The Republican nincompoops on parade

I watched the Iowa Caucuses on Tuesday evening and, until now, I have never considered  the remotest possibility that the sky might fall, but the way things are going, that seems just as likely to happen as the other mind-boggling events transpiring across my television screen.

Michele Bachman – is there a more stupid woman in public office than this crone? She reminds me of Leona Helmsley, the Queen of Mean hotel heiress who finally died, to everyone’s great relief. I find myself wondering if reincarnation isn’t maybe more than just a theory.

Newt Gingrich is proof you can never go home again, and whyever would you want to, when you keep running into this old fart sitting around crying in public when he isn’t papering over the cracks in his character.

Herman Cain of Georgia, has two major flights of fantasy: that women just can’t get enough of him, and that if any fool can be president then why not him? This guy was apparently former chair of the federal reserve bank of Kansas City Omaha branch and former chair of the federal reserve bank of Kansas City, yet two more reasons to lynch every American banker you know for the mess they have left behind.

Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas also called Crotch Perry because he wears jeans so tight you can count every wrinkle and pubic hair in the bulge he wears so prominently. Called by many the worst governor in Texas history, he couldn’t remember the three federal agencies he would eliminate if he was elected president. All right then.

Ron Paul is everyone’s favorite 79 year old candidate. When my grandfather started to suffer from old age he retired. Paul is cleaning out his mind and putting forward all of the stuff of a lifetime – see anything you like folks? Vote for me and you can have it.

Rick Santorum – cute as a bug, earnest. So why did the voters of Pennsylvania throw him out of the House of Representatives in the last election? So if you aren’t good enough to be a Congressional Representative then why not run for President? We’re having the water tested this week.

Mitt Romney – what can you say about a guy named Mitt? Watch peoples’ lips curl as they say his name. Watch the disdain most show in his presence. Watch the Republicans hold their noses and vote for him because he’s the only candidate who is even remotely in touch with reality. But they can’t stand him.

How did we get here? More importantly, how in the hell do we escape?

 

2012′s best quote

Writing columns or blogs or anything that has a repetitive nature to it is always a challenge. Going on auto pilot helps but it also means mouth and hand are in gear while the brain is on a break.

Witness the comment below. I suspect that at the end of 2012 it will still stand as one of the better “foot-in-mouth” comments of the year.

Genealogy involves, as you know, a study of the past. Many of us searching our roots use  professional software. I use RootsMagic – everything about it is first rate, so the following statement in their year-end blog first startled me and then, on rereading, sent me into out-loud laughter.

In the last genealogy blog of 2011, the author said:  ”we’d like to take a few of the last remaining minutes of the year 2011 to review some of our accomplishments from the last 12 months with you, our users.  If you’re not one to dwell on the past, check back Monday as we present our 2012 New Years’ Resolutions …. “

Instant classic. An outstanding program and excellent company. Kinda nice to know even the best sometimes get a brain cramp. Bet he’d like to have that one back.

When politicians persist in stubborness and being wrong

My blood boiled over again today at the stupidity of Conservatives over law and order.

Harper is planning to spend hundreds of millions, which will climb into the billions very quickly – a year from now? two? – on building more prisons to lockup more people for longer periods of time to crack down on crime.

Presumably Harper intends to scare people into going straight. “Mess with us and we’ll put you in jail for long periods of time. Almost no time off for good behaviour and no mercy and no judge’s discretion either, boy. Your arse is ours and will be for a long time.”

Of course if this really was an effective deterrent, we wouldn’t need to build the prisons, right? There will aways be some dip sticks who don’t get it but we could build our own Alcatraz in the Arctic area, ship ‘em off there and get on with using our tax dollars for something useful, like research into and treatment of post traumatic distress, something a grateful nation owes to our soldiers who fight in foreign wars. There are no end of uses we could put the billions to, but prisons not so much.

And of course, if you want cockamamie stupidity you’d have to go far to beat Timbits Hudak who, if elected Ontario premier, is going to send criminals out into our communities to work on chain gangs. It is somewhat difficult to treat this brain cramp with the derisiveness it deserves because we can’t stop laughing. What we have here is a failure to communicate. Hudak you dummy – where are you going to find the money for guards and guns? And once the  inmates in Maplehurst have finished cutting all the grass and picking up all the crap in the ditches in the highways for 20 miles in every direction, then what? In month four, what’s the plan?  What do you do with all these guards and all these chain gangs?

And remind me how all the families you so desperately try to curry favour with are going to react to dangerous criminals working in the ditches and streets your family passes through each day? Happy are they? Not worried about an escape try or guards shooting out the lights when someone tries to escape? You won’t put those types out on the chain gangs? Then where’s the benefit if you only put good criminals out on the chain  gangs?

It’s stupid, so brain frying ridiculous that laughter is the first mechanism against losing your sanity in the face of such determination to press on regardless. But after the laughter comes the rage.

What do we do when politicians are elected and everyone – every expert in law enforcement, every expert in bringing about changes in behaviour, every expert in jurisprudence  – everyone with the slightest knowledge of what works and doesn’t has tried to tell these two politicians that what they are about to embark on, or will embark on if the peabrain Timbit is elected – everyone has said repeatedly that what they want to do doesn’t work.

And its going to cost us billions. And for what? Because these two refugees from responsible government are going to prove that when it comes to dumbness the Tea Party and Fox News are going to give them a run for their money.

So what to do?

I have a suggestion. I think this would work.

I  don’t believe you penalize people for mistakes or for being dumb, provided it is clear that in both cases it was inadvertent. But when all of the experts disagree, and all the other political parties disagree with you, and people are making it clear that even though they voted for you because of the economy they don’t support you at all in this prison poison, then when it proves to have been a dumb thing that is costing tax payers a bundle and the crime rate was going down before and is still going down so your prisons have had no effect – then what?

Then we take action.

How? We immediately kick out of office every single member of the government Party that voted on the government bill that started this whole thing. They are also barred from ever again standing for public office.

In addition, the prime minister, deputy prime minister and minister of finance are all fined $4,000,000. All other cabinet ministers are fined $2,000,000 each. Back benchers and aids to ministers will be fined $250,000. All of the money will go back into government revenues as a small token of pay back to the Canadian taxpayer. Where does the money come from? From their cushy pension benefits which are clawed back 75% per year until the whole amount is paid back. And they cannot default and  bankruptcy will not expunge it from their debt.

Now if you’re sitting in the far back row of the Harper government, were there is really only one sun allowed to shine  and you’re not it, and you are facing never being able to run for public office again (no job!!!!) and your pension being clawed back, are you prepared to go along?  I don’t think so. I think you say “Steve, my man, you’re on your own. I’m voting against.”

Works to a T doesn’t it? If about 10 or 15 of them say no way, then the bill is lost. Ergo, no one is kicked out of office and no is fined and best of all, we don’t spend billions on unnecessary prisons and chain gangs. If they do stand up and vote as they’re told, their days are numbered.

Works for me.

In the land of the blind there is no one-eyed man

I remember not so long ago, easily within memory of those of us who still think we’re reasonably young, when the United States stood for something that the rest of the world envied.

It was a decent nation with decent instincts, and if it sometimes took up too much space in the room that was OK because its innate sense of right and wrong, fair and unfair, was about as good as you’re likely to get in any nation. Anywhere. In the whole wide world.

There were problems for sure. Lord there were problems, particularly in the way in which Blacks lived and worked. Blacks were denied education and opportunity, they sat in the back of the bus and were not allowed to eat or drink in white establishments, most lived in substandard housing in abject poverty and in some areas of the country they were lynched on a rather regular basis. Slowly but surely Americans brought about change. Changes in the law. Changes in attitude. Changes that have taken 100 years or more to come to fruition but that are, nevertheless, substantive. Compared with progress on equally challenging issues in other countries, the United States was always a country we could admire. And envy. And we did.

But today, I wonder where that country has gone. Because it is gone, and in its place is a land of mean-minded, me-first, me-above-all people, people who are largely ignorant of what is going on around them, people who know they are in a hell of a mess but who have no idea what the problems are or how they are going to get themselves out of the mess; people who have no idea who to trust and therefore don’t much trust anyone any more.

This was a country in which a president said “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

This was a country in which a president said “I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says: ‘Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest.’ I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have.”

This was a country in which a president said “I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.”

These were American presidents calling forth the best of their fellow citizens, holding forth the ideals Americans believe are enshrined in their Constitution, their Bill of Rights, their Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial.

But then it all changed.

This was a country in which a president said “A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?”

This was a country in which a president said ”I’m going to be so much better a president for having been at the CIA that you’re not going to believe it.”

This was a country in which a president said ”You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.”

This was a country in which a president said  ”And the cornerstone of my economic policies, when I first got elected, was cutting taxes on everybody on who paid taxes.”

Between the first lot and the second, the US lost its way.

The policies have been insane on a breath-taking level. Cut taxes. No matter what. No matter the math. Keep taking away any ability to manage the nation’s business intelligently. Spend billions every month on war but go into deficit to do so. Keep cutting those taxes. Keep spending money on the military. Keep cutting the gravy – education, health care, infrastructure. Give them less and less and keep repeating “Government isn’t the solution. Government is the problem.” Get a nice actor from the B list to play president and let him keep reminding people about how that and the “trickle down” theory really is the panacea of good government. And keep spending billions on war and cutting taxes.

The price of ignorance is always – always – much higher than the price of an educated populace. Education provides at least a basic knowledge and understanding of how math works, how money works, how taxes work and how government works. But when the math and the money and the taxes and the government are taught by charlatans, and when those who know better are so afraid for their own political future that they go along with the charlatans rather than call them out – then the people are lost.

Where is the man or woman who will stand in their place and call out the nonsense, who isn’t afraid to say that the way out of the mess is taxation and each doing their own part. Where is the man or woman who will stand in their place and demand that adult Americans begin to talk about what role they want government to play and how they will fund it. Where is the man or woman who will stand in their place and name the congressmen who say they have been elected to tear down the government to get their own way. Where is the man or woman who will stand in their place and call out the Rush Limbaugh’s, the Roger Ailes’, the Bill O’Reilly’s, the Sara Pallin’s for the cancers that they are, subverting every decent value America once stood for and sewing in their wake fear, ignorance and greed.

Robert Kennedy said “For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.”

He also said “Gross National Product measures neither the health of our children, the quality of their education, nor the joy of their play. It measures neither the beauty of our poetry, nor the strength of our marriages. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It measures neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our wit nor our courage, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worth living. It can tell us everything about our country, except those things that make us proud to be a part of it.”

Surely the long national nightmare in America will end and the proud and noble country to the south of us will again embrace that spirit, will again call forth from its citizens the nobility of which they are capable. And pray it isn’t too late.

One’s a liar and one’s complicit

Bev Oda and Stephen Harper.

She’s a liar and he lacks integrity.

When you’re caught flat footed in lying and the whole country knows it, if you have any shred of decency, if you have even the ghost of a glimmer that would help you distinguish right from wrong, then you resign. As fast as possible so that the rot and the stain on the nation’s honor is staunched as soon as possible.

But this tawdry Tory twosome has no shame. She refuses to face the House of Commons and sits mute in her place except when she is sneaking out for a cigarette while the House sits and debates. He stands with a sneer on his face while his minister lies by saying she made no change to a document.

First she tries to blame a civil servant for changing the document. The she grudgingly agrees the document has been altered but insists “it’s not my signature, I didn’t do it.” Finally, ignominiously, she stops trying to blame the civil service when that clearly is not going to fly and she goes silent.  He refuses to acknowledge any problem and stonewalls at every turn.

The wedge issue in the upcoming election? There’s only one issue, period, full stop. When you can no longer trust the government, when the prime minister is a liar, when some of the cabinet ministers are liars, then there is no choice. There can only be a regurgitating of the whole foul mess of people currently in office for what is clear is that we can never again trust anything they tell us.

The truth about the $5 billion needed for new prisons and the war on crime? Economists and experts in the criminal justice system say we don’t need anything like it. Who do you trust?

Changes in the security of our common border with the US. Why are we being kept in the dark? Why are we not trusted with information about changes or agreement we may be stuck with? You think the prime minister’s word amounts to a row of tin balloons?

Do you believe the budget for the G20 c0nference? You think $2 billion was the result of a well-managed, well-thought out process that made sure there was no waste of the people’s resources? Do you think we’ll ever get a full accounting of that sink hole down which we pored billions?

How can you spend $2 billion in 4 days without there being a lot  – A LOT – of questions about who paid what and when. At a conservative guess, how many Tory pigs were at the public trough schlepping up contracts to build fake lakes and fixing up Tony Clements’ back yard which, by the by, was never needed or used?

YOU THINK WE CAN TRUST THESE HACKS AGAIN? EVER?

How would you do that? Why would you do that?

There is no economic or financial leadership that is worth this kind of corruption and sleaze.

The sooner they are gone from our sight the better. And it really doesn’t matter who is elected to take their place.  There is no one who wouldn’t be a 1000% improvement. The village idiot? You bet. Leaders of other political parties? Absolutely?   So long as the Harperites have access to power, to impact the lives of the people of Canada, so long will we exist with corruption and venality.

The sounds of silence

As I was saying …

So I caught the Harper ad during the Super Bowl last week.

When the spot opens, it is midnight in the garden of Parliament; the announcer and a mysterious figure seem like the last two people on earth. The witching hour is upon us in Parliament and all is dark and shuttered. There are no well lit hallways, no sounds of cleaning staff running a damp mop over things, no lonely security staff standing on guard. Down this long long Parliamentary hallway, lit by what looks like one single 60 watt bulb, strides the unmistakable silhouette of he-who-must-be-obeyed, the puffed up pomposity of the prime minister himself.

And what is he doing? Going to work about midnight, if we are to believe it. He steps up the stairs leading to his office, with maybe one light bulb pushing back the darkness, until we reach his office. And there, with shirt sleeves rolled down, cuffs buttoned and tie firmly in place, the prime minister does his homework. No matter how long he works, no wrinkle dares march across his shirt, the tie doesn’t loosen by even one thread and his carefully coiffed hair doesn’t so much as let a breeze pass across it.

This is real, man. We are not fooling around. We are AT WORK and our country of slackers are no match for this steely disciplinarian. We are AT WORK and we are doing our homework.

With a ball point pen.

He shuffles through the paper, although never more than five or six stacks at one time, making notes in the margins, writing earnestly;  every once in awhile he stands up, takes a few steps around his chair,  then he settles in again.  No phone interrupts him, no one is around to provide minimal security, no mp3 or ipod blips out music. It is the sounds of silence, where nothing is allowed to distract our focus on this one guy, running the country by his lonesome.

In the beginning I sort of half laughed, the way one does when you are expecting laugh cues, but then you realize “holy fake lake, he’s serious!”

This is the image he want to convey. One man alone, beavering away and making decisions for the nation while all about him are tucked into bed for the night. Suddenly it isn’t funny at all, but rather pathetic that neither Harper nor his staff see anything wrong with the image and the reality.

The thing is, until those ads, we didn’t have a graphic image of what our one man dictatorship really looks like but it is coming clearer daily. Whatever the issue or concern, there is no cabinet, there are no MPs, there is no team working on the nation’s problems. It is one man, working in splendid isolation, away from the facts, away from people.

What price, I wonder, will we pay for all of this?

Leave Tiger alone

I don’t think, in all my years of watching the absurd, the hypocritical, the smug, the holier-than-thou, the self-satisfied self-appointed arbiters of right and wrong – in all my years I have never seen a more disgraceful, hypocritical piling on than has been the case with Tiger Woods.

If I had a nickel for every asshole sportswriter who has ogled women not his wife, made lewd suggestions to women not his wife and who would cheat on his wife in a nanosecond if any women found him even remotely attractive – if I had a nickel for each of these jerkoffs who have had the unutterable gall to pile on Tiger Woods, then I could retire and live the life of the rich.

Tiger Woods cheated on his wife. His wife Erin is beautiful looking, seems to be a good mother, and is a private person. Probably 100 million wives in North America fit more or less into this category – some may not be beautiful but almost all will fit the other two descriptors. I’d wager that at least 40% have been cheated on by their husbands and I’d bet a further 25% have done the cheating. But we don’t publish their names in the paper, we don’t get up on hypocritical soapboxes and make smug, repulsive  statements about how these folk have let down mankind because they went poking around an area not their own.

What gives all these jerks the right to make Tiger Woods the punching bag of the free world?

The latest, most staggeringly hypocritical comment came today from Augusta National chairman Bill Payne, the chair of a club that discriminates against women, and does so with great pride. You will recall the huffing and puffing of the troglodytes a few years ago as they turned a deaf ear to the thundering criticism that came from all quarters as they were challenged on their remaining a segregated club which refuses to allow women to become members.

Tiger has publicly apologized and acknowledged that he has done wrong. The club which Payne represents continues its blatant discrimination against all women and beats its chest with pride over its morally reprehensible standards and behavior.

Payne said this: “It is not simply the degree of his (Tiger’s) conduct that is so egregious here; it is the fact that he disappointed all of us, and more important our kids and our grandkids. Our hero did not live up to the expectations of the role model we saw for our children.”

So if I get this right, Payne and all his members think it’s OK to set an example for their daughters that reinforces that they are second class citizens who don ‘t count because they don’t come equipped with a penis, while simultaneously setting an example to their sons that they are entitled to entry into whatever group takes their fancy just because they were born boys.

Now how unreal is that? How demeaning to women and how demeaning to the boys with the unfortunate fate of being fathered by the likes of Bill Payne.

I’ve had more than enough of the Tiger Woods bashing. I’d like to see Tiger win this week and then refuse to be photographed with Payne. I’d also love to see Tiger stand up and snarl that if one more asshole decides he has the right to pass judgment and comment on his (Tiger’s) private life he’ll personally pop the idiot in the chops.

Enough already. The man cheated on his wife – that’s between him and her. Do I favor adultery? No way. Do I believe it’s my place to butt into someone else’s marriage and make public comments on it? No way.

Does Tiger Woods owe me? Yeah – if I buy a ticket to watch him play golf he owes me the best effort he can give. He owes me the effort of a thorough professional whether he feels like playing that day or not. Does he owe my kids? No, he doesn’t. Will he be idolized by young kids if he takes the time to sign autographs and pictures etc? Sure, but he doesn’t owe that to anyone. If he is content to be accorded respect for his skills on the greens but is willing to be considered an ugly human being because he’s rude or impatient or brushes kids off, then that’s his choice. Either way, he gets to make the choice and you get to like him or not but you don’t have the right to heap abuse on him for something that is none of your business.

I suggest we pass a new law – if you want to throw stones, you first have to be subjected to the same degree of scrutiny and held to the same standard you want to apply to someone else. Tough, I know – most sports pages would be blank and most sports voices would be silenced. Which might be an even better reason to make it law.

Meantime, can we have an end please to the egregious prosecution of Tiger Woods?

Positive Canadian news

It’s easy these days to be completely depressed about Canada and being a Canadian. Heil Harper has brought such disrepute to this nation that it is embarrasing and humiliating to acknowledge that yes I was a voter  when this cancer got elected.

What other nation in the world sends troops into action  – AND REQUIRES THEIR TROOPS TO SHARE A UNIFORM? Heil Harper who is so quick to mouth sanctimonious platitudes and saccharine thanks to the brave men and women in our armed forces, but behind the scenes? – his support comes to this :

“Members of the naval boarding party, the rifle-toting team that searches the pirate boats, were denied military-issued boots, hats and uniforms necessary to do their jobs.

“This resulted in situations where team members were required to share one person’s uniform between them throughout the mission,” said the report by Cmdr. Craig Baines, obtained under the Access to Information Act.”

So wait for it – the next thing will be a spin out of Heil Harper’s office that Cmdr. Craig Baines is the problem and didn’t notify Ottawa and should have done this and that and isn’t protecting his troops. Wait for it. It is never Heil Harper’s fault – it is ALWAYS someone else who has screwed up.

Earlier this week the respected Economist magazine wrote a story about how Heil Harper ” is counting on Canadians’ complacency as he rewrites the rules of his country’s politics to weaken legislative scrutiny.”

In any other democratic country either incident would have its citizens in an uproar but we have come to this that such actions just roll on by us, part of the long list of lies, bullying, and betrayal of basic decency that is the hallmark of this tinpot ruler.

But if Heil Harper is bringing disgrace to Canada, ordinary citizens are doing their bit to demonstrate that Canadians who are not part of the Reform Party government are as good as the Heil Harpers are bad.

In Las Vegas this week, Canadians “are stopping techies in their tracks” with “a perfect office” designed by Martin Carpentier, a web designer at NovelQuest in Quebec City.  NovelQuest has a tiny booth that is lost among the industry giants attending the International Consumer Electronics Show but the scorpion, as Carpentier calls his office, is drawing such crowds that traffic around the booth is almost impossible. Proving yet again that Canadians, apart from Reform Party politicians, can compete and win on the international stage in all categories.

And at the same electronics show, there is yet another Canadian showstopper which is a globe-sized, wireless audio speaker designed by Edifier of Richmond, B.C. It is among a few designs worldwide selected for a Consumer Electronics Show Innovations award.

In a completely different field, we learned this week about an innovative TD Canada Trust program it is pioneering in BC in which it is attempting to make customers of the very vulnerable on welfare who pay as much as $28 to get a government cheque cashed at payday lenders.

I’m fine with the fact that the bank will also benefit from this program and why not? A win-win is always good and this sounds like it truly is just that. I especially like the fact that the payday lenders, who have the same moral compass as Heil Harper, will suffer and who knows, may even be driven out of business. We can dream at least.

So far, about 2,000 people have participated in the program and most maintain active accounts. A small number have opened savings accounts, with some saving the $28 they used to spend at payday lenders.

Good news, badly needed by Canadians who need to know that it is only the Reform government that behaves like louts, accomplishes zip and blames everyone but themselves for their problems. The rest of Canada,  thankfully, continues to demonstrate the initiative and the skills and the decency and compassion that has always been the Canadian hallmark.

Heil Harper

Heil Harper says it all.

This smirking, self-centered, self-satisfied bundle of bullshit was never more clearly revealed as the masterful dissembler of lies and half truths he is than Tuesday night when he spoke to Peter Mansbridge on The National.  His breathtaking twisting of the facts and the truth to justify his actions in undermining Canadian democracy set new lows in political behaviour.

They say we get the government we deserve. What, I wonder, has Canada ever done to deserve this collection of  baboons?

I come to bury Liberals, not to preserve their rotting carcuses

I’ve been waiting for 10 months now for the Liberal Party to get off its butt and start acting like the party I used to know and support. I’ve now come to the sad conclusion that it can’t get off its butt because it is no longer alive. What we have is the rotting hulk of a once great Party now smelling out all corners of the land.

When Harper  got the Governor General to swallow a lot of codswallop that allowed him to duck a bullet last December, I thought finally the Liberals would waken from their long slumber. I anticipated the party would begin to hammer away at the ridiculous Reform Party now governing the nation and would come forth with alternative policies and programs to get us back on our feet again.

I know – what planet was I on?

I watched as the hapless Stephan Dion wandered through the minefield of a possible coalition government and then was heartened by the Party’s decisive action in getting Mr. Dion to step down without all-out war erupting. The decision to install Mr. Ignatieff without having him face party members across the country or facing other aspirants such as Bob Rae didn’t seem kosher at the time and now, even if it was kosher it was obviously the worst mistake the party could have made.

Ignatieff hasn’t been tempered by the fire a leadership race creates. He hasn’t had to answer tough questions from party members who want to know what the hell he’s going to do to improve trade, increase R&D, establish stronger and deeper ties with the BRIC countries and the European Union, rebuild our infrastructure, deal with education needs across the country and with pressing health care issues. Add the environment, the need for overhauling agencies, boards and commissions that no longer have mandates to deal with real problems in real ways – our airlines, our banks, our communications structures, and our management of national resources to mention just a few and there is no end of debate and discussion needed to determine where we should be going as a nation and how we’re going to get there.

Harper’s band of dimwits have no clue about what the issues are, locked as they are in a myopic belief that if we turned the clocks back 15 years and cut taxes all would be well. Most Canadians recognize that for the utter bullshit it is but the trouble is they aren’t hearing any alternative at all, so although it looks and smells and acts like bullshit, and if there’s no counter suggestions from the Liberals then maybe it’s bullshit that isn’t so objectionable.

And so we have witnessed over the last 8 months a party that has waffled and wiffled and whined and whinged and said and done not one damn thing to make anyone want to support it. Ignatieff has stepped in every political cow pie Harper has thrown in front of him. He has made a fool of himself over will he or won’t he call an election. He disappeared from sight for all of June, July and August, and then he let himself be packaged in the ridiculous puffy ads that remind me so much of The Land is Strong campaign that Trudeau ran in his first effort at re-election. If you want a low water mark for all-time worst campaign and political leadership that’s it. However, I think we will soon have a new low, courtesy of Mr. Ignatieff.  He is showing daily that just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does.

The Dennis Coderre follies of the past week indicate just how badly everything is spinning off course. You don’t let that kind of embarrassment happen if you’re any kind of leader. Long before Coderre stepped to the mikes and blew off his leader, Ignatieff should have convened a meeting and hammered out a solution that kept family laundry in the family washroom. He could have and should have turned for help to long-time Liberals in Quebec, of whom there are quite a number, to get advice as to how to resolve things. But clearly he was caught off guard and off balance. And that’s the whole damn trouble.

Can he recoup? He could but he won’t because there first has to be a hard, clear-eyed, cold assessment of what’s wrong and then a similar decision about what’s to be done and what’s to be changed.

Above all Ignatieff needs to define what he stands for and where he wants to take the country should it be foolish enough to give him the keys to the car. He should call a major policy convention but it may be too late to do that. He needs to bring Bob Rae very much to the fore and assign him to speak on key issues. He needs to identify at least 3 or 4 others in the party who have some gravitas and can be seen as strong and articulate alternatives to the idiots like Tony Clements who clutter the Tory benches.

Ignatieff needs to stop talking about an election and get on with the job he was elected to do – hammer away at the government as Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, provide some alternatives and hold the Reform Party accountable for the mess we are in. Above all, Ignatieff needs to stop navel gazing and he needs to get rid of those around him who’s only perspectives are political spin. If all of that were to happen and if the party is lucky enough not to have any election called before May, then maybe the carcases will turn out to be bodies in hibernation. But given the events of the last 10 months, they look and smell and act like carcuses and I think that’s what they are.