Yeah. Clintons bombed Serbia in 1999, so I'm not sure there's a candidate that wouldn't have been more popular than Hillary.
JudasMyGuide
The resident reactionary recalcitrant
That's creepy as fuck.
Black Wizard
Pleb Hunter
Ah yes. They are very popular in Kosovo though, and even have streets named after them.
The Australian government could potentially fall after 5 of their lawmakers have been ruled ineligible to serve in Parliament because they have dual citizenship. Wow.
Things seem to have been fraught in the Australian political scene lately over the same sex marriage survey/poll of the electorate. I had no idea this was such a contentious issue in Australia, but it looks like it's bringing other issues and division in political opinion to the fore.
Black Wizard
Pleb Hunter
I'm watching Robert Mugabe's address to Zimbabwe and he just said that "our economy...which is going through a bad patch". Understatement of the year!
Magnus
Pica Serdica
Speaking of which, today it's ten years since Ian Smith passed away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Smith
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Smith
Mugabe has resigned.
Black Wizard
Pleb Hunter
Great news, but I don't think that we've heard the last of him or that the next guy will be some sort of messiah.
Magnus
Pica Serdica
Nah, just a Crocodile apparently.
The last six weeks in my province of Ontario have been some of the craziest I've ever seen in Canadian politics. Sure, it doesn't compare to a racist orange winning the US presidency, but what does?
Like most provinces in Canada, Ontario has three main political parties - the Liberal Party (centre-left), the New Democratic Party (left), and the Progressive Conservative party (centre-right). Again, like most parts of Canada, the combined vote for the Liberals and NDP generally outweighs that of the PC party, which means the PCs only win when a) they have a united front, and b) the Liberals (the more powerful party) are weak, losing much of their more left supporters to the NDP. The PCs haven't made government in Ontario in like 15 years; the last PC premier (which is to a province as Prime Minister is to the country) was despised when he left office.
Seven weeks ago, the Liberal Party looked sure to lose. Their current leader, and the Premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne, is the most hated politician in Canada, with approval ratings in the 12-15% range. Some of her unpopularity comes from her being a cabinet minister for the previous (Liberal) cabinet that was embroiled in several scandals. Some of it comes from certain major issues in the province (IE power rates going up a hell of a lot in the last 5-6 years). Some of it comes from her being an older gay woman and there's always people who hate those words. Like Hillary, she's often described as shrill and with other, less printable epithets. Personally, I think she's a skilled politician but a fairly poor leader, though I am generally happy with the Ontario I live in.
It bears noting that in 2014, Wynne was expected to lose as well. Her primary rival from the PCs was a chap named Tim Hudak, who promised to reduce public sector jobs in Ontario by 100,000 (in a province of 13 million), which would somehow create a million jobs. The rest of the plan was never explained. It was a drastic plan and, even though Wynne had popularity numbers in the 20s, at the time, she ended up winning a majority government, where she had started with a minority. The PCs had snatched defeat from the jaws of certain victory by picking a leader who led with the wrong plan for Ontario (as judged by the voters).
Anyway, seven weeks ago, the PC party was run by Patrick Brown, a more obscure member who had come from behind to win the most recent leadership race. His platform was a centre-right set of promises that included a revenue-neutral carbon tax and a few fairly easy things. Most social conservative issues were ignored, and it looked like he was going to try to eat the Liberals support from the centre; presumably, the NDP would have tacked closer to the centre as well, to try to consume the Liberals from that direction, taking advantage of Kathleen Wynne's historic unpopularity. In provinces where the NDP has won government, this has been their traditional method of gaining power.
Then #metoo happened. The CTV ran a story about two women accusing Brown of trying to ply them with alcohol for sexual favours. Originally they reported one of the women was below the legal drinking age; they edited the story later after it turned out that detail was not true. Brown called a press conference at 1 AM to dispute the charges; by the time I woke up the next day, he had resigned and the PC party was suddenly in turmoil. Although there is a general election in June, the party decided to have a leadership race, with the outcome to be announced yesterday. The race attracted a very interesting cadre of people - Tanya Granic Allen, a staunch social conservative who wants to outlaw abortion in Ontario and remove the new sex education curriculum that dared to mention that some people might be gay; Christine Elliott, a longtime politician and husband of the former Conservative federal finance minister who passed away a few years ago; Caroline Mulroney, daughter of former PC Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (and sister of tv celebrity Ben Mulroney) who has never held elected office; and Doug Ford, brother of deceased Toronto mayor Rob Ford. Yes, the crack mayor of Toronto's brother.
Even though four months before a major election is a bad time for the PCs to show disunity, the leadership campaign got very snippy at times. At one point Patrick Brown declared himself eligible, and then turned around and quit after two or three days when he realized that he was about as welcome as an open flame on the Hindenburg. That being said, it wasn't the nastiest one I'd ever seen - until yesterday. I had no plans and I put on the CBC's coverage of the PC convention where the leader was to be announced. It was expected to go quickly - coverage started at 1, keynote speakers at 2, and results at 3, 3:15 at the latest. You're probably already guessing it didn't go that way, and you're right.
The PCs decided to do their nomination by having an online vote, but this wasn't a straight vote where one member gets one vote. Oh no, this was going to be more interesting and complex. First, each member would receive a ranked ballot. They could assign a preference to each of their candidates; once one candidate was eliminated, your ballot would go to the second choice, and so on. But that's not all that happened, of course. They also decided to assign each ballot to an area in Ontario matching the riding divisions (in Canada, Members of Parliament, or in this case, Members of Provincial Parliament, are elected from a geographic area called a riding). Each riding would be given 100 points to be divided amongst the results in that riding proportionally, unless a riding had less than 100 votes within it, at which point the riding would be assigned as many points as votes were received. Sounds confusing enough?
The voting was supposed to end on noon March 9th. However, over 75,000 people registered to vote; 64,000 votes were cast and many people complained of irregularities in the process. There was a court challenge from a party member to extend the vote but it had been denied. Irregularities included people being registered in the wrong riding, people who never got their PIN to vote online, and people who got the PIN but couldn't log in. Heck, during the convention, the former PC premier said even his daughter never got a chance to vote, but that was on TV.
At 2 PM, the keynote speaker, Jason Kenney of the United Conservative Party of Alberta, came on stage and talked about how important it was for the PCs to be unified following the convention. Vic Fedeli, the interim PC leader, did the same. And everyone expected an announcement of the first round's results at 3. 3 came and went. 3:15 came and went. And then at 3:30 CBC reported that all four candidates had left the floor, called lawyers to the building from elsewhere in Ontario, and were locked in a room with no cell phones. Yep, shit had hit the fan. Over the next 4 hours details emerged. It turns out that a computer program did not directly report the winner, but that all 64,000 votes had been printed off and counted by 12 counting machines, and one candidate was challenging the validity of those reports. It also turned out that one candidate had won the popular vote but lost in the odd "electoral college" system. At 7 PM, the party came out and told the members of the convention to go home because they no longer had the room booked.
At 10 PM, at a hastily organized press conference, the party announced Doug Ford had won. Christine Elliott was nowhere to be found and soon issued a press release saying that due to irregularities in the vote, she was not conceding, and that she was going to fight this out. She declared she had won the popular vote and is willing to keep pulling the party with her to find an end. Doug Ford, of course, is a populist, and of the two the worst choice for leader of the PC party. But if the PCs had united immediately they had a good chance. Now, it seems like this drama will split the party in the worst way and once again, the PCs will snatch defeat from the jaws of certain victory.
Like most provinces in Canada, Ontario has three main political parties - the Liberal Party (centre-left), the New Democratic Party (left), and the Progressive Conservative party (centre-right). Again, like most parts of Canada, the combined vote for the Liberals and NDP generally outweighs that of the PC party, which means the PCs only win when a) they have a united front, and b) the Liberals (the more powerful party) are weak, losing much of their more left supporters to the NDP. The PCs haven't made government in Ontario in like 15 years; the last PC premier (which is to a province as Prime Minister is to the country) was despised when he left office.
Seven weeks ago, the Liberal Party looked sure to lose. Their current leader, and the Premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne, is the most hated politician in Canada, with approval ratings in the 12-15% range. Some of her unpopularity comes from her being a cabinet minister for the previous (Liberal) cabinet that was embroiled in several scandals. Some of it comes from certain major issues in the province (IE power rates going up a hell of a lot in the last 5-6 years). Some of it comes from her being an older gay woman and there's always people who hate those words. Like Hillary, she's often described as shrill and with other, less printable epithets. Personally, I think she's a skilled politician but a fairly poor leader, though I am generally happy with the Ontario I live in.
It bears noting that in 2014, Wynne was expected to lose as well. Her primary rival from the PCs was a chap named Tim Hudak, who promised to reduce public sector jobs in Ontario by 100,000 (in a province of 13 million), which would somehow create a million jobs. The rest of the plan was never explained. It was a drastic plan and, even though Wynne had popularity numbers in the 20s, at the time, she ended up winning a majority government, where she had started with a minority. The PCs had snatched defeat from the jaws of certain victory by picking a leader who led with the wrong plan for Ontario (as judged by the voters).
Anyway, seven weeks ago, the PC party was run by Patrick Brown, a more obscure member who had come from behind to win the most recent leadership race. His platform was a centre-right set of promises that included a revenue-neutral carbon tax and a few fairly easy things. Most social conservative issues were ignored, and it looked like he was going to try to eat the Liberals support from the centre; presumably, the NDP would have tacked closer to the centre as well, to try to consume the Liberals from that direction, taking advantage of Kathleen Wynne's historic unpopularity. In provinces where the NDP has won government, this has been their traditional method of gaining power.
Then #metoo happened. The CTV ran a story about two women accusing Brown of trying to ply them with alcohol for sexual favours. Originally they reported one of the women was below the legal drinking age; they edited the story later after it turned out that detail was not true. Brown called a press conference at 1 AM to dispute the charges; by the time I woke up the next day, he had resigned and the PC party was suddenly in turmoil. Although there is a general election in June, the party decided to have a leadership race, with the outcome to be announced yesterday. The race attracted a very interesting cadre of people - Tanya Granic Allen, a staunch social conservative who wants to outlaw abortion in Ontario and remove the new sex education curriculum that dared to mention that some people might be gay; Christine Elliott, a longtime politician and husband of the former Conservative federal finance minister who passed away a few years ago; Caroline Mulroney, daughter of former PC Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (and sister of tv celebrity Ben Mulroney) who has never held elected office; and Doug Ford, brother of deceased Toronto mayor Rob Ford. Yes, the crack mayor of Toronto's brother.
Even though four months before a major election is a bad time for the PCs to show disunity, the leadership campaign got very snippy at times. At one point Patrick Brown declared himself eligible, and then turned around and quit after two or three days when he realized that he was about as welcome as an open flame on the Hindenburg. That being said, it wasn't the nastiest one I'd ever seen - until yesterday. I had no plans and I put on the CBC's coverage of the PC convention where the leader was to be announced. It was expected to go quickly - coverage started at 1, keynote speakers at 2, and results at 3, 3:15 at the latest. You're probably already guessing it didn't go that way, and you're right.
The PCs decided to do their nomination by having an online vote, but this wasn't a straight vote where one member gets one vote. Oh no, this was going to be more interesting and complex. First, each member would receive a ranked ballot. They could assign a preference to each of their candidates; once one candidate was eliminated, your ballot would go to the second choice, and so on. But that's not all that happened, of course. They also decided to assign each ballot to an area in Ontario matching the riding divisions (in Canada, Members of Parliament, or in this case, Members of Provincial Parliament, are elected from a geographic area called a riding). Each riding would be given 100 points to be divided amongst the results in that riding proportionally, unless a riding had less than 100 votes within it, at which point the riding would be assigned as many points as votes were received. Sounds confusing enough?
The voting was supposed to end on noon March 9th. However, over 75,000 people registered to vote; 64,000 votes were cast and many people complained of irregularities in the process. There was a court challenge from a party member to extend the vote but it had been denied. Irregularities included people being registered in the wrong riding, people who never got their PIN to vote online, and people who got the PIN but couldn't log in. Heck, during the convention, the former PC premier said even his daughter never got a chance to vote, but that was on TV.
At 2 PM, the keynote speaker, Jason Kenney of the United Conservative Party of Alberta, came on stage and talked about how important it was for the PCs to be unified following the convention. Vic Fedeli, the interim PC leader, did the same. And everyone expected an announcement of the first round's results at 3. 3 came and went. 3:15 came and went. And then at 3:30 CBC reported that all four candidates had left the floor, called lawyers to the building from elsewhere in Ontario, and were locked in a room with no cell phones. Yep, shit had hit the fan. Over the next 4 hours details emerged. It turns out that a computer program did not directly report the winner, but that all 64,000 votes had been printed off and counted by 12 counting machines, and one candidate was challenging the validity of those reports. It also turned out that one candidate had won the popular vote but lost in the odd "electoral college" system. At 7 PM, the party came out and told the members of the convention to go home because they no longer had the room booked.
At 10 PM, at a hastily organized press conference, the party announced Doug Ford had won. Christine Elliott was nowhere to be found and soon issued a press release saying that due to irregularities in the vote, she was not conceding, and that she was going to fight this out. She declared she had won the popular vote and is willing to keep pulling the party with her to find an end. Doug Ford, of course, is a populist, and of the two the worst choice for leader of the PC party. But if the PCs had united immediately they had a good chance. Now, it seems like this drama will split the party in the worst way and once again, the PCs will snatch defeat from the jaws of certain victory.
Black Bart
Ancient Mariner
D
Deleted member 7164
Guest
Ah, the healthy humour of an honest tommy.
Black Wizard
Pleb Hunter
Excited?
I wonder who wins....
D
Deleted member 7164
Guest
Don't you have betting on all sorts of stuff in UK? I recall I've read that some guy put money on his newborn grandson playing for Liverpool(?), which came true, and there was a bet before pope Francis. My question is, what's the coefficient for Erdogan winning Turkey or Putin winning Russia or Xi winning China, is it straight 1.0 or can you actually make some money on that safe bet?