Harper Majority Predicted, No Coalition here

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I predicted here a few months ago that there will be a spring election here in Canada. Well people, here we are in late March and we are into a spring election. I also predicted that we are going to have a Conservitive majority government after this election and right now i cannot see anything that will change my mind on this.

As i predicted before, the Harper conservitives would make the threat of a coalition their main weapon in this campaign and that is exactly what is happening. Mr. Ignatieff had one chance to deflect this right from the opening salvo and he dropped the ball. He refused to simply answer the question of would he try to form a coalition if the Conservitives came back with another minority government. He refused to deny it. He sputtered about some kind of nonsence and left it there. The door was wide open for Harper to walk through it, hell he could have driven a mac truck through it, and Harper came through that door hard. Now this issue will not go away. It is there. People will be reminded every day that Dion denied any coalition vehemently and 6 weeks later tried to take over. Iggy's problem is his signature was on that document. He indorsed it. Now he has to live with this throughout the entire campaign. I think it will do him in in this election.

I have heard some liberal commentators defend his endorsement stating he was the last one to sign on to this unholy mockery of democracy. I look at it like this. You have ten people standing around a table as a sheet is signed by all. You happen to be the last person to get the pen in your hand. So obviously you end up being the last person to sign the document. Please explain to me how that makes you non-culpable in that fiasco? Just because you were the last person to sign does not make you the most reluctant to sign. It just means you were the last person in line to get the pen in your hand. So sorry people, but that just don't fly with me.

The coalition stratagy will bring out all the conservitives to vote in this election. It will not bring out all the Liberals or all the NDP. This is why you can guarentee a Conservitive majority by the time this election is over and the dust settles. Hell, even liberal supporters don't believe Iggy now when he states he won't try to form a coalition if the Conservitives get another Minority. If you can't even convince your own supporters, how in the hell do you expect to win a campaign? You CAN'T. Conservitive Majority after May 02........

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My Filipina Wife Part#12, Money committment finished

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As you may remember from an earlier post here, a big part of understanding your Filipina Wife is knowing that she WILL be sending money home. The Philippines is a poor country. If you are married to a Filipina woman, she probably has a large family and a poor family. It is her responsability and her duty to help her family. As long as you know and understand this at the start of your life with her you can work with it.
I did a bit of research on the Philippine culture before i married my wife, so that i had a bit of an understanding of what i was getting myself into right from the start. So i understood up front right at the beginning what i would have to put up with in order to keep our house happy.
So shortly after my wife arrived here in Canada i made a deal with my wife. In order for her to send money home she would have to go to work. We could not afford to send anything living on my paycheck alone. She would have to get a job. After that she had two options. She could send home one paycheck per month (we are both on bi-weekly so we only get two checks each per month) and we keep the other for ourselves, or she could send home her pay for one month and we keep the next month, and just keep rotating. I asked her to pick one. And this was not dictated to her, we arrived at these choices after we sat down and talked about what she planned to do about money after she arrived here. I brought up the subjest to her about sending the money home. She was thinking about it but at the time was too shy to broach the subject with me in case i would get mad. She was soooo relieved when i brought up the subject. That's what doing a little research will do for you guy's.
On my part, i promised myself that as long as she didn't try changing the bargain without my knowledge then i would NEVER complain about her sending the money.
We ended up going with the one month sending home and one month keeping for our own expenses.
After you get that settled you have to decide on for how long this will go on for. We settled on three years. With her working we were going to hold off on her getting pregnant for three years and she could send her money home for that period, without any complaint from me. At the end of three years she would be done and we would start worrying about starting and taking care of our own family.

It has been approx 2 1/2 years for us and money was never an issue. But what happened is my wife got pregnant. So that threw a monkey wrench into the whole thing. We had to push the date up a bit for when we stopped sending money home. We decided to make up the difference of the lost 6 months to come by sending that balance home at christmas time. It worked for us as december was a 3 pay month for the both of us. With all of that we send one big check and we were done. Now it was up to her parents to do the best with it. The are starting a business with the final lump sum we sent. My wife is fully in agreement with me that we kept our agreement in sneding money and now we keep our agreement in not sending money. The family was made aware that unless it is an absolute emergency (medical only) we ware finished. They now have to make it on their own. She helped her family tremendously (she cleared $1100.00 per paycheck) over the past three years. Now we look after ourselves. We now have our own baby on the way that we have to start planning for. So far my wife has been in complete agreement. I think it helped greatly laying out some ground rules right from the beginning. And that was all because of a little bit of cultural research on my part before she came here. You HAVE to know what is important to your new spouse. Especially if she is from a different culture than you. Learn it up front guy's, and eliminate a LOT of issues before they can start. Because you can take it from me, money issues will ruin your marriage more than anything else. So learn what you can live with first, and THEN sit down and YOU bring up the subject with her as soon as she gets there. It will show her that you care enough about her and her worries beforehand and stop the troubles later.
Good luck with your life with your new Bride's, whichever culture they are from. But learn that culture guy's. Beforehand.

Tory Attack Ads? Get real

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All the Liberal lunatics are up in arms over what they are calling two Tory "attack" ads, portraying Mr. Ignatief as calling for an election and wanting to raise corporate taxes. Iggy seemed to be quite enthusiastic about both issues in his "yes,yes,yes" response.
This is what has everyone up in arms? This is what all the Liberal Media is calling terrible and totally untrue?
Question#1. Has Iggy called for an election during his mandate? What does the phrase "Mr. Harper, YOUR TIME IS UP" mean? He may not have said "yes,yes,yes" in exact words, but i would say that he has called for an election.
Question#2. Has Iggy said he wants to take away corporate tax cuts which will affect job creation? Many times this month actually i have heard Iggy on tv interviews and read in newspapers that Iggy WILL be voting against the budget and will campaign on reversing any corporate tax cuts the government enacts.

So the bottom line here everyone is this. Iggy may not have said the words "yes,yes,yes" as portrayed in the ads for those exact statements, but he HAS enthusiastically called for an election "Mr. Harper, YOUR TIME IS UP" and he has strongly stated that he wants any corporate tax cuts reversed, or he will vote against the upcoming budget. In other words he has said "yes,yes,yes" in other ways, but the meaning is still the same.

What i really find funny though with all the Liberal Media, is how these two ads can seem to them as so much worse than the Liberal type ad "Harper will put soldiers in our streets, with guns, in CANADA" we get here. Of course when the Liberals do it it is considered ok. Never mind how many times the Liberals have used "Stephen Harper has a HIDDEN Agenda". They have been using this for over 5 years now. They still use it. But again, i guess thats ok, no matter how untrue it is. I mean, it is Liberals saying it.

Scary????? Come on. Don't make me laugh.

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Riots in the Muslim World. How far will it spread?

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First it was Tunisia. The people had Finally had enough of the Dictator there and rose up in frustration, causing the ruler to flee.
Now it has spread to Egypt and Yemen. The Tunisian uprising was really a shocker. It was also a shock to see how quickly the ruler there gave in and fled the country.

In Egypt it is a little different. The ruling dictator there is a little more entrenched, with a better grasp on the police and army to back him up and keep him in place. But these uprisings can be funny beasts. Once something like this starts there is no telling where it will end. It all depends on the level of frustration the people being ruled feel. In Egypt it is starting to turn violent. People are dying, they are burning things. The police and army ore out in full force trying to restore order.
But the funny thing is, is that still the people are out each day, in defiance, protesting, with what looks like no end in site.
Once people get a taste of how change can happen, and get tired of being ruled by dictators, change WILL happen. And if the rulers of Egypt end up fleeing, then where will this stop?

Will these uprisings(in Muslim Ruled Countries) spread to the Arab world? If Egypt falls, can you see maybe Iran in the future? Maybe Saudia Arabia? Syria? Turkey? Maybe Lybia? These countries are all ruled by dictators, where freedom for the people is pretty much non-existant. Is this the backlash the arab world will end up dreading.

These could be very interesting times indeed if what happened in Tunisia happens in Egypt. This could very well be the straw that broke the camels back for the muslim world. Let Freedom speak.

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Bye Bye Ed. Stelmach announces resignation

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Ed Stelmach, Premier of Alberta, announced that for the sake of his Provincial Conservitive Party, he will not be running in the next election. He has basically resigned. Or promised to quit.
BYE BYE Ed. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. Good Ridence.
I have always voted conservitive in this country. Wether it be provincially or federally. ALWAYS. But Mr. Stelmach made it very very hard for me to continue to vote that way provincially. I despised how weak he was as a leader in government. He should never have been elected as premier to replace Ralph Klien. But he did and he was. The party was worse off because of it.
I was going to (and still may) vote "Wild Rose Party" come the next election. They are also a right wing party. Maybe it is time for a change here in Alberta. We will see. It all depends on who the nect conservitive leader (and Premier) will be. But for Steady Eddy, i say good ridence.

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Spring Election in Canada, Gauranteed....

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For those who feel otherwise let me say it here and now. There WILL be a spring election in Canada this year. Why? Well, that one is pretty easy. Mr. Harper has pretty much promised that in the next budget he will once again "take away" the party voting subsidies. The last time he tried this all three leaders of the oposition parties joined together to try to take power from the Government. That is what happens when you try to take away what some consider their "entitlements". When they were threatened with losing their free money it seemed that anything was agreeable to them.
In the budget due this March, expect Harper to again try to take away this "entitlement". And again watch the three oposition parties join together to bring down the government. It WILL happen. And we WILL have an election this spring because of it. Right now this looks like the Only issue that can unite the three oposition parties to bring the government down. Meddle with their perceived entitlements. There is no other issue out there that any of the oposition parties can agree on that is serious enough to vote against the government on. But mess with their entitlements? Then WATCH OUT.
That is how the government will fall, and that is what the next election will be about. How the three parties only want to protect their perceived "entitlements" to taxpayer funding. And THAT is why we will have a Majority Conservitive Government after this spring election.
Count on it.

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My Filipina Wife Part#11 Preparing for Baby, changes, and promises kept

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It's a new year (Happy new year all) and like all new years, it is a time to expect big changes in our lives. We all hope at the begining of each year that this year will be different for us than the last one. We all want changes (for the better of course) in the year ahead that will make the new year much differnet from the last.

With the new year now upon us, i can truely say that for us, changes are happening big time, and ALL for the better.

We now know that our biggest change will of course be an addition to the family. My wife is expecting to give birth somewhere around the second week of July. We won't know for another couple of weeks or more yet on whether it will be a boy or a girl, but we do know one thing for sure. We WILL be having a baby.

You all know how it feels to know you will be a dad soon (or a mom also) and i am now experiencing it myself. Just five short years ago i would never have believed i would ever be married and having children. Now here i am married for three years and now a baby due soon. My how life can change. And i couldn't be more overjoyed than i am for everything that has happened in the last three years.

Then there is the smaller things. I have not had a smoke now in three solid years. I promised my wife when i first visited her in the Philippines that i would quit smoking. You will know how hard that is to do if you ever tried to do it yourself. After smoking for over 30 years ( at least a pack a day) it was NO easy thing to do. I had tried many times to quit. Before this last time the longest i went was about four months, before i ended up starting again. It was not easy. But this last time i actually had a valid reason to do it. I think that is the biggest hurdle to trying to quit. You NEED to have a valid reason. Mine was a promise to my new wife that by the time ahe arrived here after receiving her landed immigrant card, i would no longer be smoking. What worked best for me was using the nicotine filled lausenges. That was the thing that finally worked for me. I have been smoke free now for the past three years. What a difference it has made for me. I would recommend everyone try their best to quit.

Then the wife really surprised me two weeks ago as i was reading the newspaper on a Sunday. I made comment on a sale price on a minivan in the paper, already turning the page and ready to forget it. And the wife makes a comment back that if thats a good price then maybe we should get it. Now that almost knocked me out of my chair. We had absolutely NO plans on getting a new car. We were actually looking at getting another 3 years out of the car we have now before we even looked at anything new. I guess now that we are having a baby your perspectives really can change. But i wasn't really expecting it to come from my wife. Not from the woman who will pinch every penny where possible.
But out it came. The next thing you know, i was down at the car lot that same afternoon, and i was driving a 2009 Dodge Grand Caravan 3 days later. And let me tell you, thats a big step up from the 2002 NEON i was driving. But i thing i can safely say we now have a "family" car.

The only thing left now is to find a house. We are currently renting an apartment. I think it's time to look at either moving up to renting a townhouse, or purchasing if possible.

Talk about changes for the new year hummm???/ New baby, new car, new home. I can safely say i am loving life.

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