Cadman Affair - Former FBI expert: Controversial interview tape of Harper discussing Cadman affair not doctored, according to Harper's own expert (CTV News)
Shun Lunn - Dogwood Initiative, an environmental lobby group, starts a Shun Lunn Campaign - Sounds like a good idea to me; we don't need offshore drilling in B.C., ever. (CBC News)
Loonie falling out of the sky - Hits lowest level in four years (CBC News)
Afghanistan - NATO stretches role to target drug trade in Afghanistan. The drug trade has been estimated to account for one half of Afghanistan's already meagre economic output. What's Canada's position on this? (NATO release | NY Times article)
Unable to compete on ideas alone, Harper stoops to using personal attacks in a scene reminiscent of the inhumane Kim Campbell attack on Jean Chrétien which led to 1993 conservative party wipeout.
Tom Hanson/CP
Stephen Joseph Harper should get a time out for attacking Dion over a flubbed interview (Video for those who have not seen it as yet). Its the worst sort of attack the style, not discuss the substance, politics.
Whether its attacking personal traits, misrepresenting the ideas of others (bluntly: telling lies), muzzling most of your candidates, engaging in what are probably illegal in and out campaign financing schemes, subverting democracy, Harper willingly choses the politics of attack and division over that of ideas and substance. CTV running an interview they said they would not is also rather interesting.
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The whole scenario reminds me a lot of Kim Campbell's 1993 election campaign where her team decided to run an attack ad directed at Jean Chrétien which featured the former prime minister's facial deformity prominently. The ad backfired, and while it didn't directly cause the destruction of the Progressive Conservative Party, it certainly helped.
Speaking as an anglophone who from time to time tries to ressurect his Grade 12 French, and as someone who has also spent some time in predominantly French-only parts of the country such as Chicoutimi, I immediately recognize the confusion introduced into the interview by this question:
If you were prime minister now, what would you have done about this economy and this crisis. CTV interviewer
Different tenses, present and past. This messes me up all the time when I'm thinking in English but speaking French. In the interview Dion gets a little flustered but it seems to me that he is trying to be sure of the tense so that he can reply to the question. Of course it goes from bad to worse, yet eventually a clean cut is done. CTV runs the out-takes as a story itself, a decision which one might rightly question.
Its been said that the good people of Quebec give Harper a lot of credit for speaking to them in their language, however imperfect it has been over the years. We anglos should be doing the same for Mr. Dion.
For a more humorous version of my outrage, one would be hard pressed to do better than this video:
Unprecedented market plunge of more than 41% occurs on Harper's watch. Incredulously, Stephen Harper reacts to this historic global crisis by saying it's a terrific buying opportunity!
Even as Mr. Harper hungrily contemplates all the fantastic deep discount stock buying opportunities being presented, a historic market crash affecting Canada's retirees, want-to-be retirees, unions (the largest investment fund in Canada is the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan) and employers is wiping out trillions of dollars of value.
This is Stephen Harper's idea of the land is strong:
Stick with me over the next few articles as we look at politics from the perspective of financial markets and see how the Harper government's policies impact markets, and regular folk- like you and me-whether we have direct investments or not.
