-over-year Employment Insurance claims have shot up by 96 per cent.

Reflecting widespread U.S. sentiment that the lame-duck Bush administration has been preoccupied with bailing out Wall Street and ignoring Main Street, David Miller said of Flaherty's fiscal update: "I'm very concerned the statement does not show the urgency needed to address the economic challenges Canada is facing."

The Toronto mayor added: "It's important that as the government addresses the credit crisis (it) ensures that our manufacturing industries, our construction industries and other places that are being affected have relief, and not just the banking sector."

Pump priming doesn't agree with everyone, of course. Short-term stimulus packages, says Don Drummond, chief economist at TD Bank, "don't really generate very much short-term stimulus and they very quickly become long-term structural problems."

Drummond, a former official in the federal finance ministry, adds that "Canada is not the problem – we're the only developed economy in which employment and consumption are still rising. Our economy's been hit by international events, not by domestic events."

Like many economists, Drummond also casts a baleful eye on infrastructure spending, since putting a spade in the ground usually comes only after a long stretch of planning, by which time the economy has recovered – but the spending, and its potential inflationary impact, remains.

That was a widely held view at the outset of the Great Depression, when Washington remained obsessed with balanced budgets, which even Franklin D. Roosevelt felt the need to promise in his successful campaign for office in 1932.

It does seem a bit odd to dwell on the possibility of mismanaged government spending in the immediate aftermath of one of the global private sector's most colossal blunders of all time – a U.S. housing boom spawned by often predatory marketing of subprime, or junk mortgages that Wall Street bundled and distributed until the toxic waste, as it's now known on the Street, had contaminated the balance sheets of almost every major bank on the planet.

While government doesn't have a monopoly on misallocating capital, it is the spender of last resort when consumers and businesses are too fearful or impoverished to spend. And only government can spend truly big – to build a transcontinental railway, wage a war, finance the early cyberspace network that became the Internet.

Drummond's argument aside, Canada is hardly isolated from external shocks, though it's true the impact here has always tended to lag the onset of disturbances in the U.S. and elsewhere. The recent announcement of the closures of two Magna parts plants north of the GTA, with a loss of 850 jobs, came six months after the first credible rumours that Magna customer General Motors Corp. might actually be close to bankruptcy.

Liberal economist Robert Reich, labour secretary in the Clinton administration and an economic adviser to the Obama transition team, makes a persuasive argument in his blog that "government spending that puts people back to work and invests in the future productivity of the nation is exactly what the economy needs right now. When there's lots of idle capacity, deficit spending is entirely appropriate, as John Maynard Keynes taught us. Moving the economy to fuller capacity will of itself shrink future deficits" – the long-term structural problems to which Drummond refers.

The challenge is to spend carefully. And after the improvisations of FDR's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, and our own experiments with regional economic development and subsidies to hydroponic cucumber growers in Newfoundland, we have by now accumulated sufficient knowledge, one would hope, to invest public funds at least as wisely as the vaunted capital allocators in the private sector for whom we have the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) to thank.

Where to invest?

1. Social capital

In other words, people. Immediate relief is required for people whom our market economy has failed. Employment Insurance eligibility and duration of benefits need to be expanded. Enhanced child care and worker retraining tuition grants are imperative. Workers who have lost health and pension benefits need at least temporary pharmacare and dentistry coverage to carry them over to their next job.

Paying for such essentials out of pocket crimps spending on consumer goods, which in turn triggers layoffs at everything from car and lawn mower dealerships to construction firms. The downward spiral has to be reversed, keeping in mind that even in the prosperous times of a year ago, approximately 900,000 Canadian children were living below the poverty line.

For social advocates, the needs are obvious and pressing. "Boosting three geared-to-income programs – the Canada Child Tax Benefit, the refundable GST credit and the Working Income Tax Benefit – would put additional money into the hands of lower-income households who are most likely to spend it immediately," the Caledon Institute of Social Policy notes in a recent paper, The Forgotten Fundamentals.

Employment Insurance, which now serves only four in 10 unemployed Canadians, must be restored and strengthened.

It's time to stand on its head the mythology around burdening future generations with our big-spending ways of the moment. The future generations are with us now, living in squalid quarters for lack of decent public housing, with street gangs for role models, college out of reach. The money we invest today to lift these young people out of wretched living conditions is our best assurance of lower dropout rates, teen pregnancies, violence and crime when it's their turn to run the country.

2. Infrastructure

Much of our "built environment," as architects and urban planners call anything made of concrete, glass and steel, is a good deal older than you are. Canadian municipalities alone are struggling with an estimated $143 billion "infrastructure deficit" of 50- to 100-year-old schools, hospitals, elevated highways (the Gardiner Expressway was completed before the Beatles broke up in 1970. Despite being only 42 years old, it has been under constant repair for the past decade) and water and sewage systems (the latter culpable in Toronto's waterfront beaches being closed to swimming).

With $1 billion worth of goods crossing the border to the U.S. each day, it similarly is incomprehensible that the Ambassador Bridge at Detroit and the Peace Bridge at Buffalo have not been replaced or twinned, putting an end to the daily caravan of idling transport trucks backed up to Queenston. The fragility of the North American power grid was demonstrated in the great blackout of the eastern half of the continent not long ago, at about the same time levees patched up countless times rather than replaced with state-of-the-art ones pioneered in Holland cost America one of its great cities.

Infrastructure projects have a multiplier effect, Reich argues. "They create lots of jobs, and they make the economy work better in the future. Governments should also spend on health care and child care. The expenditures are also double whammies: they, too, create lots of jobs, and they fulfill vital public needs."

And the timing couldn't be better. Robert MacIsaac, chair of Metrolinx Regional Transportation Plan, oversees a proposed $50 billion, 25-year plan of new GTA light-rail lines, expanded GO service and Viva bus rapid transit in York Region. That's a quadruple whammy: job creation, getting commuters out of their polluting vehicles, attracting more commerce to less accessible parts of the GTA, and thus expanding the tax base in North America's fourth-largest and fastest-growing city.

"It's a brilliant time to move forward with infrastructure because you'll never get a better price on contracts than you're going to in an economic downturn," MacIsaac pointed out in the Star last month. "We need to position the province to be competitive when we come out the other side of this rough patch."

Look around and you'll see plenty that needs fixing.

3. Green stimulus

There's a compelling argument to be made that developing alternatives to fossil fuels – essential to the quest to curb global warming – is a superior form of economic stimulus than reducing taxes or issuing government-rebate cheques. Development of wind farms, solar panels, more energy-efficient small vehicles and rapid transit creates high-paying jobs in R&D, enhances Canada's competitiveness as an exporter of alternative-energy technology, cuts energy costs (another competitive advantage), and reduces our expenditure on imported oil and natural gas.

Green infrastructure tends to keep jobs at home. The liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund estimates that traditional fossil fuels, on average, see about 22 per cent of the American household's energy expenditures leaving the country. A home or office equipped with solar panels, by contrast, ships just 9 per cent of its energy expenditures abroad.

That's because much of the R&D in alternative energy is North America-based. And the construction workers and many raw materials – notably concrete – must be sourced locally.

In this relatively nascent field – at least compared with a fossil fuel addiction traced to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution – there is still vast opportunity to achieve Silicon Valley-like leadership in R&D, as successive generations of wind turbines, for instance, become more efficient. There are hundreds of small firms, many still in start-up phase, working on innovative improvements.

Here again is an opportunity for government to play a role where, at least for now, the private sector is hoarding rather than spending cash.

Along with Canada's dubious distinction as an energy glutton, with our above-average per capita energy consumption, our vast physical size exposes us to most types of energy applications and the expertise that goes with them.

By the reckoning of some, not just Obama and former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, the most dynamic industry of this new century will be energy, whether in the form of developing new energy sources; devising new applications for solar, wind and other alternatives; retrofitting homes, offices and vehicles to use innovative forms of energy; or the construction job of building wind farms and installing solar panels.

Conclusions

When it comes to providing more adequately for our people – whether it's the creation or rehabilitation of public housing, or income supports that lift folks from subsistence level, or playing midwife to a new job-creating centre of excellence for Canada in green-energy technologies – we tend, in flush times, to ignore these pursuits, which are so much less glamorous than, say, investment banking. And in tough times we declare that as a community we haven't the money for such things. It's this mentality that gave us a reactionary Nov. 27 fiscal statement rather than a visionary one that embraced the future.

So for now we remain bystanders, waiting for the private sector to recover and take up the mantle of progress in a manner suited to its own narrowly defined goals.

Just as government and the private sector long ago learned the benefits of endless collaboration, we don't have to accept a cramped role for government in times of economic failure.

What boggles the mind is why Govenor General Michaëlle Jean agreed to prorogue parliament in the first place... she has not released any statement for her reasoning.

Michaëlle Jean isn't Stupid

CANADA - I received a form letter today from the Conservative party which included the following statement:

"I know some of you have criticized us for having misjudged the opposition’s response to our efforts to remove taxpayer support for political parties. Although I fully support the notion that, in the long run, political parties should be responsible for raising their own funds, I accept that our timing and the manner in which we approached the issue may have been wrong-headed. We have withdrawn those contentious items from our agenda."

"Wrong-headed"?

Say what you mean man. Stephen Harper made a really a stupid mistake.

He's made stupid mistakes before too, but this one just handed the government over to the Liberals.

The petition is a waste of time! Now is not the time to be using petitions. It is only there to make the public feel like they're involved and since the leftwing outnumbers us two to one, they're likely to get far more petitions signed than we are. Frankly petitions don't matter anyway.

If you don't recall Govenor General Michaëlle Jean was recommended by Paul Martin (a Liberal!) and she's pro-separatist!

That means she will be more interested in the welfare of Quebec than of the rest of Canada. She will look at your anti-coalition petition, look at the pro-coalition petition... and then she will go with the coalition because it IS constitutional. Its even in her job description.

What we are seeing is a fail-safe mechanism of democracy, entirely democratic and constitutional, employed to protect the system from being hijacked by a bully. Harper can be proud he won his minority government, but he lacked the leadership skills to compromise and keep it afloat.

Also, this idea that what they're doing isn't democratic or constitutional is going to fail. Michaëlle Jean is too smart to fall for that obvious lie. She can do math. She will look at the 53% of Canadian voters that voted Liberal/Green/NDP, the 10% that voted Bloc and the mere 37% who voted Conservative and she will recognize that while the Conservatives did win a minority... they did not win the will of Canadians.

Now is the time to start choosing a new leader so that when the next election does happen (likely around September or October 2010) that we have a strong progressive leader who can defeat the leftwing coalition, win the hearts of middle-class Canadians and finally win a majority.

Now would be a good time to call Mike Harris out of retirement and ask him to lead the party. Or someone else equally competent who could actually win a majority instead of these half-ass minority governments.

Conservative Party Damage Control

THIS MESSAGE HAS BEEN SENT TO EVERY CONSERVATIVE MP IN CANADA

The Conservative Party needs to do some quick damage control, and this has to be a grassroots movement, not a directive from Stephen Harper for once.

#1. We need to distance ourselves from Stephen Harper. He has just made a rookie mistake and handed Canada over to the opposition parties. Cutting $30 million in political party funding? There was no way the other parties were going to accept that. It was Harper's idea to try and force the opposition to swallow that "poison pill" by threatening another election. Instead it has only united them under an Accord government which will usher in carbon taxes, carbon emission caps and an era of Liberal changes. Harper's stupid and INCOMPETENT idea to force that through has only doomed his administration to end on December 8th.

#2. We need to pick a new leader and quickly. It would be nice to pick an ethnic leader to cash in on the Obama effect, but really what we need right now is a strong interim leader like Tony Clement, Chuck Strahl or Jim Flaherty. Harper needs to resign as soon as possible, we need to hold a meeting and vote on an interim leader and begin preparations for a leadership race in the late Winter or early Spring.

#3. We need to realize the Harper era is OVER. We need to acknowledge that Stephen Harper has tried his best, couldn't win a majority government because he's incompetent and in 9 days from now the Liberals/NDP/Bloc will have their vote and probably even have a leader picked amongst them. Bob Rae will be endorsed by the NDP, Michael Ignatieff by the Bloc and whomever wins won't be a pushover like Stephane Dion. When that happens Harper will be back in Stornaway as opposition leader and likely contemplating retirement anyway. The longer we try to hold onto Stephen Harper the less time we will have to prepare the new leader for the role of opposition leader and maybe another election a year from now. The Liberals/NDP/Bloc are going to be struggling hard to stay in power as long as possible.

#4. When we do come up with a new leader it has to be one with an actual economic plan. Harper's current plan of doing nothing and praying the recession will go away obviously didn't inspire the Canadian voters. Four out of five Canadians didn't vote for Stephen Harper. Thanks to low voter turnout 40.9% of Canadians didn't even vote. We only got 21.8% of Canadians to vote Conservative. That is NOTHING to be proud of. We need to have a strong economic plan that bolsters jobs, spending and new products.

#5. We need to stop nay-saying the environment. This is really hurting our reputation. I cannot emphasize this enough. The biggest complaint our party is getting is that we're too weak on environmental reform and too cozy with the Alberta oil industry. It makes us look corrupt and provides fodder for the leftwing media, and that in turn hurts our image. We are living in a post-Bush pro-green world now and clinging to the oil and coal industry like suckling babes is the wrong thing to be doing right now.

#6. We need to prepare for the possibility the Liberals/NDP/Greens will unite. Their numbers are greater then ours and we could be stuck as an opposition party for YEARS to come. We need to be thinking greener and more progressive. Uniting the Reform Party and the PC party only partially worked. We managed to change names but our reputation is still so radical it scares average Canadians. We need a leader who is CHARISMATIC and doesn't scare average Canadians. Only then can we ever hope to defeat whatever abomination the Liberals/Greens/NDP unite and become. The New Green Liberal Party (or whatever you want to call it) has a better chance of winning a majority a year from now than we do.

Stephen Harper hands Canada over to the opposition

CANADA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made a rookie mistake and its just cost him his government and thrust him back into the official opposition.

In Thursday's economic update Harper rolled out a plan to do nothing about Canada's recession and instead wanted to cut $30 million in taxpayer subsidies for political parties.

Those subsidies are the bread and butter of Liberal, NDP and Bloc fund raising. There was no way they were going to sit back and let it happen. PLUS the other parties are upset the Conservatives aren't doing anything about the lagging economy. We're in a recession for Christ's sake and Harper just wants to sit on his hands and pray the recession will magically go away.

So on Friday (yesterday) the Liberals made a motion of non-confidence in order to make a Coalition Accord government composed of the Liberals, NDP and the Bloc. Such a thing hasn't been done since 1985.

While some Conservatives had been gleeful about the "poison pill" plan to slash $30 million in taxpayer subsidies for political parties, the political fallout shows Harper's move is widely seen as a terrible political miscalculation. Harper has managed to delay the non-confidence vote until December 8th, but after that he will be Prime Minister no more.

A Conservative government source said Friday the idea was Harper's own.

Sources said "most" of the Conservative caucus is perplexed why the government moved to put such controversial measures in now. "It makes no sense," said one Conservative MP.

"To date, Harper has been a master at dividing and conquering his opponents," said Conservative author Bob Plamondon. "But by moving to end the subsidy to all political parties, he has given the three opposition parties unity and purpose. It is a rare strategic blunder for Harper and a miscalculation not seen since (former PC prime minister Joe) Clark toppled himself in 1979."

Conservative insiders across the country, including myself, are flabbergasted that Harper has made such a rookie mistake.

"It is 1979 bravado with 1985 facts," said another Conservative blogger, referring to Clark's bungled confidence vote in 1979 and the 1985 Liberal-NDP accord that ended 42 years of Tory rule at Queen's Park. "The government will fall," he lamented.

And frankly its about time. Harper is corrupt, incompetent and its time the rest of the Conservative party sees it.

Stephen Harper Cartoons

CANADA - Stephen Harper Cartoons:

Harper's tax cuts hurt coffers during recession

CANADA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper confirmed today he would use millions to help out hard hit Ontario , but Harper's ability to respond to the crisis has been undercut by his own government's record of tax cuts, which has emptied federal coffers, the parliamentary budget officer concluded in a report released yesterday.

Budget officer Kevin Page concluded the federal Conservatives are likely to run budget deficits "in the near term," possibly beginning this year, and that the fault lies as much with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty as it does with the weak economy. Page's report projects a budget deficit of $3.9 billion in 2009-10. But it adds that, if the economic downturn proves worse than expected, next year's federal deficit could hit $14 billion.

Page says the deterioration of the federal government's financial picture in the first nine months of 2008 is not so much the result of the weakened economy as Flaherty's policies, particularly the latest reduction in the GST and reduced corporate income taxes.

In his opening speech to the 40th Parliament, Harper pledged to make federal regional development funding available to high unemployment communities in southern Ontario for the first time. But he was sketchy on details such as how much money the Conservatives will commit or when funds might be delivered.

The government is hampered by a weak financial picture and its own dwindling coffers, which will be laid bare when Flaherty delivers his fall economic statement to Parliament next Thursday.

Harper defended his government's policies, denying his goals was just to give tax cuts to the rich. Over the past 18 months, the Conservatives have shown a distinct preference for corporate tax cuts rather than new direct spending on social or economic programs by Ottawa.

Harper has also remained mum on whether Canada will help General Motors, Chrysler and Ford plants, which are currently warning they may go bankrupt. If the US bails out the automotive industry but Canada does not those companies may go south of the border permanently.

TheCall to stop Homosexuality

RELIGION - On November 1st approx. 10,000 religious wackos gathered for a day of prayer, fasting and gay-bashing (this event was dubbed "TheCall" by the event organizers). Their goal? They thought that if they had enough people praying to Jesus together that God would somehow get rid of homosexuality in California.

I am not kidding around. This is what they actually thought would happen.

Now admittedly, Proposition 8 (a gay marriage ban) did pass 3 days later during the United States election, so the religious wackos are viewing that as an answer to their prayers for now.

Some of them also believe homosexuality is caused by the devil, and that it can be exorcised. That idea is pretty fruity all by itself.

Such people form the backbone of Christian Conservatives and frankly they give conservatives in general a bad name.

I mean... who actually believes God will wave his hand and poof the gays will stop being gay? It doesn't work that way. Never has, never will. God gave mankind free will to do whatever they want.

All this does is reveal that there is at least 10,000 religious bigots living in California.

And HOW exactly is this a conservative issue? It isn't. Its just a religious one. I wish religious wackos would stop calling themselves conservatives because they evidently don't know the difference.

SPECIAL NOTE

During his two terms in office George W. Bush did not endorse a single piece of gay rights legislation, but neither did he oppose any. He even met with the group Log Cabin Republicans, a right-wing gay rights group. Officially Bush is opposed to gay marriages due to Republican policy, but he's made no real efforts to hinder gay rights and has actually done the reverse with appointments.

Bush is the first Republican president to appoint an openly gay man to serve in his administration, Scott Evertz as director of the Office of National AIDS Policy. His nominee as ambassador to Romania, Michael E. Guest, also became the first openly gay man to be confirmed by the Senate as a U.S. ambassador.

So if George W. Bush can set aside his differences, why can't religious wackos?

Americans buying guns like crazy after Obama win

UNITED STATES - Sales of rifles, pistols and ammo are surging in parts of the United States, as many gun owners fear President-elect Barack Obama's administration may seek to tighten ownership of certain weapons.

"The day after the election, I had many more calls than usual from people looking for semi-automatic rifles," said David Greenberg, the owner of the Second Amendment Family Gun Shop, in Bisbee, Arizona, who sold out of AR-15 rifles in recent days. "There seems to be a fear they will be banned, and it's fairly likely."

Gun stores and trade groups have reported a spike in firearms sales in the run-up to the Nov. 4 election victory of Democrat Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden, who many perceive as strongly pro-gun control.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the shooting, hunting and firearms industry, reported a 10 per cent jump in gun sales this year based on its analysis of an excise tax placed on firearms and ammunition, and a spokesman said the increase had grown dramatically ahead of the election.

Obama stated his support for the right to bear arms during campaigning, although both he and Biden back a permanent ban on assault weapons – military-style semi-automatic rifles – and "common sense measures" to keep guns away from children and criminals, positions which spurred concern among some gun enthusiasts.

In McPherson, Kansas, gun dealer Steve Sechler said demand at a gun show last weekend jumped by more than 50 per cent as buyers rushed to stock up on guns including Kalashnikov and AR-15 rifles.

Obama loyalists say gun owners need not fear curbs when he takes office in January. The Democratic governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland, told a rally last month he had spoken directly to Obama about the right to bear arms. "If you are a sportsman, if you are a gun owner, if you are someone that honours and respects the Second Amendment, you have nothing to fear from Barack Obama," he said.

The lobbying arm of the powerful National Rifle Association, however, stoked concerns during the campaign, calling Obama a "serious threat to Second Amendment liberties."

Among other complaints, they accused Obama of endorsing a 500-per cent increase in the federal excise tax on firearms and ammunition – a comment he made as an Illinois state Senator in Illinois in 1999, but has not repeated since then.

Remember my article about whether the KKK might try to assassinate Obama?

Well, there is always a second possibility. A member of the NRA might try to assassinate Obama too.

Mind you, that would only leave Joe Biden in the president's seat and even more determined to ban assault rifles.

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8 Year Old Shoots Father and His Friend

YESTERDAY - An 8 year old boy in Arizona has been charged with two counts of premeditated murder after he gunned down his father and another man with a .22 rifle, St. Johns Police Chief Roy Melnick said. The boy has since confessed to the murder, but investigators are still trying to determine if the deaths were accident or intentional.

Incidents like this, school shootings and the like, will fuel the belief that banning guns and creating tighter controls around children and guns will make a difference in the USA. Remember that America has more guns than cars, people or even pets. Americans LOVE their guns.

The Republican Blame Game

The Republican blame game has begun. See this post about Barack Obama's win for example.

The financial meltdown, the George W. Bush legacy, leftist media, the touchy-feely slogans of “reaching across the aisle”...

But frankly it was all Sarah Palin's fault, or more specifically John McCain's fault for picking her.

This morning a Fox News reporter who'd been on the McCain plane related how McCain's campaign manager hemmed and hawed when asked about Palin's effect on the Republican ticket. So evidently McCain's inner circle is blaming Palin too.

See Also:

Palin raising fears among Republican conservatives

Sarah Palin Prank Call from Nicolas Sarkozy

If John McCain kicks the bucket...

U.S. jobless claims hit 7-year high

Is Sarah Palin becoming a liability for John McCain?

Saturday Night Live Parody of Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton

Sarah Palin, America's right-wing sweetheart

America shifts to the Left

Extremism in America's right wing has scared Americans into voting for Barack Obama.

Congratulations to President Obama for running a flawless campaign.

Democrats in the USA should be thanking Sarah Palin for f*&king up John McCain's election bid and causing no end of scandals.