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This poses an important question: given we are all incredible stupid at exactly the wrong moments, should we hold public figures more accountable for being dopes? Consider the humour employed by Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz leveraging the listeria crisis, a crisis which has occurred under his watch:

…The remarks were made in a conference call at the height of the crisis, between Mr. Ritz and members of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Mr. Ritz joked that the crisis was causing the government a death of a thousand cuts “or should I say the death of a thousand cold cuts.” When informed that one fatality had taken place in Prince Edward Island, Mr. Ritz is reported to have said, “please tell me it’s Wayne Easter.”

That last bit’s just a plain dumb political crack…Gerry’s a regular Ritz cracker. [Ed.: Rimshot!] I have had the pleasure of briefly knowing with Wayne Easter and talked with him a bunch of times back around 2000-2002. I can tell you that you’ll never meet a brighter politician who has his feet firmly on the ground and who works hard for the community…even if he used to call his US counterpart the “Sekkytary of Aggykulchur”. He’d take the joke just fine but still do the political duty of making a fuss…if the joke was just about Wayne.

But this is not about Wayne. It’s that other line: the “death of a thousand cold cuts.” On last count, 16 or 17 people are dead. This man is the Minister in charge of making sure meat plants produce listeria free food. He made fun of it. With his subordinates, the inspectors. A great leader. A sensitive public servant. Or is this a real human being, under great pressure – for the first time likely – blurting as we would all blurt in one way or another? Maybe his jokes are terrible whatever the situation and no one had the heart to tell him? A man with a foible like every one of us.

My verdict: time to go Gerry.

Other News for Day 12:

• Have the Tories peaked? Or is the Globe’s polling just too weird?
• Anticipatory thanks for 1.9 billion.
• The promises so far: All Tory spending costing less than just NDP or Grit child care.

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It has officially begun. The long knives are out. Warren Kinsella was on CBC Radio’s Ontario Morning explaining what Hans and Sean, both Liberal card carriers¹ if you don’t have a program, were going on about yesterday. Dion’s people are Martin‘s people and they don’t want Chretien‘s people back in. Yessh-ka-bible! So it is, in fact, better to lose in a squabble that should have ended five years ago and then watch the country follow Harper than to get together and move on, say, in 2007. This contains a certain script:

• Chretienites are needed for victory.
• Martinites are losers
• Martinites are sore-heads.
• A Harper victory isn’t a real victory.
• Dion is really not supported by half the party.
• Dion can’t even reach out to half the party.

No wonder Bob Rae is jumping up on the campaign podium – having nothing to do with any of this stuff (as a defector) he must be stupified with the stupidity of the stupid people around him.

¹[Ed.: but apparently more in the sense of “latent host / incubator of the disorder” “carrier” than actual wallet filler going by the comments.]

Other news for Day 11:

• Is this really the campaign to blog about exclusively for 37 days?
• In the US election, McCain goes all Rousseau: “There is a social contract between capitalism and the citizen. That has been broken by these Wall Street executives.”

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One billion! Jack is going to spend one billllllion dollars. And for what? Med students!

Speaking at Dalhousie University’s medical school, Mr. Layton said an NDP government would spend an average of $200-million a year to increase training spaces and help provinces expand their medical schools.

Madness. Seemingly sensible madness. It’s always the way, though. Never a plan for the 45 year old slightly pudgy dreamer, those specialists in small to medium ideas that never get picked up. Why no plan for us, Jack(!)? Hmm? Hmmm???? To be fair, last time I was among Dal Med students back in the day, I did like their frat’s (Phi Chi) bowling – taking a dozen empties and recycling them through firm contact with a wall in the basement. But, really, isn’t what we need something that brings that same sense of fun and innovation into the lives of the dulled and enrutted? Those otherwise known as the backbone of the economy – folks in their forties?

What needs to be done by Jack(!) to fill that need? I say a policy that combines preventative health policy, international development and giving the little guy, that cog in the wheel of industry, a break – and not a tax break…I mean a break. I am talking Federally subsidized Caribbean holiday camps. To create work in our shipyards, we build a fleet of liners to ferry the overworked and under-appreciated to Turks and Caicos after finally finalizing provincial status. There slightly challenging courses on topics such as the history of moustacheo care in the 1970s, the use of orange in everyday fashion, great socialists in winter sports are offered while the kids are taken care of back north through a nationalized teen daycare…err…weekcare program.

Brilliant. By focusing on the demographic that likely won’t vote Jack(!) anyway, lives are changed, happiness is reinvested creating a more productive workforce and binds across the nation. Katimavik for adults…without any real assistance to others…but with drinks and a warm beach. Isn’t that what we really want? What other programs and promises should we see over the next month or so?

Other news for Day 10:

• Hmmm…what else is going on? How about remembering Stephen Harper’s words if things do go sideways: “My own belief is if we were gong to have some kind of big crash or recession, we probably would have had it by now.”
• Unrest in Grit ranks? Wow – who would have seen that coming.
• Bob Rae. Opening act. Good idea.

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One of the great things about a Canadian election is learning how many ways the same thing can be put. From the right-wing to the left-wing is a span of about a nanometre on the scale of political ideologies. Our neo-cons support socialist programs in health care and business development, our socialists support the free market. In this election there is no better example than the New Energy Economy. Jack (!) has announced programs to shift manufacturing on to a more sustainable foundation. The governing Conservatives have a remarkably strong and, dare I say, progressive program for shifting to a more sustainable economy. We all know about the Green Shift from the Liberals, even if we don’t quite understand it…perhaps, to be fair, yet. Don’t like the big parties? Then you can vote for the Green Party.

This is all plainly good and a bit weird. And I think it is plainly good for another reason other than keeping the place neat and tidy – it will create a new bubble economy! In the last fifteen years we have lived through the IT bubble (burst in 1998-2000) and the credit bubble (burst 2007-2008). The times of bubble economy are good times. Plenty of investment and, best, plenty of high grade burn rate of that investment, distributed generously amongst work toys, snack trays and recreational marine craft. People expect no results and lots of meetings over lunch. People get hired, buy things, save. All good.

And especially good if, by some fluke, the bubble also has the side effect of creating a number of actual benefits other than blowing the investments of others. In addition to jobs and increased trade, energy security should be that sort of bonus side effect benefit…in addition to thousands of buffet-style Chinese, Thai and Korean BBQ takeouts devoured in lunchrooms across the land.

Other news on Day 5:

• Harper does the right thing and does it quickly and decisively.
• Dion makes food inspection prime issue – smart.
• Do you trust any of these polls?
• A very good point from a soldier’s father.
• Questions about this Liberal candidate suggest Denonville’s terrible acts were not most extreme imaginable, even 325 years later.

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The Liberals must be loving this. Everything so far is about how Dion is not as bad as made out to be. First, we learn he has a hearing issue: so he is not the risk the Tory ads would tell you. Then, now he’s outdoorsy: so not an inept bookish dweeb the Tory ads say. And, now, he wears no bird poopie upon his shoulder. Bird poopilessness good. And by the way, Toronto Star, let’s be clear: a puffin is an auk, not a duck as your website stated. Just because we are in an election does not mean we chuck ornithology out the window. Duck poop, indeed.

So now Jack(!) has called for civility and, brace yourself, Stephen Harper has apologized. Harper never apologizes for his own actions. But, now he has – so that is good. He is growing up, too. And speaking of change, don’t expect website management to be left in the hands of partisan teenagers anymore. This apologizing tone is not the campaign the Tories expected.

You know, given that the Conservatives had wanted to make this election about Dion’s ineptness, Grits should remember Iggy wanted to make the puffin the symbol of the Liberal Party. Perfect. Do it…err, bad choice of words…make it so. They should shower themselves with stuffed puffins and plaster puffins on bumper stickers to remind us of the value a sense of humour in the face of mean spiritedness.

Other news for Day 4:

• Don’t you dare forget the GX40 election pool.
• “No, no – after you, Ms. May. Can I get you a coffee? What a striking outfit!“
• Why does Jack (!) most firmly hold on to the same stump speech?
• The Conservatives fail to ask the most basic question of a candidate in Halifax, forcing her to leave and leading to preparedness questions.
• Given this poll, the country may be playing for that weak minority which seems to work so well.
• Hazel would have spent the 300 million on sewers – better value.

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Being Canada’s favorite swing voter, it’s sad to see that Mr. Harper has begun with a great big fib, caught so plainly by the Edmonton Sun:

…it’s Harper’s Conservatives who are likely to prove most adept at demonizing their opponents. For almost two years, the Tories have kept up a barrage of negative radio and television ads against Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, depicting him as weak, indecisive, “not a leader,” and “not worth the risk.” Most ads have been accompanied by an unflattering photo of Dion shrugging his shoulders — a gesture that makes him look clueless and ineffectual…Nevertheless, Harper now says he expects to be the victim of “a very nasty kind of personal-attack campaign.”

Seems to be a case of he who lives by the sword dying by the sword…unless he who lives by the sword also beats off and beats up he who was trying to kill off he who lives by the sword. Regardless, be not fooled. Dion has endured an embarrassment of slander through the days of the last government and has actually come out a teensy-weensy bit better off for it, most Canadians actually thinking the Tory tactic was punkish if not a little thugish.

Whether Dion can leverage something off of his two years of rope-a-dope is an entirely different matter.

Other issues for Day 2: There is more going on out there today like:

• Harper is short three candidates.
• The “throw the bums out” factor.
• Was there ever an election where “majority” was a dirty word?
• I want an “UNDECIDED!” lawn sign.

More later if there is more later.

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