Slim Chants

Two days after the US election and the knives are out at the GOP:

Circular Firing Squad at GOP

Palin Didn’t Know Africa Is A Continent

Top McCain Aide Fired With One Week To Go

Palin In A Towel

GOP In Tatters

The Pope says that men who are entertaining the thoughts of becoming a Roman Catholic priest should have their heads examined. CBC reports:

The Vatican issued new psychological screening guidelines for priesthood candidates on Thursday designed to screen out men with strong homosexual tendencies or an inability to control strong sexual urges.

The Vatican issued the guidelines in a document drawn up to help church leaders weed out candidates with “psychopathic disturbances,” said the Vatican.

Read the rest here …

Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt is not only endorsing Barack Obama in his bid for the United States Presidency, he is going to hit the hustings to campaign for the Democratic candidate too. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Schmidt said in an interview that “I’m doing this personally,” adding that “Google is officially neutral” in the campaign.

I expect in the wake of Colin Powell’s endorsement (and blistering critique of the GOP and its methods) of Obama on Sunday’s Meet The Press that the endorsements from Republicans and conservative pundits and publications to start falling in line like dominoes. It’s all downhill for McCain from here on.

Last night Canadians elected another Conservative minority government. Voting in record low numbers with a 58% turnout, it is fair to say Harper was re-elected through voter apathy. Although the Conservatives increased their seat count they will be considering whether or not the time has come to replace Harper, with his failure to deliver a majority after three attempts. The bigger question is what will happen to the Liberals. Having won only 76 seats, Dion is not expected to survive a leadership review. Indeed, the knives came out before the complete results had come in, before even the leaders concession speeches. Reporters began peppering Bob Rae with questions about his ambitions for the party leadership as he mounted the podium to thank his supporters.

Dion has yet to fall on his sword but expect that to happen in the next week or so, as he meets with other Liberals and finds the degree to which his support has evaporated. A Liberal leadership campaign and convention are a certainty. Dion is subject to a mandatory review regardless, within six months of the election, one he is certain to lose. Were he to wait for that review and force a subsequent convention, delays and expense, the party will suffer. Dion is intelligent and he is not an egotist. He will leave for the good of the cause.

So who to pick? Rae is ready. So too is Ignatieff. Both have been preparing for just such an event as took place last night. They have teams already in place to take up the cause for their respective campaigns. Gerard Kennedy will likely throw his hat in the ring. Recall, he was the king maker who made it possible for Dion’s leadership. This fact may come back to haunt him. Joe Volpe may want to give it another shot but he didn’t even keep his seat last night so he’s looking for a job today. Martha Hall Findlay and Caroline Bennet will probably be tempted to mount campaigns. I’m not sure Ken Dryden will be interested. These were the players last time around.

It is important to consider requirements. Key among these is the ability to win an election. To do that a Liberal leader is going to have to deliver Ontario votes. He or she will have to expand on the only good news for the Liberals last night, the federalist Quebec votes that went their way. So no sponsorship baggage would be a plus. A leader would have to be able to appeal to voters in all constituencies across Canada to elect a government which can claim to represent all Canadians. It would help if said leader could claim to have run a successful government previously. To have dealt with tough times and made a go of it. Above all, the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada will have to be a good communicator.

I say draft McGuinty. He has no federal party baggage. He has a successful track record. He won historic back to back majorities for the Ontario Liberals. I think he can deliver Ontario. He has a record of reaching out to other provinces, collaborating with Quebec, even. He has all the right acoutrements, an attractive wife who teaches, photogenic family, and a large personal support network. He is fluent in french. He is an excellent communicator. And he has a powerful political machine. More than any of the aforementioned potential candidates I think Dalton McGuinty is the best hope for the Liberal Party of Canada.

It’s been said (I can’t remember who said it so leave a comment if you know who) that Vancouver would be the bellwether. That the Vancouver real estate market was the one to watch. This was said in the context of the throes of the housing market collapse in the United States, while our market continued to cook on high. Well, the signs are clear. According to CBC:

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver says the number of residential property sales declined 42.9 per cent in September from a year earlier.

The number of residential properties sold in Metro Vancouver dropped from 2,776 in September 2007 to 1,585 in September 2008, according to a report released Thursday by the board.

The number of new listings continued to rise, up 28.8 per cent from the same month last year.

Harper maintains that our economy is strong and immune to the problems being experienced stateside. He’ll live to eat those words.

Sarah Palin is a post turtle.

The so-called opposition (now that’s an oxymoron) Liberals voiced their strong objections to the minority governing Harper Conservatives’ immigration bill (actually a part of the budget bill, though it has no place there), tabled for third reading in the House of Commons today. John McCallum said they would repeal it when they formed a government.

Liberal MP Maurizio Bevilacqua (Vaughan) told reporters, “We don’t support the direction in which the government is going and we will have ample time in an election campaign to in fact illustrate that the Liberal plan for this country is much better.” Dion said earlier in the day, “We want to go. We want to go. “I feel that more now than it was the case some months ago, and it’s good because indeed we need to replace this bad government.” There are several things wrong with this logic. The first and most obvious is that in order to have ample time in an election campaign, you have to have an election campaign. I need not remind these Liberals that they failed in great numbers to show up for the vote.

The Liberals have employed this tactic time and again saying that Canadians do not want an election. Bullshit! I want one. I thought perhaps they just don’t know. So I went to Karen Redman’s office and made my feelings known. Three times I went in there. I suspect a lot of other people did the same because the Globe & Mail reported that party whip Redman, along with Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff tried to convince Monsieur Dion to meet with them Sunday evening so they could convince him to bring down this aforementioned “bad government”. He elected instead to spend the weekend “at the cottage”.

The problem is, this was the Liberals last chance to bring down this government. Come fall Harper, if he is low enough in the polls to please the Liberal nervous nellies will likely prorogue parliament, depriving the Liberals of any opportunity to vote them out. In the meantime the planet cooks. The Harper minority, cash rich, continues to trash Dion in ads, and carries on tearing apart any semblance of social infrastructure in our cherished Canada.

Dion should have early on gone to the man that drafted him into this career and asked for advice. Like him or not, Jean Chretien had razor sharp political instinct. I’m sure he is shaking his head now. He would have told Dion not to be afraid to start an election campaign when you are down in the polls. Especially when you have such good issues to run on as the environment, foreign policy and the economy, stupid, the economy. Canadians may prefer a passive approach but we sure don’t back down from a fight. Dion, and all Liberals have lost a huge amount of respect for not standing up for the things they believe in and which Canadian hold dear. They have certainly lost mine.