Your Morning Giggle

OTTAWA—With the paucity of Liberal candidates and looming economic troubles, there are some Liberal insiders dreaming of a Paul Martin return to power.

Didn't someone hand this guy his gold watch already?

Totally unsourced. Authored by Sheila Copps. Hmm. I sense somebody struggling with a slow news cycle.

Kinsella's Going With Iggy

He hasn't said anything for sure yet, but I can just freakin' sense it.

This is weird, man. Its like when Captain Picard joined The Borg.

Liberals Stuck With One Last Delegated Convention?

Gerry asks in the comments:

Surely the National Executive could make an executive decision on behalf of the membership to implement one-member, one-vote now.

Campbell Clark says surely not:

This point comes up every time there's a leadership race, and lots of people, Liberals and otherwise, agree with you. It's too late to change it this time because it is written into the Liberal Party constitution. (Although some argue they cannot really afford it.)

He also has this bit of good news:

The Liberals are not swimming in cash, but their debt is not debilitating either. They'll be able to finance reasonably ordinary operations and pay for the next election campaign

On Liberal Party Problems

Radwanski writes:

If they were serious about avoiding another few years of leadership-related infighting, the Liberals would revise their process - either with one of the more drastic steps I suggested last week, or by switching to a one-member, one-vote system. But in their frantic rush to replace Dion, it seems there's not enough time to ensure they don't elect another version of him.

Pretty common sense thus far. One reason I've never actually joined the Liberal party is because signing up is really just the first step in acquiring a say in the direction of the party--in, for example, getting an opportunity to help choose a leader. The second step is brown-nosing your way into the favor of some local riding poo-bah and getting selected as a delegate. And, even once you get to the convention, bizarre and archaic rules "bind" you to a candidate you may not personally support for a long stretch of voting.

And, oh yes, at every step the party wants to suck money out of you.

With the Tories, it was a 10$ charge and I was in (back in the 1990s). I am given to understand that the NDP process is also quite a bit less baroque. If the Libs want more money out of their Members then, paradoxically, they are going to have to treat them as something more than cash cows.

But what Radwanski doesn't seem to understand is that, at the 2006 Montreal convention the Party rejected one-member one-vote and decided to keep instead that three ring monkey show, that combination of bacchanal and smoke filled rooms, known as a delegated convention. So, as far as I can determine, another one more of these at least is unavoidable.

What should happen now, then, is that they should get the damn thing out of the way. And both a new leader and a series of party reforms--recommitting the Liberals to their grass roots and ditching the convention format--should emerge from the May meeting in Vancouver.

I would like something to be done sooner, but I don't see how that is possible.

Did Lyndon LaRouche Choose Lib Leader?

So I'm Googling around trying to dig up more information on Lyndon LaRouche, and discover that the Canadian headquarters of his youth movement is situated in Montreal. Furthermore, his followers used last November's Liberal Leadership convention as an opportunity to:

...determine whether or not partakers of the Liberal Leadership Convention shall partake in pushing the American puppets through the impeachment processor.

Six MLYM members, with the help of three "contacts" (whatever that might mean) infiltrated the convention and engaged in a number of "interventions".

The LaRouchians spent most of their time trying to get to the perceived front runners, Michael Ignatieff ("an asset of the currently dominant financier-oligarchy") and Bob Rae (backed by Power Corps, which has connections to the "Synarchist faction in France"). Iggy seems to have been especially put upon:

...LYM organizer Valerie Trudel marched straight through the ring of bodyguards protecting Ignatieff, grabbed his hand, drew his face close to her own, looked him squarely in the eyes, and demanded, "Do you think a broken nation can survive the financial collapse?"

Ignatieff, who had been all smiles, recoiled in shock. Trudel repeated, but this time with a powerful bel canto projection, "Do you think a broken nation can survive the financial collapse?" Ignatieff looked stunned, as did a great number of the sycophants who were ranged about him. At this point, the bodyguards converged on Trudel, grabbing her scarf and goonishly dragging her away from the still speechless candidate while she began calling out repeatedly, "The U.S. economy is collapsing!"

And later:

...the favored candidate, Ignatieff, became a distributor of the [MLYM] pamphlets when an unguarded table of self-promotion folders had inserted into them about twenty pamphlets.

However, it looks like these guys got through to most of the candidates at one point or another:

Candidate Stéphane Dion was also given a leaflet by Luc and told that his green agenda would not work. Dion said he would read the leaflet and that he would speak more with us in the future.

And it sounds like Bill Graham might have run a bit of interference:

Bill Graham, the interim leader of the party, was briefed several times by LYM members, receiving both the leaflet and Lyndon LaRouche's latest webcast pamphlet.

The young Larouchians claim to have distributed around 700 pamphlets by midweek. But the big wind-up was on the convention's final day:

On the final day of the convention, we brought our chorus into a crowded hallway through which all the attendees had to pass. For at least half an hour, and just after Dion had pulled slightly ahead of Ignatieff on the penultimate ballot, we sang several canons we had prepared such as the following, to the tune of "I should be envious?" by Haydn: "Goodbye, Mike Ignatieff: You're a nut, Your policies suck, You financier slut! Your lips are glued to Cheney's ass! Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, you puppet of the right! Goodbye!"

So does anyone who was there recall these guys?

PS. the "secret document" (linked to at the word "Later:") comes from the website of the Jewish Defense Organization. I can't totally vouch for it; nevertheless, it does look like something from within the LaRouche movement in that the antics described are quite similar to the first, "official" document, and the names mentioned match up with the names of Montreal chapter members.

PPS. The bel canto noted above refers to the voice technique ("beautiful singing"), which LaRouche thinks is the only rational method of singing. It is just possible, therefore, that his activists might have sang their complaints to the Liberal candidates.