Ont. health agency scrutinized for contract tendering practices – lets audit ‘CancerCare Ontario’ and all Government agencies and end the practice of entitlement

Ont. health agency scrutinized for contract tendering practices

‘Taxpayers are really getting ripped off’: PC leader

An Ontario health agency has doled out nearly $5 million in contracts without any apparent attempt to open up the deals to outside bidders, documents obtained by CBC News show.

EHealth Ontario has come under scrutiny for its spending practices. (CBC)Contracts valued at about $4.8 million were signed off by eHealth Ontario’s CEO and president, Sarah Kramer, during the first four months of the newly formed agency’s operation, according to documents obtained by the Progressive Conservative party through a freedom of information request.

A letter regarding the request states that no procurement documents for consultant services were located “because none were created.”

EHealth was quietly set up eight months ago by the Liberal government, with the merger of the e-health program at the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care and Smart Systems for Health Agency (SSHA), an agency once mired in questions over its own operations.

The agency is tasked with developing a digital record system by 2015 to allow health-care providers to electronically share patient information to prevent medical errors and reduce costs.

Kramer defended her organization’s procurement policy, saying the quick transition period and the amount of money being invested in eHealth justified single-sourcing the contracts in many cases.

“It is appropriate and it’s under most policies in public and private sector to bring in sole-source vendors when you need to do something very quickly and you need some specialized services,” Kramer said.

A procurement expert said contracts should be open to competition unless they involve legal services, an urgent circumstance or a patented product unique to a single supplier.

Examples of some of the most lucrative contracts handed out during the first months of eHealth’s operation were $915,160 to health-care consulting firm Courtyard Group, and two contracts in a single day to Accenture Inc. that topped $1 million.

All but one of the listed consulting contracts surpassed $100,000, the cutoff at which provincial agencies are required to put a contract out to tender in order to ensure a fair and open playing field for companies.

No evidence has been found that the contracts were tendered on Merx, Ontario’s designated website for such government agreements.

Kramer’s spending

Hiring outside consultants also would allow eHealth Ontario to skirt the so-called “sunshine law” that requires provincial agencies to publicize the names of employees with salaries of $100,000 or more.

Sarah Kramer is the CEO and president of eHealth Ontario. (CNW Group/eHealth Ontario)The agency already employed 164 people whose annual salary topped $100,000 in 2008, according to its website.

Documents show Kramer earns a base salary of $380,000 and received a $114,000 bonus in March, about five months after her start date.

The next month, Kramer announced in a memo that the company was cutting back on employee bonuses.

“After considerable discussion, we have decided to proceed with merit and bonus payouts, but scale them back to reflect current economic realities and the organization’s performance this past year,” the memo states.

Receipts also show Kramer spent at least $800 on limousine rides, including one priced at $408 from her home to London, Ont., and a couple in Boston.

Kramer came under scrutiny for her expenditures in early April when opposition parties complained about the $51,500 she spent on her new office furniture, a cost defended by Health Minister David Caplan as a startup cost typical to new agencies.

Ontario Auditor General Jim McCarter has been probing spending at eHealth and its predecessor, SSHA, since late last year. His findings are scheduled to be published in his annual report this December.

Interim PC Leader Bob Runciman called for the health minister to explain the apparent lack of competitive bidding for the projects and called the expenses upsetting given the economic downturn.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s all sorts of problems with this agency where taxpayers are really being — I think it’s not going overboard to say — getting ripped off by this agency and their practices,” Runciman said.

Alberta consultants flown in

Spending at eHealth and its predecessor swelled to more than $800 million in the past six years, while the date for release of its electronic patient health records has been pushed back three years to 2015.

SSHA was blasted in January 2007 when an operational review done by Deloitte Consulting said it lacked a strategic plan, had a poor reputation among the health-care community it was supposed to serve and was not being held accountable by Queen’s Park.

Set up in 2002, SSHA also struggled to move away from a dependence on consultants. A 2004-2005 annual report documents “intense” efforts to reduce reliance on consultants by doubling permanent staff.

Media reports suggest SSHA spent about an average of 17 per cent of its budget each year on consultants.

Also, two of eHealth’s consultants — Allaudin Merali and Donna Strating — are listed as senior vice-presidents on the agency’s website but live in Alberta, with their regular commute into Ontario funded by taxpayer dollars.

Documents released Wednesday show each charges about $2,700 a day for their services. The two also bill the agency for regular flights, accommodation in Toronto plus a per diem for meals and other costs. Among the receipts are two $3.26 bills for a muffin and can of pop.

The total cost for the two amounts to about $1.5 million a year.

EHealth’s CEO defended the costs of flying two consultants in, saying Alberta has the “best record in eHealth in the country.”

“They’ve come in and really helped us get back on board and start moving forward. So we’re paying market rates for people who are the best and the brightest in the business,” Kramer said.

Close ties

Questions are also being raised about a further $1 million in apparently untendered contracts awarded in the early months of the agency’s transition to Courtyard Group, on top of the single $915,160 deal.

Michael Guerriere, a managing partner of Courtyard Group, was also named as eHealth’s interim senior vice-president of strategy at one point, and billed more than $3,000 a day as a consultant.

Guerriere’s wife, Miyo Yamashita, heads another firm, Anzen Consulting, that benefited from more than $300,000 in eHealth contracts.

Yamashita charged about $300 an hour for communications advice and services that included:

• Reading New York Times articles on diabetes and electronic health records from her husband.
• Reviewing Kramer’s holiday voicemail greeting and confirming details for a seasonal party.
• Debriefing during a chat on the subway.

If you have information on this story, send an email to yournews@cbc.ca.

Read more….

Free Software Will Kill Redmond

Keith Curtis, author and former Microsoft programmer, makes no bones about his view that open source puts the software giant’s wares to shame. In this interview, he discusses what’s wrong with Microsoft programming, what’s behind all those bugs, and what’s shaping his former employer’s grim future.

Linux changes how people think about their computer. Microsoft has no response for this.

In addition, proprietary software hurts Microsoft. Google writes mostly proprietary software, but quietly leverages a lot of free software that is a key to its success.

What can Microsoft do to curb the threat of free software, and what do you think it will be willing to do?

Other than adopting Linux, there is little Microsoft can do. Even if they did embrace it, not only would it hurt their profit margins, they’d be forced to explain to customers why they should continue to pay for Office if the company believes the free OpenOffice is good enough.

Microsoft has created Web sites where developers can use free code and collaborate, and the latest is called CodePlex. While it shows that Microsoft understands the benefits of free software, this site mostly contains tiny add-ons to proprietary Microsoft products.

Microsoft has also released some software it wrote under various open licenses. While it is good PR for Microsoft, this software is being absorbed by the outside community. This doesn’t actually curb the threat; it increases it.

So I don’t really know what Microsoft can do. While the company says it doesn’t like piracy, it does allow itself to compete on price with free software. As Bill Gates wrote: “It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not.”

Read more…

Canadian Prime Minister Harper rips President Obama and Libertarians in private speech to right-wing former Reform Party conservatives

PM Harper attacks Obama, Liberals and Liberatarians

By Jennifer Ditchburn, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA – Stephen Harper made two very different sales pitches for his economic plan this week: one a public pep talk to jittery Canadians, the other a private smoothing-of-the-feathers for uneasy conservatives.

The marquee speech Canadians saw on television Tuesday or read about the next day was about how the economy would recover swiftly and strongly through targeted spending in the budget.

The other was behind closed doors Thursday evening to a group of key conservatives – sharply partisan remarks that ripped into the Liberals, libertarians, the Obama administration’s tax policies and Wall Street.

The prime minister spoke at a conference sponsored by the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, a conservative think-tank run by former Reform Party leader Preston Manning.

The prime minister’s office did not signal beforehand that he was giving the speech, and refused to make his remarks available afterward.

In a recording obtained by The Canadian Press, Harper goes after the Liberals in a election-campaign style attack, saying the current situation would be much worse had they been in power.

“Imagine the stance Canada would have taken when Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists attacked Israel. Imagine how many Liberal insiders and ideologues would be now in the Senate, the courts and countless other federal institutions and agencies – I should say, how many more,” Harper said to laughter.

“Imagine the costs of going through with the Kyoto and Kelowna accords with no plan to actually achieve anything on either the environment or aboriginal affairs. Imagine what a carbon tax would be doing to our economy in the middle of a global recession.”

He twice pointed disdainfully to tax hikes U.S. President Barack Obama introduced for the highest tax brackets.

Harper urged the crowd not to “forget that Conservatives being in power has made an enormous difference.”

The prime minister has been criticized in some conservative circles for allowing the government to go into deficit with spending programs designed to stimulate the economy. At the conference, which continued Friday, some high-profile conservatives warned against watering down conservative ideas to win votes.

“Conservatives should stop having the internal debate in their head and all the philosophical arguments, and talk about hard specific ideas that make a difference in people’s lives, have the courage to stand up and fight for the things we know are right,” said Tom Long, a former leadership candidate for the Canadian Alliance.

“We have tried going out and selling things we don’t believe in – how’s that working?”

Said Michel Kelly Gagnon of the Montreal Economic Institute: “If you want to vote for a centrist party, you can vote for the Liberal party of Canada. They’re very good at that.”

But Harper vigorously defended his policies, arguing that compromises had to be made to face the economic reality.

“I’m talking about compromises that address the reality of the lives of real people.”

He went on to deride the spendthrift culture in the United States and the recklessness of Wall Street. Harper, who has been described as a libertarian in the past, surprised some in the audience by critiquing those same ideals.

“The libertarian says, ‘Let individuals exercise full freedom and take full responsibility for their actions.’ The problem with this notion is that people who act irresponsibly in the name of freedom are almost never willing to take responsibility for their actions.”

Mike Brock, a Conservative blogger who attended the conference, called the speech bewildering.

“The treatment to classical liberals and libertarians – of which I consider myself – was nothing short of stunning,” he wrote.

“The condescension was literally dripping from his mouth. Was this his response to the disillusionment that libertarians across the country have had to his government and its policies of late?

“If it was, it did not build any bridges. Rather, it burnt them right down.”

Read more at http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090313/national/harper_conservative_speech

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/602131

New Star Trek Movie Trailer…Definately not the same old trek!

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/startrek/

Marrow transplant may have cured AIDS, German doctors say

Provided by: The Canadian Press
Written by: Patrick Mcgroarty, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Nov. 12, 2008
BERLIN – An American man who suffered from AIDS appears to have been cured of the disease 20 months after receiving a targeted bone marrow transplant normally used to fight leukemia, his doctors said Wednesday.

While researchers – and the doctors themselves – caution that the case might be no more than a fluke, others say it may inspire a greater interest in gene therapy to fight the disease that claims two million lives each year. The virus has infected 33 million people worldwide.

Dr. Gero Huetter said his 42-year-old patient, an American living in Berlin who was not identified, had been infected with the AIDS virus for more than a decade. But 20 months after undergoing a transplant of genetically selected bone marrow, he no longer shows signs of carrying the virus.

“We waited every day for a bad reading,” Huetter said.

It has not come. Researchers at Berlin’s Charite hospital and medical school say tests on his bone marrow, blood and other organ tissues have all been clean.

However, Dr. Andrew Badley, director of the HIV and immunology research lab at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said those tests have probably not been extensive enough.

“A lot more scrutiny from a lot of different biological samples would be required to say it’s not present,” Badley said.

This isn’t the first time marrow transplants have been attempted for treating AIDS or HIV infection. In 1999, an article in the journal Medical Hypotheses reviewed the results of 32 attempts reported between 1982 and 1996. In two cases, HIV was apparently eradicated, the review reported.

Huetter’s patient was under treatment at Charite for both AIDS and leukemia, which developed unrelated to HIV.

As Huetter – who is a hematologist, not an HIV specialist – prepared to treat the patient’s leukemia with a bone marrow transplant, he recalled that some people carry a genetic mutation that seems to make them resistant to HIV infection. If the mutation, called Delta 32, is inherited from both parents, it prevents HIV from attaching itself to cells by blocking CCR5, a receptor that acts as a kind of gateway.

“I read it in 1996, coincidentally,” Huetter told reporters at the medical school. “I remembered it and thought it might work.”

Read More

Obama shatters barriers and makes presidential history

by Dan Nowicki – Nov. 5, 2008 01:34 AM
The Arizona Republic

Barack Obama, the cool and collected Hawaiian-born son of a man from Kenya and woman from Kansas, whose promise of “change” inspired a generation of young people, shattered the last racial ceiling in U.S. politics Tuesday to become the first African-American elected president.

Obama, a freshman Democratic senator from Illinois, crushed his Republican foe, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, to capture a White House controlled for the past eight years by GOP President George W. Bush. In a striking repudiation of the Bush era, Obama won in an Electoral College landslide.

Obama’s historic win comes 40 years after the assassination of civil-rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. and 45 years after King’s dramatic “I Have a Dream” speech. And it comes at a time when the United States is militarily engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan and reeling under economic pressures not felt in decades. OAS_AD(‘ArticleFlex_1′)

“It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America,” the triumphant Obama told more than 100,000 supporters at Grant Park in Chicago.

Obama’s breakthrough was symbolic and transitional. Obama, 47, becomes the fourth-youngest elected president and the first too young to have served in the Vietnam War. McCain, 72, a former Navy aviator who spent more than five years in Hanoi as a prisoner of war, would have been the oldest president to take office.

For McCain, the disappointment caps a 26-year career representing Arizona on Capitol Hill. He returns from the campaign trail with two years left on his Senate term. He joins his Senate predecessor, the late Barry Goldwater, in the history books as an unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate. Goldwater, the only other Arizonan to secure the nomination of a major political party, lost to Democrat Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

McCain, flanked by wife Cindy, running mate Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd, saluted his opponent and acknowledged “the special significance” Obama’s win holds for African-Americans and “for the special pride that must be theirs tonight.”

“A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt’s invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time,” McCain told the upbeat crowd at the Arizona Biltmore in central Phoenix. “There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States. Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth.”

Read more

WARNING BILL 85: The Ontario Government is secretly pushing through “big brother” legislation – using RFID tags in Drivers Licenses to track your movements unencrypted

“The introduction of enhanced driver’s licenses, which appears to be a central focus of Bill 85, will lay the groundwork for a new and more extensive identity regime, the effects of which are not fully known,”

So what are they not telling Ontario citizens? PIPEDA and your privacy will not matter if Bill 85 is passed, in its current form. In the long-term, it will be easier to be monitored by the Government, Businesses and other organizations.

RFID tags

So what is Bill 85? Yes, you are probably unaware that the Ontario government is quickly pushing through legislation on behalf of the U.S government (okay, that’s a stretch, but it has already pass 2nd reading). No, this is NOT a joke. But, you can ignore the picture; I just wanted to make a point. There has been little fan-fare or information to the public, however soon ALL drivers licenses will have a new RFID tag embedded within your card (not your hand, yet…). This means personal information about who you are will allow border agents to “quickly get you into the U.S”. However what you do not know is that these RFID tags will be UNENCRYPTED. Still lost? Let me put it to you this way.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders. An RFID tag is an object that can be applied to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification and tracking using radio waves. Tags can be read from several meters away and beyond the line of sight of the reader.

Being that it is UNENCRYPTED “ANYONE” will be able to get information about you without you actually knowing by getting readily available scanners and devices to read RFID tags. The dangerous part of this legislation is that YOUR PRIVACY IS GOING TO BE VIOLATED by Dalton McGuintry and the Ontario Government. This has gotten little to no media press and has already passed second reading. Of course you could use tin foil or a shield to prevent people from scanning the card without you knowing, but the main issue is the UNENCRYPTED portion of this legislation. We can argue whether or not “Big Brother” should be able to monitor you, but UNENCRYPTED. In effect, there is NO OPT OUT part to this legislation. You must get the tag inserted into your Drivers license, if this bill passes. Might as well force us to get it inserted into our bodies? Sounds familiar? This is a win-fall for criminals and identity theft, however do you want everyone to be able to track your movements. Please contact your MPP and get this legislation stopped in its current form. It is TOO open ended and changes MUST be made.

By Andy MJ
a.k.a The G.T.A Patriot

Big Brother and your privacy

—– more information below —–

We need to draw attention on the development of ‘enhanced’ driver’s licences (EDLs) by many provinces in advance of new US border crossing requirements coming into effect June 1, 2009. Ontario in particular is proceeding with its EDL via Bill 85 – Photo Card Act, 2008, now before the legislature.

The high-tech system Ontario and other provinces are planning could result in a “privacy nightmare.” He adds that the new cards “are a waste of money and establish a de facto national ID card in Canada,” which tramples on citizens’ civil liberties. In June, The Ontario government introduced the Photo Card Act.

http://www.idforum.ischool.utoronto.ca/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID

http://www.todaystrucking.com/news.cfm?intDocID=20562

Skinheads Supressmiss held over Obama death plot

By Deborah Charles

KKK and the US election

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two white supremacist skinheads were arrested in Tennessee over plans to go on a killing spree and eventually shoot Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, court documents showed on Monday.

Daniel Cowart and Paul Schlesselman were charged in a criminal complaint with making threats against a presidential candidate, illegal possession of a sawed-off shotgun and conspiracy to rob a gun dealer.

The plot did not appear to be very advanced or sophisticated, the court documents showed.

“We’re unsure of their ability or if they have the wherewithal to carry out any of their threats,” said a source close to the investigation.

Obama would be the first black president in U.S. history if he defeats Republican John McCain in the November 4 election. Concerns about Obama’s safety led the Secret Service to provide round-the-clock protection from early in his campaign.

The suspects met over the Internet about a month ago, said an affidavit filed by Brian Weaks, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

“The individuals began discussing going on a ‘killing spree’ that included killing 88 people and beheading 14 African Americans,” Weaks said in the affidavit.

The men stole guns from family members and also had a sawed-off shotgun. They planned to target a predominately black school, going state to state while robbing individuals and continuing to kill people, Weaks said in the affidavit.  Read More…

Canada’s shame and the deadly asbestos trade

Asbestos is a mineral with long, thin fibrous crystals. The word asbestos (῾ἀσβεστος) is derived from a Greek adjective meaning inextinguishable. The Greeks termed asbestos the miracle mineral because of its soft and pliant properties, as well as its ability to withstand heat.

Asbestos is known to have toxicity. The inhalation of toxic asbestos fibers can cause serious illnesses, including malignant mesothelioma, lung cancer, and asbestosis (also called pneumoconiosis). Since the mid 1980s, many uses of asbestos have been banned in many countries.

—–

Canada’s deadly trade in asbestos by Mark Bourrie Canada is starting work this summer on a billion dollar project to renovate its parliamentary buildings and cleanse them of asbestos, which has been found to cause cancer. The project will take six years to complete but, in the meantime, Canadian government agents are still pushing exports of the fibre. Canada even has gone so far as to argue a challenge at the World Trade Organization that a proposed French ban on asbestos imports would be an illegal trade practice. Despite recent warnings that asbestos was the cause of 500,000 cancer victims in western Europe alone, Canadian asbestos producers continue to promote and sell their fibre worldwide – especially to developing nations. Asbestos is used as a binder in cement, as insulation, and in anti-fire walls. It is also a potent carcinogen with a long, well-documented legacy of death. The danger comes when small asbestos fibres are released and inhaled by labourers. The fibres cause cancerous growths in the lungs, lung lining and abdomen but can take 20 years or more to manifest. In 1997, Canada exported 430,000 tonnes of asbestos – more than 96% of production – most of it to the developing world. Canada is the world’s second-largest exporter of asbestos after Russia. Union activists, who have visited India and other developing countries say, however, that the public relations efforts of the government and the asbestos industry are simply window-dressing to hide the fact that most people who work with the natural mineral fibre risk cancer. Critics of Canada’s asbestos exports say the country is exporting death to protect the profits of a handful of companies and the jobs of 1,600 miners. “What’s the difference between land mines and asbestos?” asks Dr. Barry Castleman, author of a respected book on the danger of asbestos. “A key difference, of course, is that Canada doesn’t export land mines.” At the heart of the issue is Canada’s own precarious political situation. All of the asbestos mines in Canada are in Quebec, a predominantly French-speaking province with a separatist government. Federal and provincial politicians are pushing asbestos exports to prove that they are successful at developing overseas markets, and are protective of Quebec workers. Critics of asbestos exports say the industry would probably be allowed to die if it was centred in any other part of the country. “Personally, I believe this is all about Quebec politics,” says Canadian Auto Workers Health and Safety director Cathy Walker. “The Canadian and Quebec governments are competing with one another to show just how prepared they all are to protect Quebec jobs.” The real costs will be borne by the developing world, she says. Walker just returned from India, where she saw unprotected workers slashing open bags of asbestos fibres. In places where the asbestos was being mixed into cement, clouds of the carcinogenic fibres swirled around workers. In Britain, the Cancer Research Campaign said in January that its study into the European asbestos-linked cancer epidemic should sound alarm bells everywhere, “particularly in the developing world where uncontrolled asbestos is still very common,” said CRC director Gordon McVie. Seven of Canada’s top 10 markets are Third World countries. Still, the Canadian government, the asbestos industry and lobby groups are trying to put a good face on the asbestos industry. Recently, diplomats stationed here were flown to asbestos- producing regions on an all-expense-paid first-class junket. Read more

Conversion the Scarborough RT to an LRT Not a Dead Issue according to reports

The possibility of converting the Scarborough RT to true LRT when its current fleet reaches the end of its life, instead of conversion to ICTS Mark-II, is still being considered by the TTC.

In the supplementary agendafor the October 23 TTC meeting, the status update on Transit City includes a section on the planned upgrading and extensions of the Scarborough RT. The following paragraph appears in the document:

The project team is currently re-visiting the option of converting the Scarborough RT from its current vehicle technology to light rail technology, when the current fleet of vehicles reaches the end of its service life.

Read more at the Toronto LRT Information Site

Website: http://lrt.daxack.ca/

Block the Vote

Will the GOP’s campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president?

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. & GREG PALAST

These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort to deter fraudulent voting. For Maez, the shock was especially acute: He is the supervisor of elections in Las Vegas.

Maez was not alone in being denied his right to vote. On Super Tuesday, one in nine Democrats who tried to cast ballots in New Mexico found their names missing from the registration lists. The numbers were even higher in precincts like Las Vegas, where nearly 20 percent of the county’s voters were absent from the rolls. With their status in limbo, the voters were forced to cast “provisional” ballots, which can be reviewed and discarded by election officials without explanation. On Super Tuesday, more than half of all provisional ballots cast were thrown out statewide.

This November, what happened to Maez will happen to hundreds of thousands of voters across the country. In state after state, Republican operatives — the party’s elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics — are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year’s race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP’s nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. “I don’t think the Democrats get it,” says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. “All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states.”

Read more

The mistake the Liberal elite will make by forcing out Dion

Dion

Well the election is over and the knives are already out calling for a new leader. It is strange? I do not remember anyone forcing out McGuinty, Harris, Harper, shall I go on. They were given a chance and look at them now! Dion is a smart and a decent person. He does care for our country. However what this really shows is the “arrogance of the Liberal elite in the party“. I really do not think that people like Bob Rae or Ignatieff (Iggy) ever really supported Dion. Look, I am not a full fan of Dion. However, how he was treated only minutes after loosing was disgraceful and just awful. It is obvious that this is not a united party. What the elite do not realize is that they are further alienating themselves. Canadians don’t like what they are seeing, Conservatives, Liberals and Social Democrats alike. I have spoken to many and despite what they think of Dion, Volpe and others are making themselves look like little evil “children of the corn”. I believe that Volpe ran for leadership and eventually put his support behind Bob Rae, so where are his allegiances?

Volpe

I think what is more damning is the fact that somehow Liberals felt that it was their right to lead Canada. Maybe Canadians just wanted to be a bit more conservative this time around. Maybe Canadians just liked Jack Layton a bit better. This does not mean that Dion needs to go. Not sure how many times Jack has given this a kick at the can, but again there is no one looking for blood. No analysis has been done, and already the vultures were waiting in the wings to pounce at the chance to consume Dion. In fact I think it is over for the Liberals anyway. They are out of touch now. Some in the party think that they are royalty and feel it is their inherit right to lead. Sadly, if they remove Dion in this fashion then they are just like any other politician, in the minds of many Canadians. You cannot trust them. Why would ANY Liberal leader trust thugs like this? It is their “god given right to lead and they cannot stand being on the sidelines”. My goodness, this is just ONE election! Ask other leaders how many times they got a kick at the can. I heard a Liberal on CBC totally destroy Dion. He seemed to have some “inherit wisdom given to him and no other from on high”. What it really sounded like was a poor looser, whining about how his “friends” lost a good job because of Dion. Maybe it was good that the Liberals lost then? This is not Kim Cambell and the 2 seats left in the Parliament after the PC’s lost. I lament, ever so slightly for the Liberals. Maybe it was better this way. Volpe and others have now truly destroyed themselves in Quebec. They will never be trusted anywhere else. You all played in Harper masterful game. Think about it? He calls an election and knew that there was decent in the party. The Liberals lost and now will probably lose badly in the next election. The Liberals, at the moment, are in disarray. It does not matter what Dion does now, because  he cannot win. If he stays then the party will splinter. If he leaves they are untrustworthy (with those types of friends, who needs enemies). it is over for the party. Volpe and others like him have ensured the Liberals slow decline and death. Heck, with friends like that, who needs enemies.

NOTE: What they should really think about is the fact that ALL parties had a decline in votes. Not a lot of Canadians really cared this time around.

By Andy MJ
a.k.a The G.T.A Patriot

Powell Endorsement of Obama

By Mark Halperin
Sunday, Oct. 19, 2008

In one of the most important symbolic moments of the general election, former Secretary of State Colin Powell announced today that he is endorsing Barack Obama for president. Making his decision public on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” the long-time fixture in Republican administrations effectively reinforced the sense of momentum Obama has been building, declaring the Senator from Illinois as a “transformational figure.” “I think that Senator Obama brings a fresh set of eyes, a fresh set of ideas to the table,” said Powell. “I think we need a generational change, and I think Senator Obama has captured the feelings of the young people of America, and is reaching out in a more diverse, inclusive way across our society.”

“I think that’s inappropriate. I understand what politics is about — I know how you can go after one another, and that’s good. But I think this goes too far, and I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow. It’s not what the American people are looking for,” he said.

Powell, a retired U.S. general and a Republican, was once seen as a possible presidential candidate himself.

Powell said he has some concerns about the direction of the Republican Party, adding that it has “moved more to the right than I would like to see it.”

Read more