Tuesday, June 9, 2009

What the hell is going on?

Let’s just summarize the last few weeks:

Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and Dalton McGuinty’s provincial Liberals tag-team a $10+ billion bailout of GM and Chrysler. A significant portion of those dollars will be taken from the majority of Canadian taxpayers to top up the pensions of the few – the GM retirees. This in spite of vociferous denials by both levels of government that that would not be the case. Predictably all the other auto manufactures are now crying foul because they are now at a competitive cost disadvantage (a legitimate complaint).

A testy John Baird responds in Question Period to opposition claims that infrastructure funding is slow to get out by saying “It is moving 10 times faster than under any other Liberal government". This is undoubtedly the Freudian slip of the month and confirms what many neo-Cons have suspected for months now.

Lisa Raitt (Jasmine MacDonnell) leave commercially and politically sensitive ministerial briefing papers at CTV and apparently don’t notice them missing for weeks. Good thing they’re both on top of the portfolio.

John Baird tells Toronto to “fuck off”, gaining another 500,000 Conservative votes in Western Canada. Oh wait, he’s from Ottawa, isn’t he? 100,000 votes then.

Lisa Raitt (Jasmine MacDonnell) makes what could charitably be called injudicious remarks on tape, which then gets left in a washroom, delivered to the media, and subsequently published after a failed attempt by MacDonnell (really??) to get an injunction against their release. Deep Trough is on it and we’ll soon know who really paid the legal costs. The tinfoil-hat-wearing Tory bloggers are crying Liberal conspiracy. Ho-hum.

Michael Ignatieff and the Liberals decide to support the Cons tough on crime Bill C-15. This in spite of significant push-back from the Liberal grass roots and ample evidence that mandatory minimums never have, and never will work to reduce crime. But I guess when the alternative is more Cons “Liberals soft on crime” Howling_Wolfattack ads, policy adjustments must be made.

Alberta’s Stelmach Tories are musing publically that Ignatieff is more sensitive to many Alberta issues than Harper is. Jim prentice is not amused.

And then to top it all off, Molson retirees will no longer get their entitlement of 864 bottles of free beer a year and current employees will be limited to 624 free bottles a year (12 per week – that’s two a day except Sundays when they’re allowed to drink real beer).

It’s been like a month of full moons.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

While you lament on the govt using 'your' money for GM bailout, you have not offerred up praise for their entertainment.

Not once in many moons has so much been happenning in our little town.

If things were quiet, you'd have to write about Harley's running on vegetable oil.

Or how the squirrel corssed the lawn.

Just please don't talk about your regularity.

Or cookie recipes, oops you went there already.

Canajun said...

LOL. Ross, you're right, the entertainment value has been priceless - worthy of a Mastercard moment.
And fyi, I also (kind of) already wrote about squirrels crossing the lawn. :)
http://viewsfromthelake-eh.blogspot.com/2007/04/squirrels-nuts-and-politicians.html