Thursday, April 12, 2007

I'm Baffled

So...we have what is possibly the most dishonest, secretive government to sit in Ottawa in decades. Where's the opposition? I'm sad to say it, but none of the opposition parties is doing a good job right now.

Dion's nearly silent; Duceppe is obviously torn - looking homeward at the crumbling of the PQ and wondering what his future holds; and I don't even want to imagine what Layton and Harper have been doing behind closed doors.

The only opposition party with an excuse here is Elizabeth May's Green Party - who has no sitting members in the House of Commons.

We have a budget that is increasing the cost of spending at twice the rate of inflation, a military that has been committed to an extended stay in Afghanistan - and that is being used to ram through spending at a prolific rate, without adequate oversight.

Harper and his people have been caught out in so many lies and deceptions that they are starting to make Brian Mulroney's last years as Prime Minister seem positively honest. We have Harper condoning the use of so-called "attack ads" and push-polling techniques in a pre-election campaign straight out of Karl Rove's book of tricks. Meanwhile, the opposition is not calling Harper out on this - or at least not effectively. (Granted, living in Alberta as I do, I doubt that I'm going to see or hear much "against" Harper and his band of goons - the media out here is so biased it's not even funny - any counter-ads or commentary from Dion and others probably doesn't even get aired.

The blogosphere gets it, why don't the opposition politicians?

4 comments:

Alison said...

Grog, you don't get CPAC, do you?
The opposition is doing a fine job of refuting Harper but you don't hear about it in the mainscream media, who are mostly concerned with personalities instead of policy, and so are consequently pleased to portray Dion as fuzzy and Layton as a traitor. In many ways it is the media who are the problem here. Which will be of course a huge problem for the rest of us come the election.

MgS said...

I check CPAC's website from time to time - it's not my first choice source because I find their website a pain to navigate.

However, most people don't even know CPAC exists - sort of like the Hansard (which exists, but is amazingly dry reading much of the time) Political junkies know about it, but the average schmoe on the street doesn't.

I don't like asserting media bias - such claims don't stand up to scrutiny as a rule. The question in my mind remains one of "Why are we not hearing more from the opposition?" Even Q/P in the House has been less than impressive when I've reviewed Hansard.

Alison said...

I meant CPAC on TV, Grog, where you watch the opposition absolutely hammering the Cons on policy in real time and then it isn't covered in mainstream media. Now that is negligence if not bias.

"Why are we not hearing more from the opposition?"
See above.

MgS said...

For a variety of reasons, I choose not to have a television around.

Alberta's Anti-Trans Legislation

So, now that the UCP has rolled out their anti-trans legislation, we can take a long look at it.  Yesterday, they tabled 3 related bills and...