Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Day 24: The end of two full days of pre-debate carpet bombing


Losers
: This just in: a couple of Toronto area Liberal MPs have joined the Council of Canadians in warning our nation of the dangers of a re-mandated Harper government.

I'm kidding, of course. But after the recent display, yesterday and today, from Iggy and Rae, I wouldn't blame anyone for wondering what in the world is the Liberal party coming to. What with Rae arguing about a war we never participated in, and a plagiarized speech, as a key foreign policy plank (or at least that's what we were led to believe he was delivering) and Iggy, sounding like the president of the Toronto Stock Exchange, boring us into submission over the fact he's always right whenever he's not wrong, is frankly enough to even make Buzz Hardgrove twinge. And where's Stephane Dion when all this policy is being made on the fly? I know, I know!! Somewhere locked up in a basement in Gatineau anxiously awaiting another chance to sell the Green Shift. Yes, my friends, this is definitely not your father's Liberal party of Canada.

Loser: Canadian English debate watchers. I'm pretty sure yours truly isn't the only one torn between watching the English debate on Thursday and this doozy.

Loser: A lazy, understaffed (and underpaid) Opposition speech writers writer who copy and pasted. Glad to see the culprit did the right thing and owned up to his obvious mistake.

Policy flop: Atlantic Liberals for feeding us more of those old, statist regional development policies. Two that really made me quiver: "...more weeks of employment insurance for the seasonally unemployed" and "renewed funding to the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency."

Winner: Tina Fey. I think it's safe to say that because of her bang-on performance on Saturday Night Live this past weekend, we will likely be witness to one of the largest non-political viewing audiences ever for a Vice-Presidential debate. Strike that, I'll go out on a limb here and say the largest.

Local losers: People looking for an honest debate in Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe. You would think it should be possible to have a picnic of honest discussion around the issues before a single ant arrives, or cloud to dim the day. Unfortunately, for voters in MRD, those ants arrived earlier than anticipated (and they're looking to ruin it for everyone else with lies and ad hominems). Word of advice, don't be fooled by the title of the Youtube video, it should read "divide and conquer [politics] along ethnic and linguistic lines" [H/T spinks]. Go watch:




That pesky Beausejour ant!! lol Anyway, is it me, or are the New Brunswick Liberal candidates, particularly Brian Murphy, getting worried about their election chances on the 14th of October? I mean honestly, what other explanation is there for such a barrage of unfounded brutal attacks right after the unfavourable poll numbers were released nationally last week and over the weekend? Oh well, the next time they get worried, Brian and Dominic can always call Mr. Zed to get reassurance that the national scene doesn't really matter in our neck of the woods, especially when they're the ones not doing well on it. lol

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where is Dion?

did the Liberals have a leadership convention that we don't know about?

Rae got something current to complain about like the economy stupid...you know the Canadian economy that is still growing according to the latest figures.

Anonymous said...

Those are pretty harsh words by Dominic. He must be looking to replace Scott Brison as Atlantic Canada's most despised Liberal attack dog.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Get real BOB, it's not Harper's fault that the speech got doctored. He trusted his writer to prepare the speech for him. Or maybe he should have spent tax payers money to google the dialogue to make sure it wasn't someone else's. The writer resigned and admitted to his mistake. All of these pea knuckle comments from the Liberals are only making the Conservatives stronger.

Just goes to show you that they are really trying to keep their heads above water at whatever cost (trying to embarrass the PM). It's not going to fly. For goodness sake...it was 5 years ago. That's pathetic.

Anonymous said...

anonymous 10:11 ... that's fine, to a point, but we both know that the Tory attack dogs in their war room would have a TV commercial on now if it was Layton or Dion who got caught cheating on their assignment.

>deep male voiceover on commercial: " ... if he cheats on his speeches, how can we trust him with the country? Mr. Harper, we just can't trust you ..."<

Bottom line is that it was Steve's speech. One of his boys fell on his sword for the boss, but that doesn't diminish his personal responsibility.

Being the control freak that he is, I find it hard to believe that he hadn't seen Howard's earlier speech (two days earlier) and suggested to his boys that it was good content. ;-)

Anonymous said...

Opposition speech writers???????

nbt said...

It reads sorta plural-like jp, but it was intended to be singular. My bad.

nbt said...

Being the control freak that he is, I find it hard to believe that he hadn't seen Howard's earlier speech (two days earlier) and suggested to his boys that it was good content. ;-)

fred: a speech writer is only one part of the process in the OLO. If you remember, which I do, Harper had his chief of staff, Phil Murphy, and his Director of Communications, Geoff Norquay, resign after that period. So, in retrospect, they were still going through growing pains on how things worked in Ottawa. I think Harper's a lot more savvy on how the world works now, then he was then.

Anonymous said...

I'm not buying it nbt. Let’s consider this bald-faced plagarism for what it is—proof positive that Harper’s conservatism is a George Bush wannabe. He WOULD have had us wasting Canadian lives and resources in Iraq. I voted for Harper last time around and have no desire this time to see the hapless Dion in power. Nevertheless, as Harper’s pronouncements during the war in Lebanon clearly show, he remains a clueless sock puppet of American folly.

nbt said...

For the record, many view Jean Chretien's move not going into Iraq as heroic and historic, however, if they really knew the facts about how he starved the military of equipment and resources, then they would realize, he probably had no other option.