Election close call, Omar, Bob and move over Warren

Wow that was a close one:

With the NDP leading in the polls at the beginning of September, I started to prepare myself, for the very first time in my life, to vote for the NDP. Mulcair looked good enough for me, with some of the best lines about Harper's Government during most of his interviews, except that he would always add the phrase, "just like the liberals" to the end of it and I thought, if I'm one of those Harper hating, Liberal voters that you probably need to vote for you, why the hell are you insulting me with this partisan bullshit.


Anyway the polling numbers changed, the flighty rural Quebecois let their inner racism shine, Trudeau-mania 2 arrived and I didn't have to drink the orange cool aid or vote for the NDP, but it was close.

Omar is back in parliament:

Omar is Omar Alghara, my former MP for Mississauga Erindale whom I praised in a post back here. He was defeated by Bob Dechert an infamous con in 2008. Back then some no name NDP candidate ran a personal attack campaign against Omar, apparently their families had a feud. Anyway Omar lost to Dechert by 397 votes in 2008. Omar to his credit simply stated that not enough Liberals came out to vote.

The NDP hack regained some notoriety in 2011 when the writ was dropped, by announcing that he wouldn't run for the NDP again and was now supporting Stephen Harper. The NDP then searched high and low through out Mississauga a city of 700,000 and then the neighbouring city of Oakville with a population of 180,000 and came up with a candidate from Burlington, two cities away to run in Mississauga Erindale in 2011 and 2015. It is little wonder that the 905 remains purple.

Anyway Omar ran and won in Mississauga Centre, this time around and again gained some national press by using YouTube videos to get his message out. He was responsible for the Interview parody ad and the Change is coming Game of Thrones ad, although I still prefer the ones from 2011 I am Omar Alghara and How to pronounce his name.The media praised his videos claiming it is the way to communicate to the younger voter. Personally I think he will gain the respect of all voters, by continuing to respond to the people he represents as he did to me. Mississauga Centre should be well served.

And Bob Dechert is not

Bob Dechert is/was a lawyer (although I always thought he looked more like a car salesman) who ran for the conservatives in Mississauga ErinDale in 2004 and 2006, losing to liberals Carolyn Parrish and Omar respectively. He finally won his seat, as described above in 2008 and was then reelected in 2011. 

However Bob was not your ordinary Harper Con candidate, Bob has a history that should not be forgotten or in my opinion forgiven.

From his Wikipedia piece "Dechert formed the Blue Committee in 1994. The Blue Committee was a group of provincial conservatives, primarily from Ontario, who desired a more conservative Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, and wanted to work with the Reform Party of Canada. The Blue Committee was instrumental in the creation of the the United Alternative movement, the Canadian Alliance and ultimately the Conservative Party of Canada"

Although we should all remember the role Bob played in the destruction of our country, he will probably best be remembered for the national/international uproar he raised, when it was revealed in the fall of 2011 that, as a Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Justice he had an affair with a correspondent from China's news agency. The then head of CSIS gave an interview about politicians being approached by Chinese spies, articles appeared about CSIS laughing at his emails, Mercer did a rant (which I can't find) and even Ezra demanded his resignation on Sun TV, but Harper backed his fallen soldier and Dechert was quietly moved away from the limelight.

Bob lost his seat on October 15th to the liberal candidate Igra Khalid. Thank you Igra.

Oh one last thing on Bob, apparently he must have seen the end coming this year and the stress got to him. It is reported that he didn't like the reason that one of his constituents gave him for not voting conservative this time and decided to re-ring her door bell and kick at her door.

It looks good on you Bob.

And finally how I predicted the election results better than Warren

Way back in 2013, when Trudeau took over, I quit being a member the LPC. I had joined after the last/lost election when Rae took over because I thought it might help demonstrate that the party was not dead. When Trudeau arrived, I figured they didn't need me anymore, besides I hate joining groups, even though their convention was fun.

I did not always vote Liberal, I have voted for the Progressive Conservatives and the Marijuana Party which are now both dead. One killed by Harper and I guess Bob as stated above and the other by the Liberals, with Trudeau's legalization promise. Never went for the NDP, they seem to treat the ridings I've lived in as rural Quebec, but I digress...

By the summer of 2014 I spent many late hours, over at my FFIBS site doing crappy gifs, cartoons and amateurish videos. It was a way to handle my forced retirement and un-welcomed, accompanying  depression.

One night on a mixture of scotch and herb, which could be considered herb and liquefied herb I guess, I decided to show the differences between the styles of Trudeau and Harper. The original posting of the video was entitled "Trudeau is to Harper as Bubblicious is to Silly Putty" which struck me at the time to be hilarious, although not many people agreed.

Anyway the video could be considered a forecast of not only the results of the 2015 election but also a prediction of how they ran their campaigns. The first half is Trudeau and the last half Harper. It is just ripped off images and sound tracks, but if you have time you might enjoy.

Besides it makes me look like a god dammed psychic compared to Warren's early predictions.