Conservative Leadership Race in Ontario

I saw a snippet of the Tory leadership debate on Global News on the weekend. It appeared to me that Frank Klees and Jim Flaherty were putting John Tory on the defensive on the issue of a tax credit for private schools.

The implication of how the debate was framed is that the electorate of the Conservative Party is well to the right side of the spectrum. This suggests that the combination of Flaherty and Klees may be able to combine to defeat Tory.

Blog links

I have created a list of links to other blogs that I regularly peruse in the column to the right of my posts. All have something to recommend them, but the one I admire the most is Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall, a young free lance journalist in Washington who writes primarily about American politics and foreign policy. He is able to articulate the essence of an emerging issue better than any of the other bloggers that I have so far encountered.

If you haven't look at this blog, I urge you to do so.

American politics – New Superstar & Swift Boat Smears

I have been taking the summer off but now I am back, and I want to focus on the U.S. election over the next few months.

So to begin: for those who missed the Democratic Convention, the highlight for me was the speech of Barack Obama, a State Senator from Illinois certain to be elected this fall as a U.S. Senator, who looks like an emerging political superstar. Watching his speech and seeing him live for the first time was like watching Wayne Gretzky take to the ice for the first time. He is that good. The speech transcript can be found here.

To find out more about this new star performer, from the May 31, 2004 issue of the New Yorker, read this profile.

On the Swift Boat smears much has been written by now, but I found the best summary was one titled, "Dirty Tricks, Patrician Style" on CBS.com.

Still the Swift Boat smears appear to be hurting Kerry.