Well, it's over...

... and surprisingly little has changed as far as the big picture goes. The Liberals got another shitkicking, yet the Tories remain scary to enough people (fortunately) that they weren't able to capitalize on it as much as they'd hoped. Some highlights:

Jack Harris took St. John's East with almost 75% of the vote! I suspect he's going to be a prominent figure in the party for some time to come. Especially nice given that Newfoundland has not traditionally been fertile ground for the NDP.

Elizabeth May failed to take Central Nova (or any other seat, for that matter). Whether she will live to fight again remains to be seen, but I suspect she will.

Once again, it took the Bloc Quebecois to save Canada from destruction. Happily, Thomas Mulcair held on to Outrement, which I believe makes him the first New Democrat to win a seat in Quebec in a general election. Contrary to what was said at a rally last week, though, he is not the first to win a seat in the province; Phil Edmonston did it in 1990. Unfortunately we didn't pick up any other seats in the province, though.

Disappointingly, Gerard Kennedy made one of the few Liberal gains this time round, at the expense of Peggy Nash. I suspect when the knives come out for Dion, one of them will be wielded by him.

Waterloo Region has turned solidly blue! This is a bit of a shock; although some had suggested that Karen Redman might be in trouble in Kitchener Centre, few could have predicted Andrew Telegdi's defeat in Kitchener-Waterloo. I'm happy to see Telegdi go, by the way, but not happy to see who has beaten him. And I would love to have seen his concession speech; I imagine him being bitter and angry.

The orange wave has swept northern Ontario, except for Kenora. This is not a surprise; the biggest surprise is that it hasn't happened for so long.

Shelly Glover slapped the cuffs on Ray Simard in St. Boniface. Niki Ashton has picked up Churchill, and can probably look forward to carrying her family dynasty for some time to come. She's one of those people who remind you of how little you have achieved (unless, of course, you were an MP by the age of 26).

Nettie Wiebe didn't quite make it in Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar. A pity; she'd have made a fine MP (and agriculture critic!) Better luck next time. Things turned out a lot better in Edmonton-Strathcona; let's hope that Linda Duncan represents the start of a trend rather than a fluke.

Turncoat Ujjal Dosanjh held onto his seat in Vancouver South. He bleated to the media about how evil the NDP is for actually daring to contest an election, and blames us for the Tories forming another government. Gee, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that his party sucks, could it? The turnout was low across the country (below 60%); many pundits are saying this is the result of prospective Liberal voters staying home. Maybe next time they'll actually find someone else to vote for? Like, say, the NDP?

So what does the future hold? Well, as hinted at above, I suspect that Dion is finished. I predict that by this time in 2011, Michael Ignatieff will be prime minister. You heard it here first.

Berlusconi's curious reversal

One of the curious things that happened yesterday was Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's announcement:

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said political leaders are discussing the idea of closing the world's financial markets while they ``rewrite the rules of international finance.''

``The idea of suspending the markets for the time it takes to rewrite the rules is being discussed,'' Berlusconi said today after a Cabinet meeting in Naples, Italy. A solution to the financial crisis ``can't just be for one country, or even just for Europe, but global.''

But within minutes, he retracted it:

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi reversed his comments that leaders are discussing closing the world's financial markets while they ``rewrite the rules of international finance.''

``I heard it on the radio,'' Berlusconi said about an hour after his initial comments his spokesman confirmed. ``The hypothesis wasn't put forward by any leader, including myself.''

An hour earlier, during a press conference in Naples following a Cabinet meeting, Berlusconi said, ``The idea of suspending the markets for the time it takes to rewrite the rules is being discussed.''

So WTF is going on? Did he actually hear it on the radio, or did he hear it from other world leaders who didn't expect him to open his big mouth?

I don't know, but Bad American as well as Canadian Silver Bug are of the opinion that it might be a good idea to stock up on supplies and cash this weekend.

On the other hand, maybe Berlusconi was just speculating wildly, or offering an opinion as to what he thinks should be done, and nothing will be done about it. We'll know soon enough I guess...

Layton, Duceppe defend Dion over interview

By now you've no doubt seen the CTV interview of Dion flubbing a question. Well, Layton and Duceppe, showing more decency than Harper could in one's wildest imagination, have come to his defense:

Party leaders spoke out on Friday to criticize Tory Leader Stephen Harper for using his second scrum so far of this election campaign to attack Liberal Leader Stephane Dion for looking confused when he struggled to understand a question in English by a TV interviewer.

Mr. Harper and his campaign team seized on the interview, claiming it proves the Liberal Leader isn't up to coping with the country's economic problems.

During a radio interview in Montreal Friday, Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe called Mr. Harper's comments a “low blow” that only serves to illustrate the “double standard” that endures when it comes to Canada's official languages.

Mr. Duceppe says Canadians demand that French political leaders speak English fluently, but that English-speaking leaders can get away with mangling French.

But he acknowledged that Mr. Dion should have answered the question.

"Nowadays, there is more pressure on Francophones to speak English well than there is on Anglophones to speak French well. I think there is a double standard. That being said, I believe that yesterday he had understood the question correctly, that it wasn't a language issue but a content issue. He didn't know what to say. And that is a whole other problem," Mr. Duceppe said.

NDP Leader Jack Layton also took a moment during a rally in Toronto on Friday to defend Mr. Dion.

“I suppose if I were someone who could honestly say I have never had trouble with a question, I might be able to make some kind of remark about it,” said Mr. Layton.

“This has been a long campaign, people are tired and questions are coming at you…And you know, my problem with Mr. Dion is his platform and his record of propping up Mr. Harper. I've got a big problem with that. I don't have any problem with some question that he struggled with because I've struggled with questions.”

Via NorthReport in this babble thread. Kudos to Jack and Gilles for doing the right thing.

And as adma points out in that same thread, you know the Tories are in trouble when the Toronto Sun turns against them:

How pathetic.

It's true Stephane Dion's repeated flubs of a relatively simple question from a CTV interviewer Thursday make him look silly. In the out-take now posted on YouTube the Liberal leader looks confused, almost dazed. He looks anything but prime ministerial.

But Stephen Harper? He looks worse.

Dion messed up in a taped interview. For this, the Conservative campaign machine went into overdrive? For this, the prime minister delayed his flight, held an extraordinary news conference, as his people bent over backwards to ensure that reporters would see the clip of funny Professor Dion making an ass of himself?

News flash to the country and the world: Dion's English is terrible!

Was anything else occurring in this country Thursday evening that might have occupied Harper's reputedly gi-normous tactical brain? Um ... let's see ... it'll come to us in a moment ... ah, yes. The global economy is collapsing. Banks around the world are petrified to lend money. Stock traders are in a blind panic. The entire world, to hear some financial experts tell it, is on the brink of another Great Depression.

But Harper's overriding goal Thursday evening was to heap mockery on his chief opponent's poor command of English. How tawdry, cheap and sad.

Audio expert says Cadman tape not altered

Nice to have this come out just before the election:

A tape recording at the centre of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's $3.5-million defamation suit against the Liberal party was not altered as the prime minister has claimed, a court-ordered analysis of the tape by Harper's own audio expert has found.

The key portion of the recorded interview of Harper by a B.C. journalist contains no splices, edits or alterations, a U.S. forensic audio expert has determined.

The results of the analysis were filed in Ontario Superior Court on Friday by lawyers for the Liberal party, despite attempts by Harper's lawyer to keep the opinion out of the court file until at least next week.

Harper sued the Liberals in the midst of a raging controversy earlier this year over claims in a book by B.C. author Tom Zytaruk that Conservatives offered late MP Chuck Cadman a $1-million life insurance policy in return for help defeating the minority Liberal government in 2005.

Thanks to oldgoat in this babble thread for the link. I just hope the story doesn't get lost in the shuffle.

Harper running deficit?

Mike Watkins thinks so:

Conservative leader Stephen Harper continues to claim that Canada is enjoying a surplus, yet his Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty this calendar year has racked up an operational deficit in six of the past seven reported months, totaling over $23 billion dollars, or $20.3 billion for this fiscal year to date. In either case these amounts are unprecedented during this decade.

So much for the Tories' superior financial management skills. It's been suggested that this may be the reason why they're delaying the release of this year's Canada Savings Bonds, because the interest rate that the bonds would have to pay would reflect things about the nation's finances that the Tories don't want public before next week's election is safely out of the way.

Strange bedfellows...

Against Islam, even Jews and Nazis can be friends:

Following the September 11th attacks on the United States, many members of the Jewish community, increasingly concerned with the threats (real and imagined) posed by radical Islam to the security of the United States and Israel took a sharp turn to the political right. Some switched party affiliations, declaring themselves "9/11 Republicans," and subsequently went on the offensive against their predominantly liberal and progressive coreligionists, whom they have accused (as Caroline Glick did in a Jerusalem Post op-ed last week) of placing concern for liberal issues, such as a woman's right to choose, over preserving the physical safety of their fellow Jews.

Shockingly, as this group, in the advancement of their security concerns and in their growing contempt for the Left, made increasingly strange bedfellows with those historically considered to be hostile towards Jewish interests (such as Evangelical Christians and free market capitalists), some Jews went even further, not only abandoning their commitments to traditional liberal Jewish values, but forming political alliances with outright antisemites.

In 2003, for example, an investigation by an European anti-racist group found that some Jews were collaborating with neo-Nazis in order to promote anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment online. Their interactions included sharing "best practices" for sending anonymous threats to mosques and other Islamic institutions.

Likewise, in 2006 a small but vocal Jewish contingent joined — to the chagrin of many in attendance — the annual conference of the White Nationalist group The American Renaissance, seeking to make common cause against the enemy purportedly shared in Islam. The event quickly devolved into a heated battle between the Jews and antisemites present. Interestingly, the debate resulted ultimately in The American Renaissance's director, Jared Taylor, issuing a statement proclaiming that Jews were a welcome part of their community.

Via Lord Palmerston in this babble thread.

Knock Out: CNBC Confirms Lehman CEO Punched at Gym

Expect more of this sort of thing in the near future:

It seems anxiety from the financial crisis is reaching new highs, but the tipping point for one individual came at the Lehman Brothers gym in the midst of the company’s collapse.

While former Lehman CEO Richard Fuld was testifying before the House Oversight Committee Oct. 6, CNBC reported he had been punched in the face at the Lehman Brothers gym after it was announced the firm was going bankrupt. CNBC and Vanity Fair contributor Vicki Ward said Fuld was attacked at the gym on a Sunday following the bankruptcy.

“Frankly, I sat there and listened and I’m with the guy who apparently, the day before Barclays announced they were coming in and Lehman had already filed for bankruptcy, went over to him in the gym and punched him because that’s how I feel when I, you know, when I watched that,” Ward said on the Oct. 6 “Power Lunch.” “I didn’t think he was contrite at all, I thought he was arrogant.”

From here, via Doug in this babble thread.