Blue Like You

Archive for October 2nd, 2008

So far I’ve found two live-blogging sites:

National Post seems to be preparing for live-blogging on both the U.S. and Canadian debates.

Macleans will be covering the Canadian English Leadership debates, as they did last night with the French.

I’m sure there are plenty of blogs live-blogging as well.

If all else fails, try Stephen Taylor’s Debate Drinking Game.

Or you can weigh in here. No reason to be bored tonight if you are a political junkie. Cheers!

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BTW, my expectations for Stephane Dion tonight are very high. So if he doesn’t measure up, then he will lose!

(The preceding was Lame-Stream Media logic.)

And Matt promises to live-blog tonight!

Found on the Post website:

"…almost two-thirds of Canadian voters consider the $1.1-billion the federal government spends on CBC’s English and French services to be a good use of taxpayers’ money…."

Oh yeah. One small footnote:

The survey was commissioned by "Friends of Canadian Broadcasting".

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Update : And in case you missed it a few days ago, this is the latest installment of the Heather Mallick saga as far as I know.  Any tips welcome.

Really big update : CBC to look into anti-Harper clip made by reporter - Ottawa Citizen . (H/T to Sammy in comments)

Just a quick note here to join Steve janke and Hunter in congratulating PM Stephen Harper for his classy response to the French Debate question , "Can you say one good word about the person on your left?’

While all his opponents managed to blurt out a few platitudes that carried embedded zingers, Stephen Harper remained a gentleman. He congratulated Jack Layton for his good work behind the scenes on the residential school apology. Jack smiled afterwards and thanked him.

No ‘but’.

When Elizabeth May took her turn, the results were loathsome - like a scorpion hidden in a sugary treat. I don’t have the exact text but it ran something about him being a good Dad, as if that’s all she could manage to come up with. Then some reference to a man of principles but those principles being dangerous for the world his kids are in or something to that effect.

In any case, her performance was disgusting and mean-spirited. National Post has a few notes at the 8:58 mark, as does Macleans.

Kudos to Prime Minister Stephen Harper for not losing his cool, because if there was ever a time to do it, it was last night.

And to those people in MSM who say they find Elizabeth May so ‘charming’, I just don’t get it.

Last night’s French leadership debate was marred or enhanced (according to your political preference) for English-only viewers by the curious choice of translators and the confusing overlay of dialogue which was sometimes difficult to follow.

I wasn’t the only one noticing this. Many of my readers commented on it in the previous post , and even the Maclean’s live-blogging team seemed to find it amusing:

9:11 PM Kady O’Malley - Kady O’Malley: Dion should consider having this Scottish interpreter voice him fulltime….

9:21 PM Paul Wells - I would go so far as to say that, for viewers who understand French or like Dion’s Scottish interpreter, this format and these players make for better TV than the McCain-Obama debate last week….

9:41 PM Chris Selley - It’s going to be hard to go back to Dion’s real English voice. Translator sounds like your favourite uncle’s favourite professor.

By contrast, the voice of the translator chosen for Stephen Harper was …. (um would be the politically-correct term?)… rather un-masculine.

Was this deliberate?

I guess it didn’t much matter to the audience for whom the debate was intended.

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Update: National Post - Dion’s plan for the economy: He’s going to get a plan for the economy.

MDL - @8:52 pm - Charles Adler, Bob Rutherford etc. talking about the voice chosen for Stephen Harper and that it was so effeminate and was that done on purpose? Michael Harris actually made a reference to "Transvestite TV"!

So I wasn’t imagining things.