November 25th, 2005
You are currently browsing the articles from Jay Currie written on November 25th, 2005.
If you go over to PJ Media, no longer OSM, but stuck for the moment with this:
as a logo, you can see what would make a lot of sense for the whole site happening in real time. Take a look at this “Blog Jam”. OK kids, I am not a brand consultant or media genius; but this is the first thing I have seen at PJ which is more interesting that what I can read on individual blogs.
Put this on your front page…call it “In the Other Corner” and come out fighting. Go inside with the groovy press feeds, blog links and other cool stuff. Develope some out of the office (and why the office??) talent to start reporting stories which will carry through in the long run; but right now go with your strength. Quick hits from big bloggers.
Once you have that up and running invite some guests. How is John Kerry enjoying jury duty? Would Bob Woodward like to talk about the fine grained editorial control enjoyed at MSM? And when they turn you down get some people we’d like to read like Kurzweil or Neal Stephenson or Peter Hitchens.
What PJ Media crashed on was what looked like a desperate bid for respectability. A stretch not to scare soccer mums or some such. Here’s the thing: good blogging is very scary. It turns pious orthodoxies on their heads. It looks for fact not wishes. It calls people idiots and worse. It is not corporate and it is not boring.
If the VCs want to make money they can do this bit of venture algebra - name bloggers bring traffic to the door, but the real money will come from people who have never heard of blogging or any of the featured blogs. These are the people who will suddenly discover an edgy, funny, serious and entirely fresh persective that they are not getting from MSM. Millions of people read blogs, tens of millions don’t - do the math.
Written by jay on November 25th, 2005 with 2 comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and blogging and media.
Kevin Brennan has a wee post up at Blogs Canada in which he notes, with disapproval, the regional aspects of Canadian politics,
our system incentivizes regionalism as the best way to build a political career, with the only counterbalance being the desire to sit in the Prime Minister’s office. It’s a powerful counterbalance, to be sure–most of the history of the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party has been shaped by it–but the effects on our national discourse have been corrosive
blogs canada
I comment,
And what, pray, is wrong with regionalism?
The entire idea of a federal state is, or should be, that different regions have different interests which are not effectively dealt with by a one size fits all central government. Many of the reasons the Fathers, in those none too sober 13 days in Charlottetown, created a federal nation was that religion, language, relative economic success (the Maritimes din’t want to fund the poor bumpkins in Upper Canada), culture and sheer distance militated against any important powers being given to the central government. And so they weren’t.
My nearly five year old asked me what the federal government did. Well, there is defence and foreign policy….ummm. Now the feds have systematically encroached upon the provinces’ powers using the golden carrot of the WWI finagled temporary income tax revenues. They have poked their nose into education and healthcare and all manner of other activities which are not, in fact, any of their business.
The myth of the utility of the central government is, to a large degree, a by-product of Trudeau’s mentor, FR Scott’s run ins with the excretable Maurice Duplesiss. The general idea was that provincial politics, producing as they did Duplesiss, Smallwood, Levesque, Aberhart, Douglas and Bennett pere, were too weird to be entrusted with the critical functions of the State such as healthcare and education. The brilliant solution to the minor problem of the apportionment of powers in 91 and 92 was the invention of tax point and the conditional transfer payment.
The rest is the last forty years of Canadian history.
Now, here’s the sad part, only the BQ is willing to suggest that the massive transfer of power away from the provinces to the central government has been a bad thing. All the rest of the time servers who purport to be politicians in the country take the primacy of the central government as Holy Writ.
The Liberal revel in it while the poor CPC is so intimidated by Central Canadian media that they cannot bring themselves to suggest that perhaps returning power and tax dollars to the provinces might be, er, not at all a bad idea. Which means the Tories are doomed to their current brilliant strategy of yelling (in a cuddley sort of a way) “Corrupt fag lovers” at the Liberals and wondering why they are only going to win fifty seats this time out.
It is possible, though not at all likely, that the Tories may, some day, realize that embracing regionalism and rejecting the Trudeaupian idea of the strong, benevolent, central government might actually win votes….Naw, never happen.
Written by jay on November 25th, 2005 with 3 comments.
Read more articles on CPC and Canadian Politics and Liberals and media.
OK, I agree with Ralph Klein’s analysis,
On Wednesday, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, an often harsh critic of the Liberal government, surprised onlookers when he said he expected Mr. Martin’s party to form the next government.
“If I were a betting man,” the Progressive Conservative Premier told reporters in response to questions about the coming election’s likely outcome.
“I would say there will be another minority. I wish that wouldn’t happen. … It’s a damn shame.”
He said that many voters, especially in Ontario, which has 106 seats in Parliament, probably would not back the Tories because Mr. Harper is seen as being “too much on the right.”
globe and mail
But if I were a Tory I’d be livid. About the best that can be said for this remark is that it came before the campaign rather than a week before the vote…Maybe the Tories could put up a fund to send Ralph to an island without a phone for the duration.
Written by jay on November 25th, 2005 with 2 comments.
Read more articles on CPC and Canadian Politics and Uncategorized.
While my American friends load the groaning boards for American Thanksgiving, Canadians are grabbing their swag bags and holding them open in the hopes that the Federal Liberals “spend your way to power”campaign will toss a little tucker their way.
Delightfully, the Liberals are going to be defeated in the House on a schedule of their chosing and before the Gormery Commission’s final Report is issued. While the Grits are screwed in Quebec, in the rest of the country they enjoy a comfrtable lead in the polls and a lead which is likely to widen over the campaign.
I expect it will widen because the Liberals will run a faultless campaign which will stress their fiscal probity, the overall health of the Canadian economy and have just a dash of the anti-Americanism - this time on trade - so beloved of the Toronto Star. Martin will point to the utterly dysfunctional Parliament and cry, “Canada deserves a Parliament that works.”
It is a fair bet that the Tories will run a campaign which suggests that the Liberals are corrupt scoundrels. To which Martin will reply that that was the old Liberal Party and that he’s been entirely exonerated by Gomery. By this point even Harper realizes that the anti-SSM routine will cost the Tories more seats than it wins; but that will not stop the dino faction from trotting it out with the Christmas pudding to ensure Harper spends a week or two off message trying to square the circle of opposition to SSM with a refusal to use the notwithstanding clause to abolish it. Other than that the Tories have no issues. The Grits have introduced measures to cut taxes, talk a good competition game and will buy special interests with the 10 billion dollar surplus.
In fact, the Tories are going to have to fight hard to keep the seats they have. In the Maritimes and British Columbia there are several seats which could go to either the Liberals or a resurgent NDP. While no one is particularily thrilled with Layton no one is scared of him and no one suspects him of having some dark “hidden agenda”.
When I have time I am going to do the seat analysis which leads to my prediction that Harper and the Tories will be lucky to hold fifty seats. Right now that is simple political instinct; however I think there is every chance that the combination of a strong Liberal campaign, the absence of any serious anti-Liberal issues, the inevidibility of dino Tories going off message and losing two to three weeks of voter attention to Christmas means there is effectively no chance for the Tories to even pull out a minority government position. And everything from there out is downhill. A full on rout is a very live possibility.
Written by jay on November 25th, 2005 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Canadian Politics and Uncategorized.