No Prorogue! Thursday Round-up

Polls, polls, polls. Good grief, they even got me today. For the first time in my life, I was called by a political polling company. Ekos robo-called me and asked do I think the country is going in the right direction and which party would I vote for if elections were held tomorrow, both federal and provincial. Then a bunch of demographic questions. It was all very straightforward, no clues as to who is paying for it.

(Question for poll-geeks: Robo also asked: 'Of the people in your household, are you the one with the most recent birthday?' WTF are they going for there?)

Here Susan Delacourt blogs on recent polls (emphasis mine).

Ekos weighs in today with its findings, showing that yesterday's Strategic Counsel poll is no rogue poll. The two surveys are showing that the Conservatives are being punished in public-opinion terms for the shutdown of Parliament.

Journalists had been expecting this, because of a less-scientific survey method, based on comments to blogs and websites over the last week or so. The simple science is this: the nastier and more juvenile the comments, the more trouble the Conservatives are probably facing. In my occasional role here as comments moderator, I've realized that the appearance of certain lines of attack (some of them unpublishable) are a sure sign of panic. It's like that old rule of political reporting -- if a politician or a flak says to you "that's not a story," it probably is. And if critics are going to ferocious and personal lengths to tell you that no one cares about Parliament being shut down, well, you can probably figure that people do care. So keep those cards and letters coming -- by their shrillness, they will be measured.

Must be fun to call somebody -- not a woman, not a feminist -- shrill.

In related news, we reported back here on our gobsmackedness over sharing a revulsion over the prorogation with Connie Fournier of Free Dominion.

She started another thread on Janaury 8, titled 'Someone tell the CPC to stop it . . . it's embarrassing'.

She's referring to the pro-prorogue Facebook group.

I went to look at the facebook group called |I SUPPORT the Prorogation of Parliament and the Prime Minister of Canada", and it is really embarrassing.

First of all, the group has barely 500 members (compared to the 'anti' group which has around 100,000). But, a quick search of the members of the group shows that many of the members are not even real people. A lot of them have no friends, or they are just friends with one other person (usually another member of the group). They are simply shell characters that have nothing in their profiles but a bunch of groups they have joined.

I don't mean any disrespect to any of you who have joined this group because I know that some of my friends are, in fact, members.

But, the organizer of the group is obviously a fake identity being used by someone affiliated with the CPC, and they are doing such an amateurish job that they are probably hurting the cause more than they are helping it.

If they are going to hire someone to do social networking for them, they should hire someone who has a clue what they are doing. d'oh!

On January 13, she posted:

Today is it called: "I SUPPORT the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper".

They must have decided that having "prorogation" in the group title wasn't doing the trick.

They have 843 members now. I wonder if the name change will help them catch up with the "No" group. They've narrowed the gap to less than 182,000 now, anyway.

Go, Steve, go! Laughing

(Big City Lib is also amused by this.)

So, as a very newbie Facebook user, I was fooling around today and got into searching for friends and entered 'Connie Fournier'. Got her. Sent her a message. Something like: I saw how angry you are about the prorogation at FD, why doncha join the group?

She replied: *big grin* I joined several days ago.

My reply: Cool. Is this public knowledge?

Her: Yes. I put a banner for the No Prorogue site up at FD, which, by the way, is the easiest way to find out about rallies in your city/town.

High fives all round. Non-partisanship to the max!



In other other related news, membership growth is slowing at Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament, so it's time to bug your friends and relations again.

And finally, everyone should bookmark this excellent piece of work by Thor at Driving the Porcelain Bus on the many, many crimes against democracy, accountability, transparency, and decency by the ReformaTories. Thank you, Thor.