10.15.2010 08:53 AM

Friday morning bits and pieces

  • Power and Politics: Was on Evan’s show last night, in the dark, to jaw about the U.N. Security Council cock-up and Khadr.  The clip is at the 1:45 mark or something.  Above: a snap of me playing traffic cop for Monte and Karl, and failing.
  • Bullshit alert: Nobody is “pondering” leadership, anywhere, in any way.  What a load of bollocks.  Does this guy ever have a source that is on the record?
  • The biggest PMO comms fumble yet: L. Ian MacDonald kicks the living beejesus out of the Reformatory [oxymoron alert – ed.] brain trust for the “blame Iggy” strategy: To make a complete botch of the day, the damage control strategy of the Prime Minister’s Office was to blame the failure of the UN bid on Michael Ignatieff’s comments that Canada didn’t deserve a seat on the Security Council…This is the most idiotic communications strategy yet devised by this PMO, and that’s saying something.” Ouch.  My Twitter take, that day, was that Ignatieff was clearly also to blame for the deficit, H1N1, my daughter not getting a pony for her birthday, and Justin Bieber.
  • The Toronto Clowns’ Office?: The Toronto Crown Attorneys’ Office refused to even look at the mountains of animal-cruelty evidence in the Toronto Humane Society scandal, and dropped all charges without an explanation.  They are prosecuting Chinatown hero David Chen for no reason, and against all commons sense.  And now they are blithely dropping hundreds of G20-related charges, thereby validating the view that they were indeed complicit in suppressing civil liberties during the Summit.  That office needs a shake-up, big time.  They have become a nation-wide embarrassment.
  • Saint/Brother Andre: If you look way, way up on one of the walls at St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, you’ll see crutches that had been used by my great-grandmother, and which were abandoned by her because – she said – Brother Andre cured her.  My Dad, ever the scientist, always had a bit of an arched eyebrow about that one.  That aside, Brother Andre is getting his due this weekend.  My great-Nanny is no doubt pleased.

23 Comments

  1. Tired of it All says:

    I KNEW Iggy was behind that whole Beiber thing… Clearly bad for Canada.

  2. Paul R. Martin says:

    I agree with your comment about the Toronto clowns. Who appoints them?

    As far as a replacement for the Ontario Premier is concerned, there are always ambitious operatives in all parties who quietly discuss the leader. I seem to recall reading about similar discussions with regard to both the federal Liberal and Conservative parties. After the election, it is possible that the Premier may decide to retire if repudiated by the voters.

  3. Dan F. says:

    Benzie is just looking to stir up trouble ahead of the OLP AGM this weekend. It will make for some interesting conversations, but I wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about it.

  4. David says:

    Re; Bullshit alert..

    While the Toronto Star has as of late less editorial integrity than Hustler magazine used to have, I have no doubt that somebody wanted this printed. Who?

    The Conservatives are taking a bit of a beating even from other Conservatives on the UN blame game. It reminds me of the wafergate scandal. It was equally stupid. The difference there was that journalists were held accountable for the fabricated story.Here it is at least just silly tit-for-tat barter.

  5. David says:

    Nope I wasn’t. I just enjoyed watching this smear blow up in the Liberals faces.

    They allowed the focus to be taken away from a decent mans funeral to an irrelevant scandal that was proven to be as much.

    It failed miserably and even caused real harm to some journalists careers.

    All in the name of gotcha politics.

  6. Ted says:

    It is interesting how the pass-the-buck strategy by the Conservatives has backfired in a few ways.

    One, had they taken the position they are now attempting to take, i.e. that they lost on principled stands from the beginning, then they might have some credibility. By starting out blaming Iggy for their actions, they look weak, reactionary, desperate and, when they finally settle on a narrative, it looks disingenuous and a fabricated communications strategy and not their real belief.

    Two, had they not gone after Iggy so hard right away for the situation they created, had they manned up in other words, it probably would have been a one day story. Instead, you have the stories about the historic loss followed by every single journalist and rational ordinary Canadian saying it is stupid to blame Iggy so why are you doing that? When L. Ian MacDonald is criticizing the Conservatives – and doing so in such extreme language – you have made a minor somewhat bad story into a major bad story.

    Three, it plays right into the growing and hardening narrative of Harper as being so bent on hatred of Liberals and so defensive and angry that good governance suffers. Do they not see this?

    Fourth, it was so patently obvious a boneheaded effort to blame Iggy for this, that they have actually innoculated him a bit. There is a meme now started that everything in the world is Iggy’s fault. Opposition leaders can’t buy that kind of stock mockery of your opponents framing efforts. It renders any future attempt by the Cons to do the same thing null. Just like Reagan rolling his eyes and saying “there you go again” to Carter. Or the way the Cons innoculated themselves from Martin attacks by taking out ads saying “they’ll go negative because they don’t have anything else to say”: when the negative ads came, no one gave them much attention, they had not power of persuasion.

    The only thing good out of this for the Cons is it did certainly deflect attention from Harper once again hugely grossly getting our finances WRONG with the budget not down to $7B next year but up to an even higher record deficit than they predicted of $55B.

    Have they gotten one single economic or fiscal prediction about anything right? Even once? That is the question they don’t have to answer because of the UN Security Council screw up.

    Even when they lose big, they somehow manage to win. That explains both why they can’t get their majority, but at the same time are not at risk of losing government.

    • Philip says:

      Definitely some very good points Ted. I honestly don’t believe that any of the Harper crew are mentally able to man up and admit they made a mistake. Some are not even physically incapable of manning up. There is no truth left in these people.

  7. Allen says:

    Who cares!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  8. JH says:

    Les
    I’m sure all the politicians and the minions who seve them, had ‘some’ personal integrity at a point in time.
    Sadly once they’re in the game it disappears quickly. You’d be hard pressed to find any of them, who are around very long, with it still intact. Same for the drive-by shooting press crowd.
    Just think they used to call lawyers ambulance chasers – these guys (pols & press) make lawyers look good.

  9. Steve Gallagher says:

    Warren, my family were also touched by Brother Andre.
    This is a good experience for all of us because the spirit
    does move through our lives.

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