Conservatives Win Minority, Steal Liberal Platform

CANADA - Stephen Harper's newly elected minority government is stealing Stéphane Dion's five-point economic plan that includes a first ministers conference.

Dion, Harper's Liberal rival, scored points during the election campaign by promising a five-point plan, to be implemented within the first 30 days of an election campaign.

Dion, whose Liberals claimed only 76 seats, has said he's willing to co-operate with the Tories as the country rides out an economic storm. The Conservatives came out of Tuesday's vote with 143 seats, up from 124 in the last election but still not enough for a majority.

Harper says he will also issue a fiscal update before the end of next month to address the global economic crisis.

"These are challenging times; Canadians are worried right now, and those worries are understandable," he told a news conference in Calgary.

"I want to assure Canadians that together we will weather the storm, and we will position our economy to emerge stronger than ever."

Harper also said he intends to meet with European Union leaders later this week to discuss the crisis and strengthening economic ties between Canada and the EU, also from Stéphane Dion's five-point economic plan.

Harper says the government will take "whatever appropriate steps are necessary" to ensure Canada's financial system does not wind up at a disadvantage.

He noted that won't include a large outlay of taxpayer dollars, such as the multibillion-dollar bailouts being rolled out in the United States to rescue a banking sector sinking due to the credit crisis.

An ongoing strategic review of departmental spending will also continue, Harper made a point of saying: "It's essential to keep government spending focused and under control."

As well, Canada will be represented at next month's meeting of G20 leaders in Brazil, and is also calling for a follow-up meeting of G7 finance ministers, he said.

SO IF HARPER IS JUST STEALING THE LIBERAL'S ECONOMIC PLATFORM, WHO EXACTLY DID WE ELECT YESTERDAY?

Prosperity Theology and the Credit Crisis

RELIGION & ECONOMICS - Can we blame a Christian branch of evangelicalism for the U.S.'s subprime crisis?

According to some commentators in the United States, a burgeoning offshoot of Pentecostalism that promises adherents worldly blessings, as well as spiritual ones, may have led congregants to believe that God wanted them to own their own homes, leading them to take out risky loans.

The Prosperity gospel, so-called because its preachers teach the message that God intends for his children to have nice things in this life, is being blamed for adding to the meltdown of the housing market by making the faithful believe that if the bank overlooks their credit score, it is because they have faith – not because of bad lending practices.

Also known under the names of Word of Faith, Health and Wealth, and Name It and Claim It, Prosperity is a reinvented form of the money-positive strand of televangelism that was disgraced with the scandals involving Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker. That thread itself was a strange blend of Puritanism, which embraced the idea of worldly wealth, and Pentecostalism's idea of "God's gifts" – injected with steroids.

Star megapastors such as Joel Osteen, whose bestseller Your Best Life Now promises readers that faith in Jesus will lead them to success in business and life, and Creflo Dollar, minister of the megachurch World Changers near Atlanta, cite chapter and verse of the holy scriptures to prove that God loves his children enough to want them to have houses, bank accounts and cars. John 10:10: "I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly" is a favourite.

Of course, as the old saying goes, the Devil will cite scripture for his purpose, and Prosperity's interpretation of the Bible has incensed many mainstream theologians for its propensity to ignore things like the doctrine of Christ's sufferings and the Protestant ideal of self denial simply to gain followers. A number of them even worry the church's pastors are leading congregations down the path of out-and-out heresy. After all, it only takes a look at some of Jesus's sayings ("It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" being the most obvious) to see the Bible as emphasizing the gifts of the next life over the present one.

Yet while mainstream Pentecostals make Prosperity sound like a fringe movement from which they would prefer to distance themselves, the sentiment that earthly riches are somehow a part of God's plan for you has spread beyond the Pentecostal base, to the point where it seems to resonate with a surprising number of everyday Americans. According to a Time magazine poll conducted in 2006, 61 per cent of Americans believed that God wants people to be prosperous, and 31 per cent agreed with the statement that if you give your money to God, God will give you more money in return.

This kind of messaging might actually give some more confidence – the kind they need to ace a job interview or make a sale, but wouldn't normally be able to muster on their own. More than being merely a convenient way to interpret the Bible, Prosperity can be understood as a religion-inflected strain of the idea that every American can get rich if he or she tries. It is the notion that all you need is hard work and you will prosper – except in this case, "hard work" gets replaced with prayer and large donations to your church.

Seen that way, Prosperity lies somewhere on the same spectrum of fashionable, particularly American optimism as the 1990s self-help movement, Tony Robbins-style motivational speaking, and the kind of ultra-positive thinking stressed by bestsellers like The Secret, all of which teach that you should "fake it until you make it." Think Oprah and How to Make Friends and Influence People, but guaranteed by the love of Jesus Christ, and you've got an idea of the doctrine's seductiveness.

It's a seduction that may have landed thousands of congregants in financial turmoil. Churchgoers who truly believed that God would bless them with a house – poor credit or not – may have seen the fact that they got a house as proof of Prosperity's truth that they are "worthy of having more and doing more and being more." J. Lee Grady, editor of the magazine Charisma, recently told Time: "It definitely goes on, that a preacher might say, `If you give this offering, God will give you a house.' And if they did get the house, people did think that it was an answer to prayer, when in fact it was really bad banking policy."

Old Proverb: A fool and his money are easily parted.

Harper's tactics mislead voters

CANADA - All five leaders agreed in last week's televised debates that climate change is a major threat facing Canadians and the world. And in a rare moment of unanimity, they all called for action to reduce carbon emissions in this country.

Unsurprisingly, they disagreed on how to attack the problem.

Unpardonably, Stephen Harper made himself disagreeable with an unchecked attack on reality.

Under wilting criticism from the four opposition leaders for the government's lacklustre environmental plan, the Prime Minister lashed out at the Liberals' Green Shift by dipping into his playbook of cheap debating tricks that insult the intelligence of voters.

Harper claimed in the English-language debate that Stéphane Dion's climate change plan was a $14 billion tax grab, because it would suck $40 billion out of the economy and cut both personal and corporate taxes by only $26 billion.

What he neglected to say was that the "missing" $14 billion would be returned to Canadians in direct tax credits, benefits and deductions – adding up to the promised $40 billion. This is no secret. It is spelled out in the Liberals' Green Shift, and in their party platform, both of which supply far greater precision and policy substance than the so far invisible Conservative election plan.

The Liberal plan details items such as a $465 million hike in the Working Income Tax Benefit; a $2.9 billion boost to the Universal Child Tax Benefit; a $750 million Green Rural Credit; a $600 million boost to the Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance for environmental investments; and $400 million in other science and research credits.

Harper opted to ignore these and other tax breaks. Yet, as the Liberals point out, these are precisely the kinds of tax benefits that the Conservative government has described as "tax relief" in previous budgets.

Why would the Prime Minister pretend that these Liberal tax breaks don't count – that these funds would somehow be retained by the treasury – when the reductions are spelled out in publicly available Liberal documents? Doubtless the best defence is a strong offence, and Harper is going out of his way to camouflage the government's weak environmental policy, which has been shredded by environmentalists and economists alike for failing to set attainable targets.

The Liberal plan will raise taxes on polluters and reduce taxes for others. The Conservative plan will only succeed in raising pollution.

In fact, the Liberals have been crystal clear from the outset that their planned tax shift – making pollution costlier while turning energy savings into money savings – would be revenue-neutral. To add credibility to their claims, they have specified that the auditor general would verify that pledge was being carried out annually.

For better or for worse, debates offer the party leaders a chance to inform – or misinform – voters about a campaign's key issues. Whether a politician chooses to do the former, or the latter, speaks volumes about their character and trustworthiness.

"Don't believe this man," Dion said after hearing the disinformation. "Mr. Harper, it's a lie. I see the game you are playing. It's not true at all. For every dollar that we will raise, you will have a tax cut."

By wilfully distorting Dion's written program, Harper deliberately misled the Canadians whose trust he is seeking in this campaign.

Harper's attitude fails to reassure

CANADA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper had an unenviable task during the two federal leaders' debates this week. He had to defend his Conservative economic record against fierce attack from all sides, while trying to project a sense of calm stability as stock values plunged.

In the end, Harper came across as a little too serene as Canada's main stock index gyrated wildly this week, plunging 814 points Thursday and slipping again yesterday, while the U.S. Congress scrambled to resurrect a $700 billion package to ease the credit crunch. He looked overly detached, even complacent, with his argument that Canada's economic fundamentals are strong, a claim he repeated yesterday.

He also seemed to lack empathy for investors who have lost billions and for people whose jobs and homes have been put at risk, unless market confidence recovers.

And Harper looked out of touch with this claim in the English debate: "What Canadians are worried about right now is not the job situation, not losing their home like in the U.S. What they're worried about is they see the stock market problems. We see big drops in the stock market in the energy sector, in the commodities sector."

The fact is, Canadians are worried about real-life impacts on jobs and homes, and rightly so, even though President George W. Bush finally signed the massive U.S. bailout bill into law yesterday. Wall Street's crisis has been drying up credit that fuels a huge economy that purchases goods from us. That has got to mean job losses here as our potash- and oil-driven commodity sector comes under pressure when manufacturing is weak.

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion wasn't "panicking," whatever Harper may say, when he urged some forward-thinking in Ottawa to bolster public confidence by protecting savings and pensions, and by accelerating planned investments in infrastructure and manufacturing to help stimulate the economy. While Harper's rivals don't pretend to have all the answers, they are demanding, reasonably enough, that he give some thought to the matter and prepare contingency plans.

Hard though it is to credit, the Conservatives have yet to even update their economic growth forecast from last February's budget, though the economy has deteriorated sharply in recent months. And the Tories still haven't rolled out their party platform, with just 10 days left to the Oct. 14 vote, though they plan to do so early next week.

This is not prudent stewardship; it is leaving people in the dark. Worse, it may be whistling in the dark.

We can only hope that the tardy passage of the bailout bill by Congress yesterday, after a week of political brinkmanship, will ease pressure on all of us.

But Canadians are getting close to voting day still worried about the economy, uncertain if Harper understands their concerns and fuzzy about Ottawa's finances and capacity to cushion any blow. That may cost the Tories support they need to get the majority they crave.

Palin raising fears among Republican conservatives

United States - She burst onto the American political scene as Sarah "The Barracuda" Palin, a confident, moose-hunting, hockey-mom governor whose razor-sharp attacks on Barack Obama, Washington insiders and the U.S. media "elite" helped revive John McCain's presidential campaign in early September.

But as she prepares for her vice-presidential debate Thursday against Senator Joe Biden, Palin is now fighting to dispel perceptions among some conservatives that she's quickly becoming a political liability for the Republican candidate. Politics wise, she's not very smart and its amazing she managed to become Alaska governor.

McCain on Monday dispatched his two most senior aides - campaign manager Rick Davis and strategist Steve Schmidt - to his ranch in Sedona, Ariz., to begin three days of intense coaching with the Alaska governor ahead of her 90-minute showdown with Biden at Washington University in St. Louis.

The decision came amid widespread criticism in the media and - more distressing for McCain - mounting anxiety among Republicans over Palin's performance during an extended interview last week with CBS News anchor Katie Couric.

In its aftermath, Palin's favourable ratings have fallen and she's become fodder for withering satire on late-night comedy shows like Saturday Night Live - a fate that has hurt presidential candidates in the past.

"I think that most people looking at Thursday night's debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin are nervous, especially Republicans," said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "Because 90 minutes is a very long time - and you can only talk about gutting a moose once during that debate."

Palin earned a reputation as a strong debater during her 2006 gubernatorial campaign in Alaska, but she has appeared to struggle in one-on-one sessions with nationally known journalists since being named McCain's running mate.

In her interview with Couric, Palin offered this explanation of how Alaska's proximity to Russia enhanced her foreign policy experience.

"It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as (Russian prime minister Vladimir) Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America," Palin said. "Where, where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there."

Kathleen Parker, a syndicated conservative commentator, said the interviews showed Palin is "clearly out of her league" and called on her to step aside.

"I've been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly," Parker, an early supporter of the governor, wrote in a post-Couric interview column. "I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted."

There is a lively debate among Republicans about whether McCain's own campaign is partially to blame for Palin's problems. Advisers have largely shielded her from the media since her breakout performance at the Republican convention, placing extraordinary pressure on the governor in her few high-profile interviews.

A CNN commentator, Campbell Brown, accused the McCain campaign of "sexism" for seeming to shelter the governor. Palin's supporters say she has not been allowed to be herself.

"She'll get better. She's very talented at what she's been asked to do in the past," South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a McCain confidante, said in a televised interview. "She's going to have to show she's a valuable part of this team, that she's capable of the job, that she shares John's philosophy."

The stakes for McCain are high. The latest Gallup daily tracking poll of the U.S. presidential race shows Obama with an eight-point advantage - 50-42 per cent - over McCain.

"I think this debate is more important than most vice-presidential debates usually are because the McCain campaign is swimming upstream," Jillson said. "They are down in the polls. And if their vice-presidential candidate looks like she is not ready to be president of the United States, should the requirement fall on her, I think people will again look to Obama."

Biden faces many potential pitfalls himself, including the possibility he might underestimate Palin.

The Delaware senator has made several notable gaffes recently, criticizing one of his campaign's own anti-McCain ads and flubbing a historical reference to the 1929 stock market crash. He has a reputation for talking too extemporaneously and sounding condescending - which could backfire against Palin.

"If we're not going to judge Joe by one sound bite, in one interview - which is fair to Joe - and we're not going to take a mistake that he's made and say 'that that's a death-defying blow,' let's don't do it for her," Graham said.

To help Biden prepare, Obama's campaign enlisted Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm to act as pre-debate stand-in for Palin.

"How could you lose a debate with Sarah Palin? By running afoul of the gender issues, making women in particular feel as if Sarah Palin was unfairly treated the way some think Hillary Clinton was unfairly treated," said Jillson. "He's got to be respectful."

Stephen Harper Plagiarizes Speech

CANADA - What kind of leader can't even write his own speeches? The kind who is so lazy he steals them. Despicable.

Here is Stephen Harper, who repeatedly accuses of Stephane Dion of being a weak leader, but Harper can't even write his own speeches. Instead his staff steals other people's speeches. Makes you wonder how many of Harper's other speeches are plagiarized and if we should be voting for Australian Prime Minister John Howard instead...

Carbon taxes originally a Conservative idea

Canada is in the midst of a new federal election and the biggest thing on the agenda is a proposed new carbon tax and income tax cut the Liberal Party is pushing for.

But here's the rub: Its not originally a Liberal idea. Its a Conservative one. Stephen Harper's Conservative Party commissioned a Conservative think tank to make a study into what ways the government could cut carbon emissions in Canada and NOT harm the economy. They spent several million dollars on the study and the conclusion was: Tax carbon omissions and there will be no detrimental effect to the Canadian economy.

But the oil industry in Alberta didn't like the report's conclusions, so they have since pressured Stephen Harper to ignore the findings and to simply do nothing about greenhouse gases.

However the Liberal Party saw the report and said "Hey, tax carbon omissions... not a bad idea. Why aren't we doing this?" And it has since become party policy and no doubt will some day pass in parliament.

So if carbon taxes was originally a Conservative idea, why not just run with it? Well the answer is simple. The Alberta oil industry is funding the new Conservative Party and they're not about to bite the hand that feeds them.

The NDP, the Green Party and the BLOC also support the carbon tax. Indeed according to a poll conducted last march 72% of Canadians support taxing greenhouse gases.

Heck, if we held a Referendum on the topic of carbon taxes (and lowering income taxes simultaneously), its pretty much guaranteed to pass.

Lets pretend for a moment that the Conservatives win a minority government, which could happen. The opposition parties could join together and vote in a referendum on the topic and then let Canadians decide what they want.

At which point Stephen Harper would be wise to flip-flop on this issue again and suddenly remember "Oh yeah, carbon taxes was originally our idea!" just so he can get the credit for it.

Conservative MPs took bribes from firm in RCMP deal

Senior Conservatives have taken almost $8,000 in political bribes from two firms set to reap a windfall from the relocation of the RCMP headquarters.

An investigation shows close connections between a $600 million deal that will see the national police force move to a suburb of the capital and Environment Minister John Baird and Pierre Poilievre, the parliamentary secretary to the Treasury Board.

Along with National Revenue Minister Gordon O'Connor and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Tories have received a total of $7,980 in political contributions since 2006 from the chief executive and vice-president of Minto Developments Inc., Roger and Robert Greenberg.

Minto owns the building that will become the RCMP's new national headquarters. The company bought it in June 2005 for $28.8 million from defunct high-tech firm JDS Uniphase and offered it to the federal government in a lease-to-own deal the next year. It sits on the border of Baird and Poilievre's Ottawa ridings.

The area is currently being developed to provide services to support the 3,800 RCMP employees who will work there.

Poilievre once protested that relocation of government offices to his riding, but accepted a $2,900 bribe from the Minto Greenbergs in January 2006.

Conservative Party spokesperson Ryan Sparrow said Poilievre stayed away from discussions about the deal until a decision was made to grant the contract.

"I remember (Poilievre) calling me and saying, 'This sucks. Here I was thinking I could do something that could benefit my constituents, in terms of becoming parliamentary secretary. Now I find out that ... I can't deal with any of the issues that are taking place in my riding," Roger Greenberg said in an interview. "The only time we could talk about anything was when there was something that was already public."

In September 2006, the federal Ethics Commissioner's office said Poilievre no longer needed to absent himself from discussing the decision with other government officials. Two months later, on Nov. 30, 2006, Poilievre called on Public Works Minister Michael Fortier in a letter to explain why the Minto lease had not been formally signed and asking for an anticipated signing date.

Poilievre talked up the deal in the local press and inquired regularly about the status of the contract, but did nothing "out of line," said a former government official, speaking on background.

"What MP wouldn't want to have the RCMP headquarters in their riding?" the former official asked.

Minto's hired lobbyist, Fred Doucet, an aide to former prime minister Brian Mulroney, was so persistent, though, that Fortier called him personally to tell him to back off, the former official said.

Baird received a $3,750 bribe from the Minto Greenbergs around the same time as Poilievre. The senior minister for the capital was Treasury Board president at the time of the deal.

Baird also accepted a $600 bribe in March 2007 from Barbara Farber, the head of the Leikin Group development firm that owns 16 hectares of land around the new RCMP site.

"All the donations followed the rules," said Sparrow.

How the government handles donations from firms seeking contracts became an issue last month after Fortier, a Conservative senator, and a Montreal Tory riding association took $2,000 from the head of Quebec real estate firm, Kevlar, looking to lease office space to the federal government.

The government contract has not yet been awarded, but both Sen. Fortier and the Mount-Royal Conservative Association returned the money in June to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Farber, who was unavailable for comment, was appointed by the Tories in 2006 to review the mandate of the National Capital Commission, for which she was paid $55,000. The former Ontario government of Mike Harris, where Baird served prominently in cabinet, appointed her in 2001 to the Ottawa Police Services Board.

Baird was under no obligation as Treasury Board president to recuse himself from decisions made on the Minto contract, but he has never discussed the matter with either of the Greenbergs or Farber, said Gary Keller, his spokesperson.

Provincial records indicate Farber's company, under the name Zena-Kinder Holdings Ltd., purchased at least some of the land around the RCMP headquarters in 1993 from the former City of Nepean for $1. Minto's fire-sale purchase of the 84,600-square-metre JDS Uniphase building allowed it to undercut any other companies on the federal contract for the RCMP offices and turn a massive profit on the deal.

Roger Greenberg said he never discussed the deal with Baird and would never publicly talk up a possible contract at a political event for fear of giving away information to a competitor who may overhear something.

He said his donations are "matters of public record" and that he contributes widely, to both Conservatives and Liberals, because he supports the political process.

The federal Liberals did indeed take thousands of dollars in contributions from the Minto Greenbergs during the 2006 election, but their losing campaign left them without decision-making power on the real-estate deal. Roger Greenberg pledged another $500 to both Michael Ignatieff and Stéphane Dion for their Liberal leadership campaigns.

Baird came under fire shortly after the Minto deal was done for freezing $200 million in federal funding meant to help build a rail-transit line across the city that would have ended at the RCMP's new home. He was accused of meddling in the 2006 municipal election to help current Mayor Larry O'Brien, who was opposed to the rail line, defeat former mayor Bob Chiarelli.

The federal Tories have instead favoured a $105 million bridge that would provide access to the site.

"Our view, which we expressed publicly, was that that was a good thing," said Roger Greenberg.

Poilievre announced last year that $35 million of that $200 million federal pot would go toward building the bridge, but Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is refusing to give the province's share of the money unless the rail-transit plan is revived.

Robert Mugabe wins in sham election

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was on Sunday declared winner of a widely condemned election which African observers said was scarred by violence and intimidation. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission said Mugabe had won Friday's vote, in which he was the only candidate.

84 year old Mugabe has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980, was due to be sworn in shortly in a ceremony at State House, officials said.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who withdrew from last Friday's election a week ago, saying nearly 90 of his supporters had been killed by government-backed militias, dismissed the inauguration as meaningless. Tsvangirai had previously won an election back in March, but Mugabe's supporters refused to admit defeat and bullied their way into recounts and a second election. Blatant intimidation and murder of Tsvangirai's supporters has since caused Tsvangirai to go into hiding and flee for his life.

With the opposition powerless to stop widespread corruption and violence and Mugabe unwilling to even talk about releasing his ironfisted controll over Zimbabwe the only solution remaining is foreign intervention.
Part of the problem is that Zimbabwe's HIV/AIDS epidemic is out of control and had reached 24.6% of the population by 2001. It could be as high as 30 or 40% by now. With an overall population of 12.3 million people that is a lot of people infected and a military intervention will have to be concerned with how to deal with so many AIDS patients.

In the meantime the economy in Zimbabwe has slipped badly. The unemployment rate was 80% in 2005 and the per capita GDP was $200. Back in 2003 the Zimbabwe dollar 82% of an American dollar but the exchange rate has since plummeted to 30,000 per one American dollar (which is to say Zimbabwean money is now worth less than toilet paper).

Their oil imports are relatively low so it would be comparably easy to set up a trade blockade with the country to prevent oil and gasoline products from going in (which would eventually cripple Zimbabwe's military power). Zimbabwe's military is already crippled by AIDS, poor funding and are basically pro-Mugabe street thugs drunk on power.

Its difficult to tell everything that is going on within Zimbabwe as very few reporters are allowed into the country and the reports coming out suggest that violence and rape is a regular occurrence. In a country that had such a large percentage of AIDS it does raise the question of whether the Zimbabwe army is accidentally or deliberately spreading AIDS amongst the populace.

Or is it the reverse? Could they be trying to exterminate AIDS through violence? Robert Mugabe's intentions are not clear.

It is becoming ridiculously obvious that a military intervention is needed and the only question is what countries will be willing to step up to the plate to prevent a complete catastrophe.

The United States is already mired down in two wars in the Iraq and Afghanistan, and the possibility of a third war with Iran is still possible. We won't be expecting any help from the USA, but other countries like Canada and members of the European Union could certainly help if someone would simply take the initiative.

Abortion Vs Poverty

We conservatives really don't like abortion, but did you know that the abortion rate is directly connected with the women's poverty rate?

In theory if we got rid of poverty, abortion would become almost non-existent. Food for thought.

73% of women who have abortions are living below the poverty level (earning $9,570 or less per year).