08.05.2011 07:25 AM

Someone’s nervous. They should be.

How very interesting:

“But the little Ford-Harper On the Road yuck fest video that went viral Wednesday, then AWOL Thursday, apparently didn’t sit right with the Prime Minister’s Office.

The video was yanked from YouTube, although by Thursday night it had mysteriously popped back up on the site.

It had been taken down by the user, one of the 800 or so Ontario Conservatives who attended a tribute to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty at Ford’s mother’s home Tuesday evening.

Harper’s office took care of that.”

What happened? Well, I’m told that Hudak’s folks went ballistic after seeing Harper’s maladroit suggestion that cities, provinces and the entire country be run by the Conservative Party. If anything can sink Hudak’s party, it’s that.

Polling I’ve seen – and they’ve seen – makes crystal clear that Ontarians don’t want the same Con cabal running everything. They want some checks and balances in Canadian democracy.

Arrogant, pompous, dumb: Harper’s comments were all of those things.

And they may have just helped to sink Tim Hudak.

33 Comments

  1. frmr disgruntled Con, now Happy Lib says:

    Another jetski and wetsuit moment?….one can only hope….lol

  2. Chris P says:

    Play this video in an ad over and over again with subtitles that talk about the: arrogance, smugness etc. plus the need for checks and balances… I like the tag line: ‘were the only ones left who can stand up for Ontario’

  3. Sean says:

    So how long before that is part of an ad on TV?

  4. Sean says:

    So how long before that is part of a TV ad?

  5. frmr disgruntled Con, now Happy Lib says:

    Ever notice when Harper and/or his cronies get caught with their pants down around their ankles, the Con apologists on here are strangely silent?……..

    ….Crickets….lol

  6. Cath says:

    so they were fishing buddies – at least they didn’t strip down and skinny dip with Rick Mercer – because seriously that definitely would be something for Hudak to worry about.

    In my neck of the woods the education issue just got thrown in the faces of several school communities – surprise! Pissed off parents and communities to begin in September and only ONE candidate even talking about it – and it’s not mine or yours WK. It’s the one still riding the Orange Crush (slowing morphing in to a melting Creamsicle) and the federal momentum.

  7. Cath says:

    Not buying the McGuinty/Harper showdown caper. Remember this one – http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/610319

    Also, re: looks like the reversal of Canada’s brain drain has already started – it brought Ignatieff back home:-) Go figure.

    • allegra fortissima says:

      So, politics is “business” and politicians are “business managers”? The Mssrs. McGuinty and Harper apparently haven’t read their Cicero, eh? “Est igitur res publica res populi, populus autem non omnis nominum coetus quoquo modo congregatus, sed coetus multitudi nis iuris consensu et utilitatis communione sociatus.” (De re publica)

  8. Matt says:

    Ohh my god. A Conservative Prime Minister pumping up a yard full of conservatives in the runup to an election by talking about talking about a conservative government in Ontario. What a shocker. If this doesn’t swing the 11 point McGuinty polling deficit back in favour of the grits nothing will….

  9. JH says:

    Game changer for sure!

  10. Cath says:

    Hey Warren – you should get the clips of Bob Rae’s live interview – being broadcast as I write this. In particular Bob’s taking what appears to be credit for being the one who gave McGuinty advise on education. Oh, and there’s more…..lots more fodder for war rooms with a keen and creative mind.

    Keep up the great work Mr. Rae and keep reminding folks how close you are do Dalton McGuinty – all that’s missing is the photo-op

    • Jim Hayes says:

      Cath, everyone here knows you as a PC shill…just curiours, are you paid to monitor Warren’s site? Please when you are doing your self-evaluation tell your Hudak supervisors that you are so obviously PC that nobody and I mean NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOObody takes you at all seriously

  11. RN200 says:

    Not abortion. Not Rob Ford. The channel is not going to change for you. This is the Triple-E Election ™ – energy, economy, education.

    On the economy front, how ’bout you Libs focus on this one:
    http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1034946–canada-added-jobs-in-july-ontario-saw-losses?bn=1#comments

    HST and Green Energy jobs not materializing in Ontario…another provincial Liberal lie. They’re too numerous to count after 8 years.

    Bye Dalton, bye.

    • Attack! says:

      maybe if you took a closer look at those numbers you’d see there’s more to it than meets your cry.

      An estimated 22,000 fewer jobs in total in Ontario in July than the month before?

      Ok, but how many of those were attributable to the total loss of 30,000 jobs in educational services (everything from educational assistants to secretaries to bus drivers) across the country that month, which StatCan notes they haven’t ‘seasonally adjusted’ for since they’ve fluctuated so much over the past five years. Oh, that’s right – YOU DON’T KNOW.

      And you might have noted that even though there was a big loss in Part-Time jobs (39k), there’s actually an estimated 16,500 more Full-Time jobs, which are far more important to people’s prospects, and that’s despite the hit the manufacturing sector’s taking over the rising dollar.

      Or that Ontario’s added 151,000 FT jobs since last year.

      Or that the unemployment rate actually went down, even though the working age population increased by 10,000. (Because, yes, a lot of people dropped out of the workforce.)

      Some of this may just be due to ‘noise’ in the relatively small sample sizes of the LFS, but maybe, just maybe, a lot of older people who were still working part-time last month because they felt they couldn’t afford to or didn’t want to risk retiring yet… suddenly decided that now they can; or at least, to take the summer off.

      So I wouldn’t go putting so much stock in a one-month 0.3% reduction in the employment rate as evidence of a massive FAIL or LIE, if I were you.

      http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/110805/t110805a4-eng.htm

      • The Doctor says:

        The important thing is:

        1. to the extent that the employment situation is good in Ontario, that’s 100% attributable to McGuinty, and 0% attributable to Harper; and

        2. to the extent that the employment situation is bad in Ontario, that’s 100% attributable to Harper, and 0% attributable to McGuinty.

      • RN200 says:

        So those WERE the promised HST and Green Energy jobs that were created then…? If not then I’m still going with a FAIL and a LIE.

        And you seem to agree the election questions are energy-economy-education, and not abortion and not Harper/Ford quips at a BBQ?

        • Attack! says:

          No, dummy. (More of your brand of research or scholarship? Leap to conclusions, and make totally unwarranted attributions?)

          I didn’t say or even imply anything about either of those other matters.

          My point was that those global employment indicators are ‘way too coarse to make inferences about where or why the jobs were lost or gained in Ontario… for the first part of that, you’ll have to pay for the more detailed LFS info. on which subsectors gained or lost jobs each quarter. (And for the latter, well, I doubt you’d ever understand OR concede what forces were at play to account for it.)

  12. The Doctor says:

    I suppose the provincial Liberals might be able to spin this into an effective TV ad.

    On the other hand, I’m not sure that most voters (especially non-aligned ones) would fall off their chairs in shock at the revelation that conservative parties and politicians want to win elections and gain power.

    It may all depend on whether McGuinty & Co can find a substantive issue or two that enables McGuinty to be seen as “standing up to the feds”, “standing up to Harper”, that sort of thing.

  13. Lance says:

    Wow, ANOTHER game changer, eh?

  14. The Sprinkle Maker says:

    Weren’t you already running on the anti-Western Canadian “dominated” government theme? I’ve heard McGuinty mention that at least twice so far. (Of course his math doesn’t add up, but that’s never stopped him before.)

  15. The Sprinkle Maker says:

    Even in the story Warren links to here you can see Dalton playing up the anti-Western card. Xenophobia is a deeply Liberal value, isn’t it? This “conservative” line is just a euphemism for the same line. As a Western-bred transplant to Ontario, I actually voted for McGuinty in the past. But I’ll enjoy watching him and his prejudice-stoking friends go down this time.

    • Attack! says:

      What, re you deaf and blind on one side or something, that you’ve missed how the Harper bunch rose to power by playing up how the West wants in, and by railing against QC and Ontario, and how he wrote things like,

      “the [Canadian Alliance] will be under considerable pressure to rid itself of any tinge of a Western agenda or Alberta control. This we must fight. If the Alliance is ever to become a party that could be lead (sic) by a Paul Martin or Joe Clark, it must do so without us…. Let us build a society on Alberta values.” (“It’s Time for Alberta to Seek a New Relationship With Canada”, NCC Online, 2000: quoted in vol 3. of the CPC’s own database of Harper quotes, and also discussed at http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=34275

      And they ARE favouring AB by lobbying for and subsidizing its oilsands (and dismantling EnviroCan and lying to both the world and our populace in the process), and are playing to its Western base on various boneheaded things like killing the Wheat Board & the LGR and making noises about the Senate, and are _still_ giving shots to Ontario, like when Baird slagged the “Toronto Elites” like WK here for losing the gun registry vote.

      McGuinty’s not being ‘xenophobic’ for objecting to the CPC for pushing a Western agenda at the expense of the other regions: he’s calling them as he sees them. But you apparently can only see to one side. (Hope you don’t drive.)

      • The Sprinkle Maker says:

        “The Harper bunch rose to power” by winning more seats in Ontario than the Liberal Party, and more seats in Francophone Quebec than the Liberal Party as well. “The Harper bunch” has more seats in Ontario than in all Western Canadian provinces combined. You are in such deep denial about this fact that you persist in characterizing the Conservatives as some sort of foreign interlopers in order to make yourself feel better about having lost the ability to persuade anyone outside of downtown Toronto. If you think that Harper is “pushing a Western agenda at the expense of” Ontario, for example, then you ought to persuade Ontarians to stop voting for him. In fact, with every election he’s won Harper has won more and more seats in the province – and has more seats there than in every Western province combined. Persuading people is what successful politicians do. But when you’re fearful of losing, like McGuinty is, you unleash fear campaigns, even when those are based on ignoring basic facts (e.g., characterizing the federal government as dominated by the West, when it has more MPs from Ontario).

        • Attack says:

          You’re on about the most recent election, when they consolidated their power. They _rose_ to power through the West, which, as noted in the quote above, Harper pledged to make the focal point of all their future policies.

          And don’t change the topic, from the CPC’s privileging the West over ON, to the CPC vs. the LPC in the most recent elections.

          Here’s the relevant facts:

          The number of Reform, Alliance or CPC seats held in Ontario for each of the past 6 federal elections…. versus their number of seats in all the Western Provinces and Territories combined

          1997: 0 ON seats; 60 in the Western provinces & Terr’s
          2000: 2; 64
          2004: 24; 68
          2006: 40; 65
          2008: 51; 72
          2011: 73; 74

          from http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/results.html

  16. ok says:

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    increase gold stock:

    this may help economy in Canada growth
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    btw

    I am not right

    maybe!

    ————–

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    this help stock market moving well up.

    gold coins or gold watch or gold neckless or any kind of gold as a gift

    with 24 and 18 karat gold

    if you can not afford it to shop from big stores
    go to flee market on Saturday and Sunday open are made you cheaper but check their validity
    security important

    keep some of gold and switch your gold to new form of neckless

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  17. ok says:

    -AND-

    Leave Mayor Ford mother alone
    she feed her child too much meat and fish perhaps

  18. Windsurfer says:

    First of all, I call it ‘noives.’ As in nerves.

    Also, McGuinty was extremely diplomatic, reserved or perhaps even nerdy when responding the Harper incoming.

    He could have said, in a politically correct way “We helped you CON-feds to implement the HST for the good of the country and the whole Great Lakes economy and now you come and stab us in the back.”

    I don’t know how that would have been said in an Ontario-politic-speak way but McGuinty would have looked better in my books if he had told Steve to back off.

    Your opinion?

    p.s. Stop calling RN2000 above, a dummy

    • RN200 says:

      Thanks, but I can take it. Sometimes I actually am one.

    • Attack! says:

      yeah, it’s pretty crazy how compartmentalized people have been in just blaming the two provincial Premiers who implemented the HST last year while giving a complete pass to the PM & his Elf who put them up to it.

      The ON Libs were also useful allies to the CPC in blunting the LPC’s criticisms of the corporate tax cuts, by proceeding with provincial corp. tax cuts. (Funny how the conbots never mention that now when bitching about how reckless McGuinty’s been with the economy.)

      As for ReN’s hyperventilating about the orchestrated comments on the Star article on this month’s job numbers, overreacting to a one month loss of 39,000 part-time jobs (good riddance, if they’ve been replaced by the better paying 16,500 new FT jobs that month) by citing the allegedly broken HST & Green Economy Jobs promises:

      1) as others pointed out in that thread, the time horizon for the HST promise was TEN years, not just one, for the changes to trickle through the supply chain, to free up capital to allow the so-called job creators to do their thing by investing in more equipment and hiring more people etc.

      Funny how the same people who were willing to buy Jack Mintz’s claims about the $30-B in foregone tax revenues for the last couple of rounds of federal corporate tax cuts requiring a good 7 years before they’ll result in 100,000 new jobs… are being so impatient as to demand instant action on the HST at the provincial level.

      And, again, as StatCan noted, there’s over 150,000 more FT jobs in ON than there were a year ago…. so they’re well on their way to the 600,000 or so over 10!

      2) RN demands a reckoning of where the green jobs are. Well, courtesy of ‘The Green Economy Review’; you can see them at http://www.bluegreencanada.ca/ON_manufacturing_jobs_map (click on the map there for an annotated listing)

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