Dumb staff

So Puffin-gate was all the fault of another Conservative staffer. My question is, how many dumb staffers have the Conservatives hired this time?
By the way, Scott Tribe has been on fire lately in covering all the breaking election stories -- great stuff!

Hurricane America

From James Howard Kunstler:

McCain-Palin have nowhere to go now but down, and I will tell you exactly how this will happen. They can run away from President Bush, but they can't run away from the Republican Party. The Republicans will be regarded from now on as 'the party that wrecked America.' Over the weeks ahead, as carnage in the economy and the financial markets ramps up, it will become increasingly clear.

And James Carville actually said something sensible along the same lines -- "It's the economy, stupid" rises again.
I wonder if Harper can run fast enough in this election campaign to escape blame for the damage from Hurricane America, which apparently is going to drown the US economy. Canada would get soaked as well, perhaps also swamping any chance to implement Dion's Green Shift. Interestingly, this was described by Ottawa Citizen columnist Susan Riley as a brave, far-sighted idea:

...if [Dion] goes down, he will take his much-ridiculed and only partly understood Green Shift with him. That will be a catastrophic missed opportunity.
For all its intricacies, the Green Shift amounts to a straight-forward revolution in the way we are taxed; in what we, as a country, reward and what we discourage. It may be the boldest, most transformative policy advanced by a major Canadian party since free trade.

If Harper gets reelected, however, we'll be swirling down the US drain.

Disconnect

So Harper thinks this election is going to be nasty because those other guys are all going to be very, very mean to our Stevie.
As Dunkler said:

Are. You. Kidding. Me?
This from the guy who's been running personal attack adds against the opposition leader since day 1? This from the guy who last year said that the Opposition party and it's leader cared more about the Taliban than Canadian soldiers.
Are those the kind of personal attacks you're referring to, Prime Minister Harper?

Following the Karl Rove principle, we can anticipate that Harper will immediately launch a series of vicious smear attacks against Dion, Layton, Dion, Duceppe, Dion, and May.

Great line of the day

TBogg :

History repeats itself in a distaff way.
Dan Quayle was an empty suit.
Sarah Palin is a stuffed bra.

Great line of the day

From Sam Harris' article in the LA Times, Palin: average isn't good enough:

McCain has so little respect for the presidency of the United States that he is willing to put the girl next door (soon, too, to be a grandma) into office beside him. He has so little respect for the average American voter that he thinks this reckless and cynical ploy will work.
And it might.

Be careful what you wish for

This election is happening because Harper wants his majority government and he thinks he's going to get it.
While adopting the appearance of supreme confidence, the Harper Conservatives are throwing money around like drunken sailors and making promises to leave Afghanistan. They're so desperate to get Maple Leaf foods off the front pages that they're promising an inquiry -- yeah, I'm sure that'll happen, just as soon as they finish the Mulroney one. And their website is chock full of stories about how awful they think Dion's green shift is.
But they shouldn't underestimate Dion. Though Harper is more popular than he was, and than I think he should be, Canadians still just don't trust the Conservatives.
We trust Dion and support Liberalism in general. At today's Liberal town-hall campaign opener in Edmonton, Dion came out swinging:

"We are all playing, all of us, we are in the game," he said. "If we fight, and if we fight well, with Ken Dryden as our goalie, we will win....
"Don't waste your time looking at polls going up and down."
After a town hall-style meeting - in which he went to work on explaining how the green tax shift will benefit Canadians in general and Albertans in particular - Dion said he envisions the Liberal campaign as a series of such meetings with Canadians across the country.
"We are everywhere, as you have seen," he said.
And, he slipped in references to the way Prime Minister Stephen Harper has handled the media since coming to power in 2006.
"I am here, working without a safety net, answering any questions Canadians have to ask," Dion said. "I want this election to be a big town hall where we will discuss what's best for this country."
He also questioned, again, Harper's decision to call an election short of a fixed date in 2009.
"He gives a bad example to Canadians by not respecting his own law," Dion said.

Boris went to see Dion and gives us this report:

Dion spoke for about an hour, beginning with a short and clear campaign type speech to much applause, followed by a long question and answer period with the audience. The prelims introduced the Edmonton area Liberal candidates, and Dion's opener was all about the Green Shift. This is clearly the major policy issue they'll run on.
Overall, he appeared confident, well spoken, most definitely passionate, and approachable. I'd say handled himself very well, standing in utter contrast to the character assassinations coming from the Cons, let alone Harper as a person dead fish crooked pine 2x4. Definitely an A grade on form . . .
I made the comment to a friend afterwards that I was left wanting to corner Dion and pick his brain over coffee or beer. If he can stimulate that sort of interest in the broader public, perhaps he's on to something.

Harper has been listening to the polls telling him how popular he is, but as Jack Knox points out, the public mood isn't particularly positive for this election -- in fact, people are annoyed that Harper is pushing it:

...an election now is like going to the mailbox and finding a notice from your dentist saying it's time to get your teeth cleaned. You look at the notice and go, "Already? I thought I didn't have to go again until October 2009." That's when we were supposed to vote under Harper's fixed-date election legislation, the law that was supposed to free the process from political manipulation.
But the Conservative guy on the CBC show said no, no, another election campaign might be like going to the dentist, but we have to do it because Parliament is so dysfunctional. I guess he's right, if by dysfunctional you mean no one party having enough votes to do anything wingnuttish without the others taking away the car keys until the government sobers up.
Indeed, the Conservatives keep repeating to us that Canadians seem to like minority governments and that the forthcoming election is likely to breed another one. Super. Then let's keep the one we've got. It's only two years old, barely has the motor broken in, doesn't even have a dent. (Don't worry about that Bernier-Couillard business; it will buff right out.)

But since we're being forced to make a trade, maybe we'll go for a different model.

Seat prediction

Sean in Saskatchewan handicaps the Saskatchewan seats here and here and here. Sean's bottom line:

Conservatives - 10 seats, 3 to close to call
NDP -0 seats, 2 to close to call [Nettie Wiebe, Janice Bernier]
Liberals - 1 seat [Ralph Goodale], 1 to close to call [David Orchard]

Sounds about right to me.
Of course, if oil prices on the stock market keep going down, and the Saskatchewan public starts to feel a cool breeze signaling the end of our booming good-times-roll economy, maybe the voters will start to wonder whether they should actually support the bunch who so quickly broke their equalization promise when Harper told them to shut up and get with his program.
Or maybe not.

Trial 4?

Regardless of the notoriety of this case and the anger of the families involved, if all that has been achieved in ten years is one hung jury plus two verdicts overturned on appeal, then perhaps it is time to recognize that the evidence to convict beyond a reasonable doubt just isn't there.

Painting the roses red

I never really understood the Alice in Wonderland scene about painting the roses red until I read this Daily Kos story, about how McCain's people are rewriting the Vice-President's speech because their previous version was "too masculine". Then I suddenly began hearing the tune, "We're painting the roses red..."

Inquiring minds

Republicans find that if they live by the sword, then they must also die by the sword. In general, you could say that the media is giving the Palin pick the respect it deserves.

Shut up and smile!

Chet nails it -- the reason John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his Vice-President is because she will not challenge him at all.
She would look terrific at state dinners and funerals, however.

The Maple Leaf Election

So nobody seems to know what this election is about? Well, let's make it about listeriosis and Maple Leaf Foods.
Do Canadians want a government which will thoughtlessly risk their lives in order to cut government expenditures? If so, I guess you vote for Harper. If not, then vote Liberal.

Yeech!

The machines at the Maple Leaf plant were filthy:

While the machines were cleaned daily at the plant prior to the outbreak, the whistleblower suggested daily cleaning procedures were not consistently followed or thorough enough.
The Maple Leaf worker also claimed a shoestring night staff only manages to clean "what they see" and the production line where the recalled corned and roast beef were handled was not always cleaned thoroughly.
"They clean the surface, but not underneath. You can see the dust and meat sitting on it," he said.
For thorough sanitization, the slicing machines should have been occasionally disassembled and deep cleaned, the worker insisted.
"They should get a flashlight and look inside. It was terrible -- leftover meat -- the smell," he said, recalling what happened when workers did completely disassemble the machines this week.
What they found inside were the gritty, pasty remains of leftover meat.
"We used so much chlorine to kill the bacteria, my eyes were burning," he said.

Not an appetizing image, is it? But already, the cover-your-ass spin is starting -- the news story continues:

It is not clear whether the federal government requires meat processing equipment to be regularly disassembled and thoroughly cleaned as part of normal procedures.

I don't care whether there are federal regulations requiring this or not, Canadian meat processors should be doing it anyway.
I absolutely hate this kind of corporate excuse -- that something is OK because the government hasn't passed a law against it. Because out of the other side of their mouth, they're complaining about how too much government regulation is hampering profitability and industry should be allowed to police itself and blah blah blah.
And then we get a Conservative government which actually listens to that corporate tripe.
And then we get eleven deaths and counting.

That was then, this is now

The Globe and Mail has a photo feature which isn't actually about photos, but rather about words -- its all the things the Conservatives said in 2006 and 2007 when they passed the law about fixed election dates -- you know, Stephen Harper's promise to Canadians that he wouldn't do exactly what he is now doing, calling a politically expedient election.
Here are some of the words said then:

This kind of manipulation unnecessarily derails important government and parliamentary business and gives rise to cynicism among voters. - Jay Hill
Canadians will benefit from knowing exactly when these fixed elections will occur so they can plan their lives and the businesses around it. It improves governance by removing power from the prime minister's office and devolving it to the people, as it should be. - Russ Hiebert
Never again will the government of the day be able to play around with the date of an election for its own crass political motives. - Peter Van Loan
The increased electoral fairness through Bill C-16 ... will ensure that elections occur once every four years, not when the prime minister chooses to call them based upon whether his or her party is high in the polls. That was a terrible wrong. It was abused by the previous government repeatedly. This initiative will ensure that it is not abused again. - Scott Reid

Maybe their constituents will remind them of these words, during the coming campaign.

Great line of the day

Taylor Marsh on Sarah Palin:

There's a lot of talk now about sexist language and judgments being leveled, with terms, phrases and graphics judged inappropriate. It's not sexist to call the selection of Sarah Palin what it is. She was chosen on purely gender terms, her looks, and her personality, along with her hard reactionary right wing views, so John McCain could buy the presidency through the pulpit wing of the Republican Party. That's how she will be judged around here. Sarah Palin is the Miss Vice President candidate, nothing more. She has been tapped to be Miss Republican 2008.

Emphasis mine.