A Diary of Stupid Human Tricks. Commentary on everything from Joe Average to international politics.
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Sunday, December 07, 2008
And so it begins... again
According to CP, Ignatieff will be installed as the new Liberal leader and without even a race of any type! Fabulous.
Bob Rae has made the fatal mistake of going out 'campaigning' for the coalition, which is a dead horse. By pretending to take over the leadership of this ationally unpopular coalition, he effectively elimited himself from the Liberal leadership race.
I just want to know: Don't these people read CBC? FaceBook? Their local paper's letters to the editor? If Rae had read any of those, he would have quickly seen that Ignatieff' staying well out of the fray and not making a single comment was the best plan.
NOW this is going to be interesting. Ignatieff is no dummy. He must realise that there is no future for this coalition and that continuing it will be death for the Liberals.
If Ignatieff speaks out against the coalition, speaks for stabiliy and for not going forward with any non-confidence vote, he will have begun rebuilding the Liberal party's image, which looks like the Canadian flag in Dion's YouTube the other night... barely in view at this point.
Support for the Conservatives Mounting
On Thursday, a public opinion survey suggested that the Conservatives had won the initial public relations battle surrounding the impasse.
An EKOS poll for the CBC, conducted over two days this past week, found that 44 per cent of respondents would support the Conservatives "if an election were held tomorrow." That's up from the 37.6 per cent support the Tories received in the federal election held in mid-October."
I'm telling you, people, you better be sure a Harper-led Conservative majority is what you want because this prorogue is giving him the time to have it coalesce. And, the most incompetant leader ever just won' shut up, making matters worse and worse: Dion is now claiming that Harper "ran away" from Parliament, which may or may not be true but Dion's not the person to be pointing it out because he looks like a scared rabbit most of the time.
M. Dion will go down in history as the man who almost single handedly gave a majority government by providing a bloodless coup that the other party hardly needed to participate in.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
AHAHA!!! More
Not three hours after the PM's address on the steps of Parliament, the coalition is already blowing apart!
CBC just said that it is already crashing and burning and that the coalition shouldn't have done this to start with.
JUST REMEMBER. YOU READ IT HERE FIRST!
Prorogued!
The opposition parties - all of them - Just handed Harper's Conservatives a majority government, whether after January 26th, if there is a non confidence vote then, or at the next election.
Duceppe, predictably, came out swinging with his own brand of brilliant, but fantastically spun slagging! That was awesome! If you can understand French, listen to what he says in French! Awesome. He's a great speaker but he was speaking like a really pissed off 15 year old.
As for the other two guys, no matter what they say and do - NO matter - they have put themselves in a position of losing face, creditility and voters. Neither of them can recover from this, no matter what they say and do next.
If they come out swinging, considering that Canadians are so pissed off about all this anyway, they're going to further anger anyone who might have voted for them and they're going to lose voters no matter what: they're going to lose anyone who thinks they made a really bad move and they're going to lose others because they have caused the parties they lead to be mocked big time. Guess where those voter are going... Right. Conservatives.
If the opposition parties campaign during this progrogation, they're going to set themselves up for serious, serious defeat. Duceppe's angry tirade is going to have a negative effect even on staunch separatists, no question, because Harper made a very good - and important - point today: he has not been attacking separatists; he has rightly pointed out that the Bloq does not act on behalf of all Canadians -and Duceppe confirmed that in his address today - but that they have an agenda that is Quebec centred (as it should be and iI have NO quarrel with their madate: Quebec - and Canada to a certain extent - needs the Bloq whether English Canada likes it or not).
And if the Liberal Party thought it was in trouble before this morning, man, that was fun and games compared to what's coming next. Mr. Ignatieff should get his butt out of there right bloody now. There is NO point in wasting his expertise on that party at the moment. Let Bob Rae have the leadership of what is now a leaderless, shit-distrubing party in utter shambles. Dion, who is perhaps brilliant but has zero skills as a leader, attempted to steal a job for which he is decidedly not qualified and has got himself nothing less than a spectacular backfire.
Mr. Layton better have another job lined up because there is NO recovery from this mess. None. No matter how he turns, he cannot recover. He got into bed with Dion, who has always been out of focus, and well before his disasterous address last night. (It may have been an oversite on the part of his tech crew, but the implication of being litterally out of focus - and having the Canadian flag out of the shot entirely - will not lost on the Canadian public. I'm a conspriacist. Read between the lines).
All I can say is there hasn't been excitement in Canadian politics like this since the Trudeau years. Harper could not be in a better position. Whether you like him or not, he's been handed the most amazing set of circumstances. Talk about Christmas coming early! There's no possible way Harper can come out of this looking anything other than Prime Ministerial and the ONLY viable leader there is. Against the backdrop of those three other guys, who now look like idiots, he's a winner.
In January, when parliament reconvenes on the 26th, the government will bring down a budget and will have done it in record time and under serious pressure to perform. If the budget is great - which it likely will be (because, in addition to this mess, the economy can totally reverse in six weeks, as it did in the last six to eight weeks), the opposition is going to be eating crow - and lots of it. If it sucks, then we're going to redo today but with no progrogation. We'll have another election - the third in just over two years. People are going to be looking for stability and they're going to make sure they get it by electing a Conservative MAJORITY government. The perhaps Harper will stick to his own four-year rule....
And there again on January 26th 2009, the opposition will be presented with new rope to hang themselves. If they oppose the new budget and vote non confidence, any election that ensues will guarantee the Conservatives a majority and probably a big one. If they don't oppose, they're all going to look like idiots for getting this shit started in the first place. This is the definition of Catch 22.
The only thing that surprises me about all this is that Harper was able to maintain his decorum when I'm SURE he wanted to be dancing in the streets and singing out loud praises to the idiots that lead the 'opposition' for putting him in the most win-win that the Conservatives have had since I don't even know when - Mulroney's landslide. Wow! Groovey Canadian politics! Fun fun!