Sayeth the Globe:

“The provincial Liberals have learned from this federal Conservative campaign, not just by co-opting its tone, but by starting airing their ads months before the writ actually drops.

…these ads could well make a difference by the time Oct. 6 rolls around.

Liberal MPP Bob Chiarelli has defended their content, saying Mr. Hudak’s promises “have no substance and cannot be backed up by any third party advocate with any credibility whatsoever.”

“There’s no plan, there’s no priorities, there’s no policies. It’s a sham. It’s a scam.”

It’s an argument that could have particular resonance in the GTA, where the city is still coming to terms with its decision to elect a mayor who promised a taxpayer windfall without showing how he would make it possible.

Across the province, communities are facing real needs: crises in health care and education, shortfalls in infrastructure and innovation.

Unless Mr. Hudak and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath can persuade people they have real solutions, and the money to pay for them, Mr. McGuinty’s attack ads just might be enough to earn him another term.”

And the Globe’s Siri Agrell is right, as I wrote in this book: some may say that they don’t like critical ads about a politician’s public record.  But they pay attention to them, and are motivated by them.  As I’ve said a million times before, there’s nothing “negative” about shining a bright light on an opponent’s public record.

The ad released yesterday – seen again above this post – is merely a collection of things the media, not Liberals, have said about Tim Hudak.  The PCs, who can’t take a punch without crying like little babies, have been shrieking mightily about them – on this web site and elsewhere.  It seems their hero Harper is permitted to do ’em, but not anybody else.  Uh-huh. Pot, kettle, black, etc.

Ontario Liberals are indeed in a tough fight to win the support of Ontarians.  After being in government for nearly a decade, and after having made some tough decisions, I’d expect nothing else.  In fact, I had frankly expected we’d be further behind, at this point, than we are.

What you shouldn’t expect is that we will simply roll over and hand over the keys to a dishonest, facile politician like Tim Hudak (cf., said he’d “stop the HST in its tracks,” now plans to keep it; said full-day kindergarten is a “frill,” now claims he’ll keep it; attacked human rights laws repeatedly, now insists he’s changed his mind, etc. etc.).  We won’t do that, because we genuinely believe Hudak is in it for himself, and not Ontarians.  He’s a phony, fatuous fratboy.

And we will therefore fight for every vote until the very last moment.

 

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When Fratboy Tim stops telling lies about us, we’ll stop telling the truth about him.

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As Chip Martin detailed in the London Free Press, innumerable Liberal supporters in the hotly contested London ridings reported receiving late-night calls of harassment — spreading false information, for example, about polling stations being moved.

Most of the calls came from smear-for-hire call centres in Florida or the Dakotas, which were beyond the reach of Canadian law.

“A good Conservative friend informed me they had actually been utilizing a central office for phone calls and that none of them emanated from London itself,” Pearson wrote on his much-read blog. “They had poured big money from afar into influencing my riding.”

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This young man has captured the attention of many people.

I hope we hear from him again.

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See the details here.

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SFH has been in the studio! Here is a taste of one of our new tunes. Lemme know what you think!

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With our combat role allegedly ending in Afghanistan – and with Rise Against’s show at Edgefest, which we saw with 16,000 others on Saturday – I figured it was timely to again post my kids’ still-favourite song, Hero of War. Worth watching and heeding.

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But voter suppression, sadly, isn’t just found in the Third World. Sometimes, we get to experience it right at home.

So, on Super Bowl Sunday in 2007, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives launched an expensive ad campaign carefully designed to depict the then-Liberal leader as a weakling who couldn’t speak English. “Stephane Dion is not a leader,” the Super Bowl ad proclaimed.

The spot featured a clip of Dion and his leadership opponent, Michael Ignatieff, verbally sparring at a debate. Ignatieff tells Dion the previous Liberal government “didn’t get the job done” on the environment.

Dion, outraged, sputters: “This is unfair. Do you think it’s easy to set priorities?” Nowhere in the ad does Harper’s campaign team declare they were hoping to persuade one million Liberal voters to stay home.

But that in fact was their objective and they achieved it. Extensive focus group and polling research had told the Tories that while many Grits despised Harper, they also had serious misgivings about Dion’s “image” as a leader and his ability to communicate.

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Great journalism is great storytelling.

This is great storytelling.

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I can’t remember the last time I read something like this by a Canadian journalist.

That’s because I haven’t.

(The truth, as they say, fears no questions.)

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