Saturday, January 23, 2010

Has the Liberal Party given up on Adults?

I am beginning to get the feeling that the Liberal Party is shifting its focus from adults, to the more easily influenced youth. Impressionable minds who have not lived enough life to distinguish the difference between the end of democracy and a standard Parliamentary procedure used repeatedly by past Liberal administrations. The CBC has been closely following these "grassroots" protests and it seems like every time they interview an organizer, it is a kid. Whether children were chosen as a tactical move, or they were the only ones to drink the koolade, I can only speculate.

I am not trying to declare war on young people. I have a niece and 3 nephews all of high school age or less. I want for them to take an interest in the world around them, but I stop short of taking orders from them. It isn't hard to convince young people that the world is coming to an end or that something bad is happening. You could even do a controlled experiment where you take a random sample of people from all ages and individually hand them a fake newspaper saying that the world is coming to an end. Have them read it, and then ask if they believe it. I would be willing to wager that there is a direct inverse correlation between how old you are and how likely you are to buy the phony apocalypse.

Of course the CBC has a team on location for every protest, and I am being introduced to journalists that I had never met before. If you can believe it, the "C-Team" at the CBC are even worse than the usual suspects. They are estimating 7000 people at the Toronto rally. With 5 million people in the GTA, that works out to roughly one percent of one percent of the population in attendance in a Liberal stronghold. And that one percent of one percent are a bipartisan representative sample of the Canadian population… (that was sarcasm by the way)

There's Jack Layton giving a speech. He appears quite pleased with himself. I have noticed that all these CBC talking heads are taking great care to emphasize that the organizers are not politically affiliated and this is purely about our democracy in peril and not an opposition stunt to try and win votes. I think that's why they are putting so much emphasis on the young people who were roped by these dopes. Let me make something clear, any event featuring Jack Layton and Elizabeth May as keynote speakers cannot be labeled non partisan.

I have never seen Kady O'Malley happier with herself. She again emphasized that all the organizers were very young with no party affiliation, and she went on to describe "the enthusiastically non partisan mood here". Nice to see that they have booked musical acts for their Ottawa crowd estimated by Kady at 2000 - 4000 people. Again, how many registered Liberals, Greens, and Dippers live within driving distance of Ottawa? 5000? The CBC just flashed to the Calgary protest. There were 3 guys. The studio journalist asked the field journalist "what is the focus of the anger in Calgary?" And by that do you mean the focus of the anger of the 3 guys standing behind the reporter? The attention the CBC is giving this is unreal. I guess people are getting bored with disaster relief in Haiti.

This is creepy, they were just breaking news on the CBC that the body of former Liberal MP Serge Marcil was found amidst the wreckage in Haiti, and then they immediately cut away from that breaking news in Haiti to go live to the Ignatieff speech. Ironic how these two breaking news stories emerged at the exact same time and the CBC cut away from the dead Liberal in Haiti to go live to a speech by the current Liberal leader. Priorities.

(**please forgive the fractured nature of this blog post, but I have ostensibly been "live blogging" the coverage of the Prorogation Protests on the CBC**)

The Vancouver protest starts in an hour. My instincts tell me that I should grab my camera, hop on a bus and head downtown...and I think that I might do exactly that...

8 comments:

  1. They just flashed back to the Calgary reporter. There are now a solid 30 people behind him.

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  2. And the weather is good too. Imagine if it was really cold or there was a lot of rain or snow...

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  3. cbc just showed a photo of crowd from a twitter acc't..said this 'twit' states a crowd of over 20,00 at TO msm organized protest..but the police said crowd closer to 2,000. Hmmm who to believe.

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  4. 300 showed up in Montreal, Duceppe (Garneau and Mulcair) led the parade.
    Montreal area have population of 3.64 million....not exactly a grassroots movement imo.

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  5. Weeks of free, non-stop advertising of the rally events, including links to the FB site for details,
    and this is all the media/coalition 'surge' could get out?
    Must be very disappointing for them,eh.

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  6. And if one percent of the one percent of the one percent come out to vote I will be surprised. These adolescents who are caught up in some rapturous wet dream about how they are going to change the world into some socialist Utopia have a lot to learn. To make democracy work you can't sit on your ass and pontificate about the evils of capitalism or free enterprise, as their sociology professors do, you have to get down in the trenches. You do the volunteer grunt work in constituency offices and have a thousand phones slammed in your ear when you happen to contact a non-believer. You freeze your butt off in a winter storm as you put up posters. You suffer through the diatribes of some octogenarian you drive to the polls on election day. You attend meetings, seminars, and get-out-the-vote rallies and gradually establish yourself as a valuable member of a political team.
    Sitting in a lecture hall listening to some leftover loser from the the 60's revolution as he/she extols the virtues of demonstrations as a sure-fire way to change the system only leads to disillusionment, anger, and blind obedience to a lost cause. You become Evan Solman and Kady O'Malley! And that my friends, means you have degenerated to the lowest possible scale of human dignity.

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  7. I don't that the students have any idea that the politicians are still on CHRISTMAS BREAK until tomorrow nor do CBC CTV will them. this make it easier for the media to continue with their manipulation.

    Had the student knew that the prime minister only extended their christmas holiday because of the OLYMPICS soon to start, the prime minister decided to give the UNGRATEFUL POLICIANS more time off; to let some of them who already tickets to games. So what's the idea of reconvening the HOC just for few days plus having politicians to travels across canada for few wks. What for?
    Also, while the games are on, politicians will be at their base working.

    You see, the least the students know the harm the media is doing to them; it is is better for the media to again, manipulate.

    ICEMAN, I wonder if the NDPer student realize that JACK LAYTON has gone against almost every bill that was to aide her and family during the recession.
    TIME TO GIVE SOME LESSONS ON POLITICS TO THE STUDENTS.

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  8. From this article in the Globe And Mail
    "A crowd of about 100 stood outside the legislature in Halifax"
    "In Edmonton, about 250 people"
    "In Montreal, hundreds also stood in a downtown public square"
    It is safe to assume that numbers are worse in other cities in Canada or they would report them.
    To think if anything these figures are inflated, what a dismal turnout for this big rally promoted by the partisan pundits in the media.
    Since the CBC took this demonstration on as a personal crusade with incessant publicity for the last few weeks, and yesterday running on screen messages inviting people to attend the prorogation demonstrations in their communities, must just demonstrate once again, that obviously nobody watches the CBC, and we should maybe begin a Face Book protest, that Canadian taxpayers are wasting a billion dollars a year subsidizing this broadcasting abortion. One thing you can be sure, after what Canadians saw on TV and read, these same pundits will not be able to convince Canadians this was a huge success and demonstration - it was a dismal flop. Three party leaders Ignatieff. Layton and May, at the rally in Ottawa as headliners and entertainment couldn't hold a thousand people there for the duration of the rally. Ignatieff will now have to go back to the drawing board, and follow through with his earlier promise in January "to investigate the conduct of our troops on the ground" in Afghanistan, who they have accused of being complicit in committing war crimes in Afghanistan because "they detained and handed over for torture a lot of innocent people". What is more, all Ignatieff and the Liberals have found, to this point in time for substantiation of their accusations of abuse, is some Taliban detainee being hit with a shoe, but their slurs and condemnations of our military continue.
    To end on something light, the CBC are reporting, would you believe, that in Calgary "a group of protesters gathered outside the prime minister’s constituency office" ( it was never clarified but it was reported that these were people actually waiting for a bus and not prorogation protesters) and the CBC didn't mention, that in vast majority of the cities across Canada, nobody but nobody showed up.

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