KNIVES ARE OUT IN LONDON

I posted this on Saturday over on the other site (The CAIRNS BLOG), but thought I would move it over here to the politics site since, well, absolutely nothing happened as you can tell.

(Saturday, Feb 23, late afternoon, around 5 p.m. Central time.)

Been listening to CFRB and it appears to be very bad news for John Tory at the PC convention in London. He's cancelled his media availability after the end of the vote and word is leaking out that the news for him is bad. They have also delayed the official announcement of the results. Never a good sign.

UPDATE: They are going to announce the results in two minutes.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Well, it's not as bad a result as I had feared moments ago but --- 66.87 per cent voted in favor of keeping Tory on.

Ouch. Joe Clark received 66.9 per cent, and decided it wasn't enough and called a convention. Tory says he will think things over, but this is not a very good result at all.


YET ANOTHER UPDATE (late evening): Now Tory says he will stay on after all.

It is now Monday, and all I have to say about what happened this weekend is that this is just nuts. How does Tory expect to keep a lid on all these dissidents?! The dissidents are not going to go away. In fact they are even more emboldened by this 2/3rds vote.

Yes, I've supported Tory before and had I been at the convention I would have voted no to a convention. But this is not a good result for the party at all. The Tory supporters and these dissidents threaten to tear the PCs apart for the next three-and-a-half years. I have said this before and I will say it again: the Ontario PCs are a mess.

BYE BYE FIDEL

Fidel Castro has resigned as president of Cuba.

I guess it would have been more fun if Fidel had died, or been toppled in a revolution, but the Cubans stuck in Miami will take it. It's party time in Miami for the Cubans. And look on the bright side -- once Castro dies, they can have a second party.

WISCONSIN RESULTS

It was another big night in the US primaries and Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton again. And should Hawaii fall into his corner as expected it will be 10 in a row for him. And of course John McCain won again. Results here.

BACK TO THE BALLOT BOX IN THE USA

Well, here we go again. More primaries and caucuses.

Barack Obama has won in Nebraska and in the state of Washington. Louisiana results coming.

Meanwhile Mike Huckabee has clobbered John McCain in Kansas. Hmmm -- for a guy who is supposed to have things close to wrapped up, McCain still has plenty of opposition.

WHERE THINGS STAND

Depending on who you talk to, Clinton has the delegate lead. Or Obama. Whatever. About all we know is that McCain has a big lead for the Republican nod.

Here's a look at where things are at after Super Tuesday, with nothing settled.

All I have to say is this is great news for political junkies, having a race this close. Keeps these Tuesday nights interesting, that's for sure.

ROMNEY: FINISHED?

Well, John McCain beat Mitt Romney in California and apparently tomorrow Romney's people are going to be having "frank discussions" about his campaign's future. That according to MSNBC. McCain also managed to eke out a win in Missouri over Huckabee, who's had a good night regardless.

Clinton won in California but Obama managed to win Connecticut and Missouri in tight races. That's it, I am going to bed.

Update - Romney has bowed out.

RESULTS COMING IN

I'm really enjoying watching the election primary results coming in from all over the United States. Reminds me of the heady days of 2004 when I was very, very active on the political scene during a big American presidential year and following that race very closely.

Right now Obama has won Georgia and Illinois and Clinton has won Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. I notice on the Republican side that Romney has only carried Massachussetts, and Huckabee has won in Arkansas and West Virginia and is currently leading in Georgia. McCain has won in New Jersey, Illinois and Delaware and is leading in a whole bunch of states.

I think that Huckabee stands to be the real winner on the Republican side today. He may not win the nomination but he's done well enough to probably secure a spot on the ticket. What was really interesting was what went down at the state convention in West Virginia. At that convention Romney had gone in there leading and stood to win the state, but McCain's folks made a deal with Huckabee's people to put Huckabee over the top to win the state's presidential nomination on the second ballot!! So that was really interesting today, and it sure looks as if Romney is tanking from coast to coast. Like I say, McCain pretty much has the GOP nod locked up, but I think he is going to need to look to the right wing of the party for a VP nominee and I think Huckabee has really helped himself with his showing, not just tonight but over the last several weeks.

It's still too early to call it on the Democratic side. In fact it may not even end tonight, it's that close on the delegate side right now. We'll see.

UPDATE: Massachusetts has now been called for Hillary Clinton.

SUPER TUESDAY COVERAGE

Here's where you can find all the live streaming coverage of Super Tuesday.

MSNBC's coverage can be found HERE.
CNN coverage is here.
Fox News coverage is here.
CBS News coverage is here.
And ABC News can be found here.

Live blog of election night to come. Stay tuned.

FROM THE SUPER BOWL TO SUPER TUESDAY

Just a reminder to everyone that the big Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses go tomorrow, and if we believe the prognosticators it could be a close race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the Democratic side, and a likely outright clinching win for John McCain tomorrow over Mitt Romney.

We get a lot of TV advertising from the US channels in Minnesota and they have been flooded with ads on the Democratic side for Obama. We've seen one Obama ad after another, encouraging people to go out to the caucuses. Of course, what's really funny are the ads for US Senate, especially the ones for unlikely candidate Al Franken. "I'm Al Franken, and I'm serious" about running for the Senate, he keeps on saying. It's almost as if the moment you see him on TV you think he'll make some wisecrack about George W. Bush or something like that. It's almost as if Michael Moore was running for the Senate.

I just had to throw that in. But hey, what do you expect from a state that once elected Jesse Ventura?