Harpernomics

The financial markets are in meltdown. Canadian investors are losing their shirts. Canadian seniors unlucky enough to not have fat civil service or parliamentary pensions are seeing their nesteggs nuked. Again! It's a very, very scary time for many, many Canadians.

So how do the Harpercons respond?

Well, while Flaherty and his advisors are busy coming up with ideas to help Canada and Canadians weather the storm,



little Stevie Harper is singing his new economic theme song.

What was that about peaceful Sunday mornings?

Sunday is a day to which I particularly look forward, if for no other reason than I normally get an extra ½ hour sack time. And this morning was no different. Blissfully unaware of what was to befall me (and the neighbourhood) I was far off, on a favourite beach, surrounded by hard bodies (you just have to love how reality isn’t allowed to interfere in dreamland), enjoying the sun, sand, and surf.

And then – KABOOM!

What the... ?

6:38 AM.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

Aw crap! It turns out that today was opening day of the duck hunting season. Our little lake had been filling up with migrating ducks for the past week or so, which had apparently been noticed by at least two hunting parties. So at the crack of dawn all hell broke loose with competing groups on either end of the lake trying to outdo each other to see who could put the most RPMs (rounds per minute) into the air overhead.

Less than 10 minutes, and at least 100 rounds later, everything was quiet again. Any ducks with any sense of self-preservation had exited stage left, flying through the clouds of ack-ack, searching for cover among the homes on the lake. The neighbourhood dogs had stopped barking. Even the hunters had disappeared leaving behind nothing but a vague whiff of gunpowder, ringing ears, and piles of spent cartridges to later be discovered by local residents. And I was up, making the coffee, much, much earlier than planned.

Ah, life in the country.

They just can't seem to keep from lying.

I just listened to Flaherty and McCallum on Don Newman's Brooooaaaadcast, and the discussion turned, naturally, to income trusts. Flaherty insisted, on at least two occasions, that the income trust sector had rebounded, showing a 14.5% increase since September 2006. According to him, the only people who lost money in the income trust fiasco were "people that lost early on when they panicked and they sold". McCallum called him on it claiming that he (McCallum) had checked the figures this very morning and the sector had not rebounded. He was promptly told he was "wrong" and "totally inaccurate".

Then I find this chart posted at CAITI-ONLINE-MEDIA that clearly shows an 11.1% DROP in the income trust index since September 2006.

I'm beginning to think they really just cannot help themselves. It's pathological.

Let's do it all again, shall we?

Wow, that didn't take long. The election hasn't even been held yet and already Justice Minister Rob Nicholson is threatening "confidence motion". According to this story, Nicholson said "We will be taking a zero-tolerance approach. Our crime measures will be confidence measures, we are determined that our law and order agenda will be passed."

That's right. Lock 'em up and throw away the keys. And if you don't agree, we'll keep spending your money, $300,000,000 at a time, until you see things our way.

In other words, the beatings will continue until morale improves.

Unbelievable.

It's simply outrageous!

Conservatives cry foul over Island Liberal MPs’ pre-election newsletters

Let's see now. The Cons have been flooding the land with 10-percenters for weeks now, including a few from Baird's riding (and possibly others) that arrived in people's mailboxes after the writ was dropped, with the predictable response. So now, when Liberal Wayne Easter (he of Gary Ritz fame) sends mailers out it's the Cons turn to feign outrage.

Childish. All around.

$22 Billion

According to this article in the Ottawa Citizen today, "The Afghan war is going to end up costing the Defence Department more than $22 billion, in actual money spent on the mission and future payments to rebuild equipment and provide long-term care for veterans...".

For another perspective on the cost of this war, read this post by The Enlightened Savage.

Is there a pattern emerging here?

Every 50 feet or so along a stretch of Terry Fox Drive in Kanata this afternoon there was a Re-elect Gordon O'Connor sign posted beside the roadway. In among the sea of blue signs were the torn out signs of the NDP and Liberal candidates (There may have been some Greens in there too, but I was trying to pay attention to traffic at the time.) Not a single sign for the other parties was left standing that I could see.

Unfortunately this was a day I left my camera at home, but that image I think says more about one element of Stephen Harper's base than anything I could say in this blog.