03.15.2011 04:59 PM

Stupidity-related illness spreads in Ottawa, CJOH has the exclusive at eleven

Did the Prime Minister of all of Canada just use the ongoing tragedy in Japan as an excuse to avoid being inconvenienced by an election?  Really?

There is a bi-partisan outbreak of Dumb Flu in Ottawa, this week.  They should all take two aspirin, get some rest, and not call any of the rest of us for many, many weeks.

UPDATED: Based on this Ipsos, he’s at our very near a majority.  So is Mr. Angry playing a game?

20 Comments

  1. bigcitylib says:

    And they will do all these things, eventually. No May election. Tories offer tidbits. NDP accepts. Everyone pencils in late 2012 as the “Its Nobody’s Fault!” election. But from now until the end of the month, it’ll all be bad melodrama.

  2. JH says:

    I don’t want to interfere with anybody’s narrative, but there are a lot of us out here in main street Canada who are saying what the feck do we need an election for? As the polls would indicate we are not rushing to crown anybody King, but the idea that the economy is coming back and we can live with the usual Ottawa BS, which most of us ignore anyway, is a pretty good argument in my neck of the woods. Now the political junkies who jump all over these kind of comments won’t agree – but I think I’m closer to the mainstream than they are.
    Now ‘lay on McDuff’ et al, as expected

  3. Iris Mclean says:

    So we just have to give the Official Opposition a few more years to get its shit together.
    Sounds like a plan.

  4. Sort of like a QB testing the Defence.

  5. Annie says:

    Harper is getting ridiculous..something like the Republicans in the US..thinks the same way
    Democracy gets in the way of one-party rule…he should be offering something to Japan and stop this ridiculous blaming us.

  6. Timmy says:

    After your QMI column today even! Who’d a thunk it’d be the Harpers not the Dippers taking advantage?
    Reminiscent of Haiti Quake saving Harper from prorogation anger last year.
    I bet the Japanese would trade an election every month in place of the apocalypse that just befell them…

  7. The Doctor says:

    I find the Ontario number in that poll interesting, and a bit surprising, i.e., that the CPC would have that much of a lead over the LPC (though I assume the GTA number is not as bad — I assume team Liberal at least has a nice lead in the GTA?). Was the Ontario number that bad for the LPC in the last federal election?

  8. Timmy says:

    Did the protesters who died in Tunisia and Egypt consider accountable democracy “foolish games and distractions” as you call them?

  9. George says:

    Yeah but every news show I watched this evening warned of the global economic impact of what is happening in Japan. The quotes offered in the piece clarify what he said. I don’t think Harper’s far off with what is becoming clearer.

    • Namesake says:

      well, you must be watching scare-mongers, then, because the most knowledgeable and responsible analysts have pointed out how small even the considerable damage is in relation to the total Japanese economy, and how the reconstruction is actually likely to be GOOD for CANADA’s economy, since they’ll need lots of our resources to rebuild.

      See, e.g., this blogger’s round-up on that:
      http://impolitical.blogspot.com/2011/03/one-of-these-economists-is-not-like.html

      Oh, and the election itself is good for our economy, too, as its own little stimulus program:

      as Kady reminded people yesterday, the StatsCan-data-mining reporter Eric Beauchesne reported on this in Fall 2009, the FIRST time that Harper was waving the big ‘But the election will RUIN the economy” red and white flag:

      and, analysing the spin-off effects of the 2008 election, he found that Cndn. gen. elections produce: 40,000 FT jobs!

      http://www.punditsguide.ca/2009/09/guest-post-election-economics.php

      (not enduring jobs, sure, but neither were the ill-considered nature of the deliberately short-term EAP projects they invested $40-B in)

  10. Namesake says:

    What a crock: Harpo’s been saying this sort of thing all year,

    but it’s nonsense that the economy would tank if they weren’t at the helm,

    and it’s not like his team of trained seals — who do very little but prepare for QP every day and watch the news and twitter feeds to see if they can pounce on a mis-step by the Opposition — are actually DOING anything to help the economy.

    (Apart from Kenney bringing in a quarter million temporary immigrant workers a year to help corp. profits by undercutting wages, that is. http://urlm.in/hhxt )

    In fact, now that the stimulus program is over, this would be as good a time as any to clear the decks.

    And about that latest 40 v. 27 Ipsos-Reid poll Darrell Bricker served up:

    funny, but they don’t seem to mention that it was actually a three-point DROP from their last one.

    (43% v. 27%, on March 02: http://ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=5146

  11. hugger says:

    What? The LPC isn’t at 23%?

    Soon I will lose faith in these samplings of 1,000 altogether. At least they didn’t try to half Green support like Nanos does consistently.

    It seems that no matter how much of our money, and theirs, the Reformatories spend for self promotion and to circumvent the election spending cap, they just can’t break free of those chains that hold them back.

  12. Bell says:

    I wonder if the NDP are starting to see a change in their situation. The nuclear events, signs of growing food prices, Iggy continuing to do stupid things and Harper’S polarizing ways. There might be an opportunity for the NDP to pick up alot of protest votes. It would not surprise me if Layton calls Iggy’s bluff and votes to bring down the government. When Layton votes against the budget it will align with his party’s image. Unlike Iggy where his vote will only fall into the storyline already painted by the cons.

  13. Dan says:

    Good thing the Prime Minister doesn’t work for Afflack or he’d be toast.

    • Namesake says:

      Except that, like Gilbert Gottfried, he IS the spokesman for, in this case, the whole country; so it IS an embarrassment and bad for our national brand when he says things like,

      Most likely found doubly guilty of contempt of Parliament? Meh; you win some, you lose some.

      Lost your job and most of your savings in the recession I said most likely wouldn’t happen here? Meh; it’s a good time to invest, if you’ve got any money left.

      Hundreds or thousands mowed down in peaceful demonstrations against a dictator the West has been propping up for decades in Egypt, what should we do? Meh; they’re not going to put the toothpaste back in the tube on this one – guess we might as well support the call for democracy.

      And that doesn’t include all the vicious swipes he’s taken at the Liberal leaders, often on the world stage, and usually based on Soudas ‘intel’, such as that the former PM supported child pornography, or that MI cost us the UN seat, or that MI said Canada was too much of a small-fry to belong in the G8 any more, etc. etc.

      http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/663961

      http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/pm-apologizes-for-ignatieff-attack/article1213930/

  14. Matt says:

    Namesake:
    I think your partisanship might be blinding you a littlebit. BS does that when you’re in it up to your eyes.

    You say that PMSH is an embarrassment and bad for our national brand yet Canada’s reputation on the wold stage has improved the past couple of years. We are playing a leadership role in afganistan, our economic recovery is being hearalded as the best in the world and polls show international opinion of Canada is on the rise.

    You say it’s an embarrassment that Harper suggests a dip in the stock market presents a good time to invest in it. It does. That’s how people make money, buy low – sell high.

    Lost your job? Most have gotten them back at a time when much of the rest of the Western world is still struggling with much higher unemployment levels, much higher per capita national deficits and much higher national debt per capita not to mention much higher rates of personal bankruptcy and home forclosure. I think Harpers record on the economy speaks for itself when we lead the G8 in economic growth and Flaherty has been named the best finance minister on the world stage.

    Also lets not forget that Iggy did say we didn’t deserve a seat on the SC – he said it and that couldn’t have helped our case at all. Iggy did say we were too small a fry to belong to the G8, that didn’t help either. Don’t blame Harper for pointing out the stupid shiz that iggy says his idiocy deserves to be exposed.

    Also i don’t think it was sudas’ intel for the child porn thing but I’ll give you that point. It’s the only real one you get from this post,

    You might be embarrassed by Harper but even more Canadians are embarrassed by iggy. In fact, recent polls show that none of the above gets more support than he can muster. That means that more Canadians would rather have NO GOVERNMENT AT ALL than one led by Iggy.

    • Namesake says:

      Um, no, MI didn’t say the G8 thing — it was someone else altogether; hence the PM’s apology (that’s documented in the two news stories I linked).

      And do you seriously think the other countries were paying more — or ANY — attention to what the new leader of the Opposition may have said at an obscure Town Hall meeting about our international record, very late in the process (we’ve been trying for a decade), re: whether we still deserve a UN seat, when you yourself are crowing that he’s pretty much invisible even to Canadians? Or that the PM’s publicly whining about that would help our reputation after the loss, even if they did?

      And the fact that our economy avoided & weathered the global recession isn’t due to the CPC’s great acumen & stewardship, but despite it: it was because the “strong fundamentals” like banking regulations they tout were put in place by the Libs (often despite the Reform’s protests); and because of the surplus they were given to work with; and because of the stimulus spending they had to be threatened with a non-confidence motion to introduce, since they denied the recession was even going to hit us; among other things…

      … and the fact that, sigh, so many give Flaherty credit for that, is a function of how little people pay attention to such things in Canada, and also how little the international community pays to Canada, since they don’t distinguish b/w the current & the former administrations on these matters.

      Except they couldn’t have help notice — even if just for a little while — at the G20 last summer, when Harper & Flaherty spent over a $-Billion on, um, an austerity summit, and then proceeded to lobby the other countries AGAINST implementing an insurance system for the banks to PROTECT the world economy from another disaster from the one they just CAUSED.

      And the stock market thing wasn’t about the substance of his remark, it was about its insensitivity: it came off as horribly cynical and callous — or maybe just coldly clinical, or even autistic (like his “nascent democratic movements as seeping toothpaste” remark) — to those who had just lost 20% or more of their retirement saving from their portfolios, and was useless to them because they probably didn’t have any more money TO invest; and as you say, it was something obvious that savvy investors would know, anyway.

      • Namesake says:

        p.s., more about the gap between the reputation & reality re: Flaherty as the great economic manager.

        Popular opinion — even among one’s counterparts on distant shores — is NOT a good indicator of reality on something like this.

        Consider: the actor Rock Hudson, e.g.: he had a great reputation as a lady killer, a sex symbol, a man’s man… except, er, he was gay.

        Or Consider: Flaherty & Haper: helped us dodge the bullet, brilliant economists etc. … except,

        – again, they didn’t think the recession was going to hit us; and,

        – virtually all of their economic projections have been wrong, and the PBO’s right; and,

        – Flaherty himself introduced a measure that’s led us to coming perilously close to replicating one of the major causes of the U.S. meltdown — low interest 40 year mortgages, that leads to otherwise unqualified buyers getting over their heads in debt which produces a housing bubble that could crash big time — and then had to quietly reverse that a couple months ago.

        I could go on (obviously).

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