Not making the "A" list?
Buzz Hargrove is upset that he (in the words of the CBC) has been removed from the prime ministers "most important people" list.
Right.
Perhaps Buzz is sufffering from delusions of grandure, that or the CBC is up to its old trick of reporting their perception as fact. Unless one or both of the aforementioned parties haven't noticed, not to many of the glitterati get a one-on-one with Stephen Harper. He gave short shrift to Bridgit Bardoe, told Sir Paul to get back, and turned down Pammy Anderson. To turn down the first two may suggest that the PM won't play for the paparrazi, but when your one of the few men in the known universe to decline an invite to have a private rendevous with the Anderson twins, to invoke yet another pun, speaks "volumes".
If Buzz's contention is true, not being on the A list, then one must also assume that list is pretty short.
Namely that it has three people on it, his wife Laureen and his two children Ben and Racheal, or that Harper doesn't like to play favorites...unlike the last resident of 24 Sussex.
Define the word nation.
Heard the media in Quebec couldn't resist asking Harper one of those "do you love your country" queries. Seems these guys still don't get it.
He wouldn't bite. Even tweeked the noses of the separatists by insisting that St Jean de Baptiste Day was around long before the PQ decided it should be a "national" hoilday.
Here's the money quote from Harper
“This Fete nationale was being celebrated long before the Quiet Revolution (in the 1960s) - and even before Confederation,”
I got a bit of a laugh over that, but something else kept nagging me about it in a way that wouldn't let me put it to rest.Then that old sense of deja vu hit me about two hours after I heard about this. Years back when the country was in the midst of its constitutional crisis and we where told in no uncertain terms that if we didn't give Quebec a special constitutional recognition the country was doomed. The elites feel over themselves to advocate for this. Dare say most if not intially half of the politicians out there where in a common front to get it signed, sealed and delivered. At first anyways, then folks started to read the blamed thing and as with most grand plans, the devil was in the details. One of those tasked with reviewing the document was a young Reform MP by the name of Stephen Harper.
Yeah, that Stephen Harper.
He picked through the Charlottetown Accord, and came back to his boss, Preston, to offer a cognitive oppostion to it. Most notably that its bad for the business of federalism to make one province more equal than the others.
And thats what it was about Harper's comment that stuck. He's going after the separatist threat in a way they can't counter.
All the symbolism they've co-opted from the federation is about to be reclaimed by Harper and Co. The startegy as best I can figure at this point, is to say that Quebec is part of Canada because without Canada, Quebec would not exist. Its the same logic he used when he came up with his private members bill C341. If you don't know what that was about, its the bill Dion co-opted to come up with the Clarity Act, though a watered down version thereof.
My best guess right now is that in the future session of parliament we should expect Harper to come up with an amendment to the Clarity Act to do three things.
- Put in those things that the liberals took out of C341 when they co-opted it, thereby reclaiming it as a conservative piece of legislation.
- Divide the liberals yet again.
- Most importantly, rankle the separatists.
Harper's plan I assume is pretty straight forward. Whatever Quebec wants out of the federation has only one condition. All the other provinces get the same no matter what it is.
One things for sure, if Harper is going to get Quebec to finally sign the constitution, you can bet he won't be saying anything about it.
My gut instinct says that he can achieve this without selling the farm.
I got my fingers crossed.
And the winner is
Stephen Harper.
linkIf you didn't know the race for Stornoway was a setup from the beginning, your doubts should be starting to go away.
So far the leadership debates (if you dare call them that) have been embarrassing, if not mortifying. Who except Mrs. Rae can take former NDP Premier Bob Rae seriously after what he did to Ontario; Scott Brison radiates sour grapes at being rejected for the Tory leadership; Joe Volpe is kaput after revelations that he had children contribute $5,000 to his campaign; Hedy Fry, Carolyn Bennett, Stephane Dion and Maurizio Bevilacqua are embarrassments, while Ken Dryden puts people to sleep and Kennedy is just nice looking.
Things that make you go "hmmmm?"
- The iamnotafraid gang did a name change to unitedwearetoronto because they where afraid they might lose some of the members of this "bandwagon" due to the name being confused with this years theme of Toronto's gay pride week.
- Joe Volpe is still in the liberal leadership
- Guite is sentenced and Chretien tells us that the issue is closed now, even though the government prosecutor says the investigation into Adscam is still on going.
- After all the wailing and gnashing of liberal teeth about how Enviroment Minister Rona Ambrose is dimantling all the enviroment programs the last liberal government implemented, when offered the chance to bring down the government over the enviroment, the liberals side with the conservatives.
- Dalton McGuinty in an effort to end the occupation at Caledonia, buys out the developer with an undisclosed amount. The occupiers still entrenched at the site, not only insist the land is theirs (read: refusal to end occupation, even though the crown has ordered them removed) but that they have further claims all the way up the Grand River.
- Ryerson gives an honourarium to a reknowned ethisist, only to say that if they knew about her opinions on certain subjects then they wouldn't have. These guys never heard of Google?
- The pundits now feel that Iggy is the liberals best hope at a shot at regaining the government side of the Commons. Odd however, that they also see that if they liberals embrace his leadership it would move their party further right of the conservatives. Thats not pragamatism, thats whoring oneself for power, but hey this is the liberal party they are talking about.
A chance to show how unafraid you are.
To those bloggers and heart on your sleeve liberals that want to show how unafraid you are of terrorists, I have a question.
Are you ready to condemn the terrorists of Caledonia with the same bravado?
The silence is deafening.
So much for multi-culturalism eh.
A message for the terrorists
Since the weekend events there's a plethoria of bloggers that have decided they would do the collective wearing of the heart on their sleeve by creating pdf's with the theme of "we are not afraid".
Uhm yeah, really bet that will put the fear of god into the heart of Osama....
So I'll join the fray with my own. Lets try this.
"You picked a fight with the wrong country"
Message is this, if the terrorists want to sap our resolve to fight the war on terror, plotting to blow up the CBC, hold MP's hostage, and threaten to cut the head of of our Prime Minister will have the exact opposite.
Rest assured our men and women in Afghanistan are after hearing the news ready to push all the way into the mountains of Pakistan if they have to rid the world of scum like you.
Which leads me to the second cliche to throw out for mass consumption.
" terrorists started this fight, we're going to end it."
nuff said.
Mr Beer and Popcorn thinks its not fair
Latest from the Hill Times.
linkDavid Herle, former campaign manager for the Liberal Party's last two electoral campaigns, told CBC Newsworld's Politics host Don Newman last week that the campaign financing rules for leadership campaigns should be changed because under the current rules in place, fundraising is an uphill battle. He argued that political parties rely on public financing for running election campaigns but leadership campaigns do not have any such arrangement. So, he said the law should be changed to give a reasonable opportunity to leadership candidates to raise money.
"Every candidate is really struggling for money in this campaign, some of them desperately, but everybody is really short of money and it creates a moral hazard and I think the law needs to be changed," said Mr. Herle.
I highlighted those two statements to point out why that they still haven't figured out that
- Why should tax payers foot the bill for any political campaign?
- What is a "moral hazard"?
Both of those statements premise Mr. Herle's belief that the law ought to be changed because its too hard for the liberals to get by.
News flash for a Davey. I can't go to the government to get cash to pay for my bills and I won't foresee any time soon that any financial institution will give me a loan in the hundreds of thousands to run a campaign.
Liberals just don't get it
If you get caught doing something that folks disapprove of and your response is to repay a political donation and use the defense that there is nothing wrong with what you did because "we broke no laws", doesn't it prove that your morals are based on the old premise "I am not my brother's keeper"?
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Joe Volpe.
See, its not about judging if your actions break any laws being used as the bench mark of ethical behaviour. Its about judging if your actions are ethical.
Yes Joe, you didn't break any laws, but what you did was wrong.
Trying to justify it makes you unfit to lead a federal party, much less aspire to be PM.
