One enduring characteristic of Conservative political comments since 2003 is the resort to personal attacks.
It must be Rule Number One in the Connie political playbook: Go sleaze ball. Don’t deal with the issue.
This past week the public got a good example of that from a provincial Conservative politician.
To round out the week, here are five curious posts on different subjects to send you off into the weekend.
And don’t forget this Saturday* is Guy Fawkes Day.
- srbp -
* Not Sunday
The bunker team that ruled on Brad Cabana’s appeal of his rejected leadership bid made a fascinating – and most likely inadvertent – description of what standards they used to determine who might be considered a member of the provincial Conservative Party.
You can hear this in a debrief CBC Provincial Affairs reporter David Cochrane did with the St. John’s Morning Show’s Jeff Gilhooley on Friday morning.
Cochrane reported that the Conservative appeals team found that only three of the names on Cabana’s nomination forms were considered to be party members. They came to the conclusion after scouring membership lists from district associations, youth groups and other affiliated organizations as described in the party constitution.
Sounds good and official so far, right?
And then Cochrane started listing the three.
The first one he described was a person who may have – note the conditional language – put up a few signs during an election campaign.
Hold the phone.
That’s it?
May possibly have been vaguely recalled to have helped out on a sign crew.
Okay.
So how many signs do you theoretically have to stick in the ground?
Is it one?
A dozen?
Do the signs have to be in the ground or could you have been seen holding one lovingly at some point?
Do you actually have to have done it or is it a function of someone else’s efforts? After all, maybe this was back in the 1990s when every Tory householder included a sign. Junior sticks it in the window to piss Dad the Dipper off and presto the whole family is down in some registry of known Tories kept in someone’s basement?
Maybe the whole membership process isn’t even that specific.
Maybe you only have to look like someone who might have erected a sign: Yes, by. That fellow looks like a guy who helped me out years ago. He’s a member then.
After all, as Cochrane related the tale, the Tories weren’t even sure this guy or gal actually wielded the hammer or got the splinters from holding the two by two. They thought he may have.
And while they weren’t even 100% certain of that they were prepared to say that the person was a member in order to meet the clear and stringent requirements set down in the Tory party constitution.
We know this is such a document since coronation chairman Shawn Skinner – with no real or perceived conflict of interest whatsoever, surely – duly blessed the outcome.
Now that sign guy doesn’t sound like someone whose name wound up on an actual membership list. After all, the party doesn’t really have membership lists as such since the party doesn’t have members, as such. There are no cards or dues or any formal way of identifying as a member of the party.
In fact, the party considers every person in the district over the age of 18 years to be a member for the purposes of voting in nomination contests. And under the party constitution only members can vote.
So basically before Cochrane even got that far in this tale, the story totally demolished the bit before it. If the Tories had actual membership lists to scour, they wouldn’t have had to be beggar someone’s failing memory of a sign crew that could have gone off with a van and the dozen bear and a few dozen signs at any time back to 1972, at least.
And if they really had some sort of membership lists with rules that are clear, widely known and fairly applied, they wouldn’t be crediting Cabana with finding a possible Tory sign jockey.
In case you'd forgotten, the same people who are living this tale of membership stupidity are the same people who control about seven billion a year in public money.
it would all be hysterically funny if that were not true.
- srbp -
Political media commentary in Canada is usually funny.
Lately, commentary on federal politics is even funnier.
Example The First: Winston Smith makes several cogent observations which should - among other things - put to death that always laughable Connie excuse that the news media are biased in favour of the Liberals. Read Winston. He’s always sharp as a tack. he’s not the funny stuff; the people he’s writing about are funny, albeit not meaning to be laughable.
Example The Second: the bevy of comment in many quarters prompted by the Prime Minister’s recent tickling of the ivories at the National Arts Centre. Again, unintentionally risible.
You got your American bloggers of the conservative variety.
You got your locals of the something variety, including the line “I am growing more and more impressed with Stephen Harper.” Now just note that for what it’s worth. If that comment is coming from that source, be sure that there will be no ABC campaign in the next federal election.
But anyway…
There are news stories and columns all over the place.
Only one journalist so far has nailed the point about the whole NAC thing and she did so this morning with a pithy line to the effect that the piano is the latest version of the sweater vest.
In other words, it’s a contrivance. Sure the guy plays the piano but the entire episode was designed to create exactly the commentary it is generating.
As great as that is, it is a sure sign of just how vacuous is the political landscape that the biggest national story is that the PM can bash out a Beatles tune on the nearest Yamaha.
It’s as irrelevant to the universe as the claim the Liberals are on a campaign to bring the government down or any protest that Jack Layton and his Dippers propped up Stephen Harper just recently because they could score some dough for their peeps.
All three federal political parties are suffering from a gross leadership problem the proof of which is the fact that the big news out of Ottawa is about Denis Coderre, a non-election scare and a guy who took music lessons.
In the meantime, just think about the stuff that none of them are actually talking about.
Anyone been following economic news lately, for example?
-srbp-
Over at the redesigned voice of the cabinet minister website, there is now audio with just about every short news clip. In some cases there’s a bit of video.
In the story on a news release from opposition leader Yvonne Jones, the audio clip is from Dave ‘Sentence Fragments” Denine, the intergovernmental affairs minister.
Denine got scooped by the opposition, but never let it be said that VO didn’t make sure the CM got his own words on a story.
But that just raises another bunch of questions.
Denine’ s the guy who should have been talking about the fact the federal Conservatives aren’t delivering on their 2005 promise. After all, that’s the government talking point to try and deflect attention from the fact that most of them bought the Connie bullshit umpteen times after 2005.
For an opposition party, reminding Denine and the rest of that fact would be the logical starting point.
They could drag in John Hickey, the minister for Labrador Affairs who campaigned a couple of times on the bogus battalion alongside his federal Connie cousins.
And if all else failed, they’d could now tee off on Denine and Hickey for failing utterly to hold the federal Connies feet to the fire, to use that horrid phrase.
Instead, Jones goes after Stephen Harper as if she was a federal politician.
All is not lost in the local opposition world.
Jones now has the chance to go headlong at the local crowd. Denine – obviously knowing nothing at all about the military - refers to a bunch of buildings constructed decades ago for the air force as “first-class” infrastructure for the army. He then tells VOCM that he’ll be going back and have a chat with the federales to see where Goose Bay fits in.
Hint: it doesn’t.
Jones could be pinging political hit after political hit against the skulls of two incompetent cabinet ministers for building up false hopes in the people of Goose Bay when they should have known - and should now know – much better.
Shame on Dave and John, should be her line.
Shame on Steve is just too easy, too obvious and totally meaningless locally.
People around these parts - especially Bond Papers readers - already knew not to trust the federal Connies on the bullshit battalions.
All Denine does in his voice clip is pretend the promise is real.
Just wait until the ABC Leader gets back.
-srbp-
The new battalion of soldiers promised to Goose Bay by the always-desperate federal Conservatives way back in 2005 does not exist.
The Connies promised it several times after that.
But it does not exist.
It never has existed.
In a recent letter to the provincial government, National Defence Minister Peter Mckay [sic] confirmed that the federal government will not be making any investments into their rapid response battalion or additional troop deployment at Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Goose Bay, says Opposition Leader Yvonne Jones.
The June 3rd letter is written to Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dave Denine and states, “Goose Bay was never considered as an option for the territorial battalion group” and “…the army currently has no planned investment in Goose Bay”. This is in direct contrast with the 2006 election commitment of Prime Minister Stephen Harper when he stated that a new rapid reaction army battalion of approximately 650 personnel would be established at CFB Goose Bay and that these plans would result in a significant increase in employment in the Goose Bay area.
Hands up anyone out there who is surprised by this?
See there.
That fellow in the back of the room there needs to be reading Bond Papers.
Regular readers had the scoop four years ago and hopefully didn’t fall for yet another ludicrous political promise - unlike some provincial Conservatives - in any of the federal elections since.
-srbp-
How appropriate in this week of celebrating the guy who pointed out natural selection to the rest of us that the federal Conservatives should demonstrate that, in fact, some people are doomed to political extinction.
There should be a special category for political Darwin Awards.
Those would be the people who cooked up a scandal with some guy and his trusty tape recorder and released bogus “transcripts” all in an effort to bring down the government and claw their way one inch at a time toward power.
Then, when caught in a wee political and potential legal problem over a politician on his deathbed and offers of financial help that some think look suspiciously close to being bribes, these scandal-and-tape Neanderthals scream conspiracy when someone turns up with a tape of their boss talking about said dying pol and said cash.
The source of this latest example of antediluvian politics, of course, would have to be Pierre Poilevre. The Prime Minister’s parliamentary secretary claimed in the Commons last week that it had been proven in court that the tape in question was doctored.
Not so, of course, as anyone who has followed the case would know.
Had that part been proven, as Poilevre claimed, it is highly unlikely the federal Conservatives would have so quickly rushed to withdraw their law suit against the evil Liberals over the whole Chuck Cadman business in the first place.
Then again, no one ever accused Pierre of being the sharpest Clovis point in the pile.
-srbp-
Among the funniest comments coming from Ottawa these days was an e-mail reporting the streets around Parliament Hill are blocked with chicken feathers these days.
So many chickens are coming home to roost that their shedding feathers are causing a driving hazard. People are having difficulty walking and Ottawa Carlton municipal workers are putting in overtime trying to free up enough space for people to get around.
There are also reports of tar on back order at local Home Depot outlets and the price for rails is climbing on a shortened supply. Some people are apparently planning to take advantage of the feather supply.
The latest chicken to head home wore a wet suit and jet skied up the Rideau Canal.
Stockwell Day's people worked on a secret deal with Bloc in 2000 in case the election returned a minority parliament. Day denies knowing about the deal. Others might be seeing nuggets and dipping sauce since Day's defence emphasizes "signing" a deal with separatists.
That kind of feather-splitting should make anyone skeptical. Then when you find out Stock had a loose definition of "bad" back then - much like Loyola Hearn - you pretty much know Stock is running scared. Scared of losing the car and driver, the expense account and the trappings of power.
The lust for power runs deep among the Blue crowd. It will likely take hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their claw marks out of the desks, door jabs and banisters as they get dragged from their offices next Monday.
CBC dug into the files as part of the televised version of the Stockwell Day story. They found a 1996 article by some guy named Harper and his best pal Tom Flanagan wherein the newbie member of parliament and his future political staffer mused about cutting a deal with separatists as a way of ousting the Liberals.
If they get punted to the opposition curb next week in a confidence vote, we can only wonder what will happen when the cows come home. That bovine history, full of stuff like Cadman and all its implications of potential criminal activity, could well make getting covered in tar and feathers and run out of town on rail look like an afternoon strolling the Byward.
-srbp-
September 9, 2004
Her Excellency the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson,
C.C., C.M.M., C.O.M., C.D.
Governor General
Rideau Hall
1 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A1
Excellency,
As leaders of the opposition parties, we are well aware that, given the Liberal minority government, you could be asked by the Prime Minister todissolve the 38th Parliament at any time should the House of Commons fail to support some part of the government’s program.
We respectfully point out that the opposition parties, who together constitute a majority in the House, have been in close consultation. We believe that, should a request for dissolution arise this should give you cause, as constitutional practice has determined, to consult the opposition leaders and consider all of your options before exercising your constitutional authority.
Your attention to this matter is appreciated.
Sincerely,
Hon. Stephen Harper, P.C., M.P.
Leader of the Opposition
Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada
Gilles Duceppe, M.P.
Leader of the Bloc Quebecois
Jack Layton, M.P.
Leader of the New Democratic Party
The usually more staid Daimnation has gone to the dogs.
Yapping dogs of blind partisanship.
The best they can come up with for political comment is name-calling - C'mon guys. "Dork" is so junior high school" - on a story which died shortly after it was first floated.
Can the kiddie porn crap be far behind?
Oh yes, guys, when it comes to incompetent campaigning - not to mention morally debased and intellectually bankrupt - Stephen Harper's attack on Paul Martin takes the cake.
-srbp-