A GOOD FEVER...

Enough about swine and their churlish across-aisle taunts and bullying. I doubt there's a fourth division rugby team that could compete with the party that's given us a bribe to a dying MP, making 'cancer' a sexy career opportunity, shipping bodybags to remote communities needing medicine, laughing off the fatal listeriosis as "a death by a thousand cold cuts" or hoping that the latest victim of said food poisoning was a rival.
What Canadians want? Crap if I know. But give them more of this, just to help us recover from the above...

LEADERSHIP, SORT OF...

The Canadian public is anxious but not completely sold on the idea of that H1N1 flu shot, which is slowly winding its way to your nearest doctor.
It's true, the CON government has faced some heat over the delays and its handling of this issue -- but I suppose to Gerry Ritz and Pierre Poilievre, those body bags were just an instance of 'lightening up the mood or a lesson on hardwork. Lisa Raitt sees it as a possible great and sexy career boost to Leona Aglukkuq, if she can handle it...
That aside, I've noticed on the radio spots for Health Canada that unlike all things stimulus and Canada Action Plan, the government is going out of its way to avoid being known as the first line of defence. The ones I've heard make point of stating "all levels of government" have their fingers on the H1N1 file. Which is true. But is this a case of shielding their actual function and role, just in case something goes awry? Not that these guys haven't been afraid to share the credit -- especially on good news items. Kind of like it's also true that the CONs were the government which helped cut the ribbon and tried to take the credit for construction of the new Pitt River crossing, despite the fact that the money bill was signed off more than four years ago by a government headed by Paul Martin... It would also seem that they are being overly generous in not asking for their due credit on squeezing both B.C. and Ontario into the HST thingy.
Is it because they are scared about being held accountable for their actions, or that the criticism already expressed has them trying to ladle the heat to the provinces and municipalities?

Hat tip to ScottT.

I'LL TAKE GARY DOER TO BLOCK, BARACK...

Look who now's playing cover for the Alberta tarsands, er oilsands project.
While I actually believe that the best strategy to deal with the oilsands and its litany of environmental implications (many to come) isn't to force it closed or halted, I find it amusing in a sick way that another NdP leader is playing defence for Stephen Harper.
Gary Doer may have a track record in Manitoba, but what he offers in tarsands pollution denials is akin to holding up a big novelty sized cheque with the SS Valdez on it and offering it to environmentalists.
I wonder how comfortable the intelligent, serious NdPers are feeling, these days?

THE TIDE GOES IN, THE TIDE GOES OUT...

It may not be like clockwork, but the CON celebratory mood may be in withdrawal this weekend, although one never can guess just how things work in this great world of ours.
Riding high in the polls despite having created the biggest deficit in Canadian history -- prissied up with a lot of giant novelty cheques with CON faces, colours and autographs -- Stephen Harper's gang has seemingly stubbed its toe again, if not shot it off, with a myriad of cluck-ups and cockamaney selfishness.
Their smokescreening to prove the former Canadian diplomat to Afghanistan is either lying or mis-remembering has caused a familiar bruise with the government's integrity and honesty levels.
Harper's claim that "he didn't see the memo" makes him a liar or an incompetent buffoon -- but its the same kind of defensive play he made about the woman locked up in the Sudan, too.
Now there are serious allegations that Canadians were offering bribes to buy time and peace with the Taliban kind of raises alarm bells. And memories. I guess when the so-called leader of your country can allegedly bribe a dying MP for his vote, what's a little bribe between warring enemies?
There's the whole cheque-gate thing, which pokes a stick in many eyes, partisan from all sides... It's the kind of behaviour that many Tory supporters associated with Trudeau and Chretien-era politics, and the stench of being bribed with our own money, while Harper's grinning idiots pretend like its payola-time, raises multiple ires -- no more proof is necessary by how quickly the government tried to squash the story (going from "it was just one rogue MP" to now sending out spokesliars to say its just a case of "the Liberals did it so we've made the same error").
Of course, the decade-old evidence of Liberal cheque-giving falls flat when you notice that none of those cheques feature anything but the Canadian government logo, no pictures of a smirking MP on the wall-size memento, no party logo and no mish-mash of signatures. Only the CONs were clever enough to run with those.
Now Harper has been discovered trying to ramp up his piano-playing through a link at the Economic recovery website, making a governmental info area into a partisan hootenanny. This after someone finally called him on his out-of-control narcissism, where his photos lined the pages of the site to an embarrassing level.
Then there's the whole 'turning himself into a pretzel when it comes to partisan appointments'. Remember Harper's whole "We're going to do it the right way" and his idea of being accountable?
What are the CONs doing to rectify these items, which alone are barely enough to stir the barely partisan from indifference, but when stacked one ontop of another and another, along with the old ones that Harper was granted a pass on, it's pretty damning.
Instead of counselling their leader with some kind of mental health plan, an intervention on his meglomania and self-professed passion of wasting energy on focusing on the opposition and trumping a few inconsequential photo-shop images, even a pamplet on a good 12-step program? Their scurrying from their holes, howling "This is not fair!" and creating a whole lotta more interest -- even the media, who has done its best to lighten poor Steve's load and ignore his trespasses, knows that where there is smoke, there's fire...
And down comes the sandcastle.

WANTED: OUR MOJO BACK...

Okay, the numbers are terrible.
The visuals and white noise that is considered 'journalism' these days are also icky. Although we could complain about the missing ethical compass of the media, who appear to be following down the same stairs that their US counterparts took when George W Bush's team were sliming John Kerry's war hero status, it won't help move this boat in the right direction.
While I wholeheartedly believe that the current positive spin that Stephen Harper and his CONs are enjoying is all lather, no soap, the real concern is that the response from Liberal-land and Michael Ignatieff in particular has been underwhelming, lacking in punch.
We don't need to be George Foreman (sorry, I'm dating myself) but we do need to put the 'heat' on the grill. We also have to lay the foundation for the inevitable election -- which, if the current polling numbers continue to be replicated, is going to be very very soon.
Look at what the CONs and Harper had going for them during their last days in opposition. While they would roll out a very easy-to-digest list of promises/policies in that 2005/06 winter election, they already had a piece to their program well known. They've had the bread-and-butter crime issue -- one that has proven to be a slightly more of a whack-a-mole for them than a real call to action (we still haven't seen those new RCMP members promised in 2006, while their anti-gun registry flies in the face of what the police chiefs of Canada have been calling for)...
While the argument in the Liberal war room is that the policy will be released in due time, likely with the dropping of the writ, its never too late to put out something worth standing for.
I'm thinking the 30-50 poverty plan that Stephane Dion spoke so forcefully about prior to and during the last election campaign. Poverty is an issue that is affecting more and more Canadians during this recession. People who are seeing their EI run out, being forced onto welfare rolls, those who are being turned away from welfare due to 'tough-in-good-times' provincial regulations. Those same people are now being squeezed out of the stats that track unemployment, being classified as 'non-existent' when it comes to seeking a job.
Canada as a nation has built up a reputation for responding to the needs of those less able to pick themselves up, whether its due to a temporary setback or more long-term issues. I want the Liberal Party to be at the forefront of speaking up for those who are falling through the cracks, for those who are seeing opportunity as someone else's reality. And while we also have to admit that there is a cost for such a program, if we talk about it as a vital investment that in many ways is 'wealth creation', turning citizens from dependents on government handouts to taxpaying, healthy contributors to the Canadian economy, I think it is an issue where the party can establish a beachhead prior to the writ being called.
The public and the media is clambering for a reason to like us. We need to step forward and give them that -- let the Grouchy and Less than Good with Numbers Party do their pickin' and grinnin' act.

QUICK OFF THE MARK...

You have to give Jack Layton credit. Despite having little money and a position almost impossible to defend, he likely knocked out a double with his quick-to-air orange spots currently making the rounds on TV these days.
He hits his spots and lays out exactly why he has tumbled himself into a parliamentary pretzel (without quite saying it that way). Now, I fully understand exactly why he's doing it, and most Liberals should be thanking the spiritual one for the NdP for doing just that -- less said about the latest polls the better.
But is it such a novel idea, getting out quickly to head off the dissection of criticism, whether warranted or not?
Let's just say Jack's learned from our total lack of same ... I still have yet to see one of the Ignatieff wildlife spots except on Liblogs, we know the Dion team decided to forgo countering Harper's lies and fictional attacks with a deaf ear. Considering we have some money and Jack's practically working the squeegy corner for quarters, it's amazing that the big minds who surround Ignatieff haven't figured it out yet. They do have TV in Toronto, don't they?

BIZARRO WORLD...

... when the media gives Denis Coderre the hint of respectibility and sensibility typically applied to knights of the roundtable, captains from the Original Six hockey clubs, and Sir Thomas More.
So typical that they are enjoying the pile-on of Michael Ignatieff while letting a numbers-deficient, ethically challenged and accountability allergic CON and their so-called leader skate away with the worst fiscal management record since George W. erased a healthy surplus with 'me-me-me' economics.
Could Ignatieff have handled his Outremont decision more astutely and more quickly? Sure. But when the end result grants powers to the grassroots that previously were in jeopardy, when the end result guarantees two ridings will have the choice of two excellent candidates, there is expectations of a zero-sum result. But not in today's Bizarro-world, where heavily leveraged media conglomerates hooked on government money speak with an eery similar voice.
But, take heart fellow Liberals. The last time a party leader was being scolded and pillored for some self-inflicted reason, he lived to walk and run again, right?