Well, the Con conference wrapped up today and the 'tough guy' Harper came out to taunt again.The prime minister was in high dudgeon Thursday as a two-day Conservative caucus planning session wrapped up in this community across the St. Lawrence River from historic Quebec City.
We have a mandate from the people . . . We'll be bringing forward important pieces of legislation - and you can bet some of these will be confidence measures.
"Either we govern or we go to an election. Mr. Dion has a simple choice."
It was the second act of a choreographed squeeze play on Dion.
Aside from his pathetic base, just who do you think he believes he's attracting and how much do you think he regrets putting in fixed election dates?
You won a minority man. What don't you get about that?
'Media Check'
Harper's message to Liberals is two-fold: give our minority government free rein to govern, or get crushed on the hustings in a general election. To date, it's proved a highly persuasive combination despite the fact that polls put the two parties in a dead heat.
If the polls haven't moved, how precisely has it proven to be highly persuasive? What a ridiculous, unthinking statement to throw into the middle of an article.
And then Harper once again shows his respect for our political institutions and processes.
Having achieved power in 2006 on a platform of accountability and transparency, Harper is now giving short shrift to Opposition tit-for-tat investigations into the ethics of his government's behaviour.
Parliament's purpose, said Harper, is not to "hold a bunch of kangaroo courts, or to do investigations into scandals that never occurred, or try and pretend they can second guess the police in a criminal investigation."
Problem is of course, they did occur. Second guess police? I presume he's referring to the RCMP/Cadman proclamation. All the RCMP said is that they can't find evidence to pursue charges. Meaning, the one witness who knows what went on is gone. That doesn't negate Harper on tape.
Back to the love-in, I guess they have been too busy bashing to take the time to pay attention to the news.
Very little of what the 120-some Tory MPs and assorted senators discussed leaked from the caucus room. Tory talking points, however, abounded.
Safe, sound economic management will be the Conservative mantra this autumn.
This economic soundness mantra by Conservatives absolutely perplexes me. Where is the evidence? There is NONE. How is this absolute myth perpetuated? Surely someone with a brain could write about our history and recent US history that would show just how blatantly false that presumption is. I do not get it.
So how do you end a Liberal 'bash fest'? Well, you lie to Canadians of course.
"The purpose of Mr. Dion's carbon tax is to raise money for the federal government so that he can spend it," Harper claimed. "That is the only reason a politician ever put in a new tax."
What a guy Harper is. Taunter, basher, bully and liar. Yes, that's who I want as PM.
10 comments:
Taunter, basher, bully and liar.
Plus: Religiously deluded, food addicted and fashion impaired.
How is this dink Prime Minister?
Where did it all go wrong??
Oh, and I think he is lying about writing a book on the history of hockey. The Mother of All Canadian deceptions.
If the polls haven't moved, how precisely has it proven to be highly persuasive?
It persuaded the Liberals to abstain a whole bunch of times, didn't it?
Where did it all go wrong??
I don't know Omar. That's the question behind all my posts.
How'd Bush get re-elected? It's a mystery that delves into the stupidity and apathy of who we are.
How we got here is beyond me.
No jason, the taunts did not persuade the Lib's. Circumstance did.
Are you really that delusional?
You believe that Harper is driving Dion's moves?
Illusions of grandeur never end well.
Illusions of grandeur? Don't even know what that means.
Delusional? Only my doctor knows for sure...
I don't know if *anyone* can fathom Dion's "moves" over the past session: call Tory stuff unacceptable, make vague threats to bring the govt down, hide behind the curtains when the confidence vote comes around, lather, rinse, repeat.
Anyway, the "circumstances" were that the Libs had to decide whether they could bring down the government and win, or abstain and let Harper's agenda go through. It's pretty clear which door they chose to go through. I'll be interested to see if they've changed their tune come the fall.
Unfortunately these are the stories the media give the air time to and the numerous announcements made recently to the various provinces not held by the cons. This is exactly how a band of clowns like this get elected, they manipulate and lie to fool the average Canadian who only watches the local nightly news and maybe reads the weekend newspaper. The one thing I truly hope the Liberals understand is that our elections are fought and won through the media. When a media mogul like say a Oprah Winfrey get behind and more than supports a candidate like Barrack Obama, this begins to shift momentum and when more and more popular people begin to jump on board, well then... What Stephane Dion needs are some high profile celebrities to discredit what the Steven Harper messages/lies are. We saw a little of this when we had the likes of Lynn McDonald and Judge Reid Scott and David Suzuki promoting Stephane Dion and his visionary thinking with regards to the "Green Shift Plan", However the Liberal Party needs to get more high profile people and get that into the evening news and weekend newspapers. There should be enough celebrates that this government has jerked around in the last two and a half years, getting some of them to come out and support Stephane Dion should be easy. The biggest problem still exists that media coverage in this country is persuaded by true blue conservatives such as Peter Mansbridge, Rex Murphy, and Lloyd Robertson. The average Canadian doesn't keep up with all the bills introduced by this government that change our way of life, they don't know the outrageous lies that they tell daily they don't follow the blogosphere to get the truth and facts, they will need to see these on T.V.
Meh, what do you expect from Stephen Harper at the end of a Conservative Caucus retreat?
Canadians are smart enough to realize who is making these statements and judge them accordingly. After all, he did not say anything different from previous statements and we all know how those previous statements have given Mr. Harper such a big boost in popular support.
Scott Reid had a piece in The Star today where he stated that "July talk is cheap" with regard to the election taunts. We will see how things play out in the next few months to see if he will walk the walk with regards to an election.
Jason, I do like it when people bring up the Liberals abstaining during the last couple of seasons. Like these statements by Mr. Harper they have not really had an effect on Liberal support. In fact, over the past 9 months it is the Conservatives that went from the mid-30 range to the low-30range, tied with the Liberals.
Why would that be? Well, short answer, Canadians by and large ignore the Opposition, so the Liberals actions did not hurt them but the troubles the Conservatives have hurt them.
Indeed, the current political situation is the result of the Liberal strategy to abtain. They knew Canadians would not take real notice. They knew the Conservatives would eventually trip themselves up, although I bet they did not think they would do it so spectacularly and so often. They knew that a minority government would prevent the Conservatives from doing anything too radical and irreversible.
As an added bonus the strategy gave them the opportunity to release The Green Shift Plan, which has dominated the political discussions this summer. Incidentally, I believe Mr. Harper's bluster in the last couple of days was partly to attempt to change that conversation. Since it was just more of the same from him though I am not certain how much it will change anything.
All-in-all the pros of the Liberal strategy far outweighs the cons. And going into the Fall where there very well could be an election the Liberals are well within striking distance of the Conservatives. That is all they could ever have hoped for at this time.
I'm with "frankly canadian" on this one.
The average Cdn. gets most of their info from the sound bytes on the news & the occasional written word. They don't delve deeper into what has been going on. They are mostly disinterested but highly influenced by whatever the P.M. will say. After all "he's our Prime Minister, he knows what he's talking about".
They don't put the pieces of the puzzle together to make a whole picture. It's all bits & pieces that they aren't really paying attention to. Or not much.
They aren't stupid, far from it, but politics is not a favourite topic among them & are jaded to where they think all politicians are the same. No good. End of story.
The only thing that makes them stand up & pay attention is when their wallet/purse is hurting. And they want the "quick fix". And if one party presents a better policy than the other to "fix" the problem they will vote for them. Personal finances is really the only thing that grabs the attention of the masses, so to speak. And we know where that's heading, no.
The way Steve is coming out now & attacking, right after this caucus meeting, is highly reminiscent of the Mike Harris plan. And there are now a lot of the "old Harris guard" in this CON govt. & with the addition of Guy Giorno, & his buddies he's brought in with him, we can expect more of this & with a much harder line than before. And it is possible!
I do blame the MSM for playing into all of the CONs talking, attacking & lying, points & not digging deeper or presenting unbiased reporting & linking all the untruths together more often. It's sickening.
It also frightens me because as much as we, & there ARE many of us, can see & know what's going on, the scare tactics & fear-mongering does have a strong effect on the public. I'm absolutely terrified of these creeps being re-elected, minority or majority. It would be a total disaster for this country - it already is.
M. Dion, & others in the party, need to get into the headlines, the "sound bytes", & reveal, reveal, reveal the truth. Link it all up. Non-stop. And the MSM has to give them, at least, equal time. And the way I see it there's fat chance of that.
Also, the economy has to tank a whole lot more before people will really take notice & vote away from the CONs. I could be wrong in some of this & hope that I am.
How we got here is beyond me.
If we look at the electorate, the issues are too complex to be all that helpful in the short term. They're the result of systemic weaknesses that led to a kind of collapse into mild mass hysteria just around the Iraq invasion (when a good proportion, though thankfully not a majority) of the Canadian population revealed itself to be rather credulous and underexposed to information.
What we did see clearly was a failure of leadership with practically all our major institutions; political, corporate, religious, educational and above all, news media.
I accuse absolutely everyone who had an audience who asserted something about the correctness of going along with the neoconservative agenda without providing the proper evidence to demonstrate how he or she knew these assertions were correct.
Rank-and-file, moderately sensible "conservatives" can't be blamed all that directly, since their style of thinking tends to be linear, mechanical, narrowly focused, and uncomfortable with doubt. Instead of spending more time fleshing out the questions that will lead to a more fulsome and complete analysis of a problem, they jump to providing answers, usually in conformity with the evidence they already have at hand.
If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
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