“His answer is, in French and in English, ‘I don’t have a plan. Yes, I criticized the prime minister, but I don’t actually have a plan other than a carbon tax. Please elect me so I can develop one.”‘
But spare some empathy for Mr. Dion. It’s the end of a grueling campaign, the man has admitted to a hearing impairment and the question was open to interpretation while being phrased in Mr. Dion’s second language.
The question was not really that hard to understand. Sure, it was bit more complicated than “What’s your favourite colour?” or “What’s the average air speed of an African swallow?”
Andrew (no apparent relation to Harry) Potter over at MacLean’s wants to shoot the messenger:
This is worse than the Chretien face-paralysis attack ad. CTV just won Dion the election.
Damn. I knew they had an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, but this kind of bullcrap is ridiculous:
Two campaigners for Windsor West Liberal candidate Larry Horwitz were arrested on Tuesday after they shoved pamphlets in the faces of people at a grocery store.
[…]
According to the police report, a store employee noticed one of the campaigners push a pamphlet so aggressively at a customer that the customer snatched it and threw it back.
When store staff asked the campaigners to leave, they refused.
“They said, ‘No, I have a right to stay here,'” McNorton said.
Police were called — but even after the officers arrived, the campaigners didn’t relent.
“Our guys approached them and asked them to leave the premises, as their activity was disrupting the business and the management requested that they leave,” McNorton said.
“They responded by shoving a piece of paper in the officer’s face.”
The campaigners reportedly said they were protected by the Canada Elections Act, and that only the RCMP could stop them from campaigning.
[…]
“Common courtesy is if someone is not interested in what you’re trying to tell them, you just leave them alone,” McNorton said.
“They felt that they had a right to be able to do what they wanted in relation to promoting the election, even though it was on private property. And that’s the key issue here — It was on private property. The store has a right to do business.”
Yup, listen to us whether you want to or not, the law means what we want it to mean, whatever we want to do, yadda yadda yadda.
Last word:
University of Windsor political science professor Lydia Miljan said the incident “destroys” Horwitz’s public image, and she was surprised his campaigners would adopt such tactics.
“It’s just bad optics to be annoying people when you want their vote,” she said. “It sounds like they’re awfully desperate.”
As more and more people are finding out about The Absent-minded Professor®’s little deer-in-the-headlights moment on CTV the other day (even the Red Star couldn’t clam up about it), they are starting to get a really creepy feeling at the thought of this guy running the national till.
As if that wasn’t good enough, little Grit tadpole Geoff Regan had a chance to put the whole thing to bed and totally blew it. He could have said something like, “yeah, that was embarrassing; but the poor guy’s jet-lagged stupid these days, so what can you do, eh?” That could have been the end of it right there. People would have just assumed that Dion’s all tuckered out from dashing back and forth across the country for a month now and just had himself a brainfart. Could have happened to anybody.
But nope.
When Duff pointed out that this was reminiscent of Bob Stanfield and the football (best analogy so far, BTW), Regan fell back on the favourite HypoGrit tactic of ad hominem faux indignation, so beloved by them whenever they’ve been caught piddling on the rug and don’t think they should have their noses rubbed in it.
“Mister Dion has mentioned before that he has a hearing problem and that’s clearly what happened here,” he harrumphed. “I don’t think that we should spend a lot of time talking about someone’s physical impairment.”
When Duff quizzes him if it’s an impairment or just “a failure to comprehend,” Regan first sulks in silence, then tries to play dumb, and finally just goes all to hell in a handbasket amidst trying to deny that he just said what he just said when Duff calls bullshit on him.
… wants to be Prime Minister. He actually thinks that he somehow deserves your vote. 😯
For those of you that just come here but not to the BT website: that’s where I found this (thanks guys).
You know, I actually don’t know how to go with this one. Really, I don’t. Half of me wants to wallow in partisan glee at his idiocy, but the other half of me actually feels… what the hell is that, anyway? Sympathy???
Any fool knows I’ve never had any love for Dion, not by a long shot. But the poor bastard just seems so… utterly out of his depth here that I almost can’t help but feel sorry for him. Yes, I know; I’m a poor excuse for a partisan SOB. Tough.
But I gotta tell ya, after seeing this, the thought of this guy holding the levers gives me the willies now more then ever (and I didn’t think that was possible)…
And he wants us to trust him to steer our economy through what is likely an upcoming global recession. God help us…
If anybody out there is still wondering whether or not Stephen Harper is the best man to guide the economy through the coming uncertainty, just watch this.
Yes, I know it’s the Ceeb, but it’s still good. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut some days, right?
Now, I’ll be the first one to admit that Harper (surprise, surprise) doesn’t come off as even remotely warm and fuzzy here. Mansbridge also hits him with a few curve balls as well but the PM handles them damned well. (more…)
I thought that these clowns were owned by the Toronto friggin’ Star, fer chrissakes!
Of all the things that I thought I’d see before this campaign was done (and my mind goes in some startling directions at times), this didn’t even come close to making the list. Not even remotely.
I guess this is the part where I tell you what the hell I’m so stunned about, huh?
Okay, here we go. Everybody and their dog knows that newspapers aren’t really neutral in their political leanings; that’s just the nature of the beast. No, I’m not bellyaching about it. Newspapers are private companies and their owners can run them as they wish. If the rest of us don’t like it, we don’t buy their papers and they go tits-up. It’s as easy as that.
Papers frequently come out on one side or another of an election, usually determined by the owners of the paper (see the note above), which is why you can usually make a safe bet on who they’re going to be endorsing. This is why I was shocked as shit to find out that The Record — yes, The Record; as in “The Waterloo Record” — has come out and endorsed STEPHEN HARPER FOR PM!!
No, I am NOT making this shit up…
In contrast to the Liberals, the Conservatives, for all their failings, offer a safer, more credible approach to the economy. Months ago, aware of the looming crisis in the American economy, the Conservatives took action. They cut taxes across the board, to corporations, yes, but to ordinary Canadians too. We believe those cuts have helped buoy the Canadian economy. And while Harper was late in releasing his platform, it appears to be a prudent plan, offering targeted support for specific sectors of the economy.
There is reassurance, too, in Harper’s record over 2 1/2 years in power. He reached a welcome compromise with the Liberals so that Canadian troops can help bring aid and security to Afghanistan until 2011. Separatist sentiment in Quebec slumbers, thanks partly to Harper’s efforts to reach out to that province.
Nor have we seen the so-called “hidden agenda” of socially conservative initiatives. We see no indication Harper intends to resurrect national debates on abortion, the death penalty or same-sex marriage. And this only makes sense. Whatever Harper’s personal views are on these subjects, he knows that pushing them onto the House of Commons agenda would be political suicide.
On balance, Harper has put Canada in a good, even enviable position to weather the coming economic storm. Proof of this came this week when the International Monetary Fund predicted that Canada will lead the Group of 7 industrial nations in growth next year, with our gross domestic product estimated to rise by 1.2 per cent.
And what of the other choices? Well, neither the New Democratic Party nor the Greens appears to us as a viable option for government in this election. NDP Leader Jack Layton has fought an energetic, passionate campaign for which he will likely be rewarded with more seats. However, his plan to pound corporations with higher taxes and interfere with our free trade agreements would be economically disastrous. As for Elizabeth May’s Greens, as much as they belong in the political landscape, their call for new corporate taxes and distrust of free trade are not what Canada needs. The Greens deserve a seat or seats, not a government.
This, at least, is how this newspaper’s editorial board sees things.
Okay, Lord, you can come and get me now. There’s nothing else to see down here… 😯
Damn. I knew they had an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, but 
… Just keeps on giving. And I’m lovin’ it.
… wants to be Prime Minister. He actually thinks that he somehow deserves your vote. 😯
I thought that these clowns were owned by the Toronto friggin’ Star, fer chrissakes!
