Tuesday Tid-bits

-This is kind of cool - Stephane Dion blogging from Bali.


-Radwanski is right on the money here. There needs to be some sort of degree of presumed innocence among Parliamentarians because, if scantilycladwomangate has taught us anything, the wild accusations being tossed around are starting to get way out of hand.


-Also via AR, comes Pat Martin's latest media stunt:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DECEMBER 11, 2007

SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN…

…with toxic toy consumer tips for Canadian parents

Oh, please, somebody get this up on Youtube because:

a) I assume Pat Martin will be the one dressed as Santa.
b) This is going to be even more awkwardly entertaining than the puppets press conference this spring.


-From this week's Hill Times:

An online Angus-Reid poll released last month of opposition party leaders showed that 34 per cent of Canadians think that Mr. Layton would make a good Prime Minister of Canada compared to Mr. Dion who had 23 per cent support and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May who had 14 per cent support.

But Liberal MP David McGuinty (Ottawa South, Ont.) said he does not put any stock in polls in between elections. "[If] Mother Theresa were alive, she [would] have obviously [had] the highest rankings too. I don't believe it for a second. When people walk into a ballot box in the next federal election, there will be many questions on their minds.

By my reading, David McGuinty is either comparing Jack Layton to mother Theresa, or implying that Mother Theresa's support levels would dry up during an election campaign. While there is probably some truth to the later statement, I have my doubts that even mother Theresa has the political sense to nix a Santa Claus press conference.

Partisan Jabs

I'm going to be a good little Liberal blogger today and take a few jabs at the NDP and CPC. If Gilles Duceppe does something stupid by the end of the day (a 50/50 proposition at worst), I'll update the post to include a shot or two at him.

First up, remember that investigation into Liberal Party polling practices headed up by former PQ Cabinet Minister Danielle Paille? Well, you probably don't because his conclusions have been sitting in report purgatory for a month, no doubt waiting for a quiet December 24th publication. Well, it seems the CPC have broken Paul Martin's spending record, with the PMO quadrupling its polling budget since '05-06. When asked about it in the house, James Moore said he was "surprised" to learn this.

Speaking of James Moore surprises, hot on the heels of scantilycladwomangate, the NDP have been forced into yet another apology, this time over accusations levelled during the last election:

NDP House leader Libby Davies formally apologized Thursday on behalf of her party for spreading allegations that a Liberal candidate in the last federal election tried to bribe his NDP rival to drop out of the race.

“The New Democratic Party admits we seriously erred in making the allegations public and in putting a young and inexperienced candidate in a position where he felt justified in making those allegations and to repeat them on some 40 occasions to media across Canada,” Ms. Davies told the Commons.

[...]

Ms. Davies admitted that the NDP erred in arranging for Hansen-Carlson to repeat his accusations widely in the media 10 days before the Jan. 26, 2006 election. And she said it made “another serious error in judgment” in failing to make public a letter from Canada's elections commissioner, three days before the election, which cleared the two Liberals.

You think? But, really, NDP errors in judgement aren't that surprising; they're as much a way of life as Liberal patronage or Conservatives complaining about Liberal patronage...

What's that?

OTTAWA — The Conservative government appointed a raft of Tories to federal boards, agencies and as citizenship judges yesterday.

At least seven of the 11 appointments yesterday to the National Film Board, Via Rail, the CDIC, two shipping agencies, and citizenship judgeships, went to people with Tory links. They include a former MP, a former Manitoba MLA who now works for a Conservative MP, a former Canadian Alliance candidate, and advisers to federal and provincial Tory ministers.

Stephen Harper practicing blatant patronage after railling against it for all those years? Man, he really must be using Mulroney as a mentor...

ScantilyCladWoman-gate

Finally, we understand why James Moore is deemed less competent for a Cabinet position than Gordon O'Connor, Michael Fortier, or Jason Kenney - he's a pervert. Yes, NDP MP Irene Mathyssen, has dropped the bombshell that I can only imagine will splash across the front page of the Globe & Mail tomorrow morning. Rather than snoozing, heckling, or pretending to laugh at Peter Van Loan's jokes, James Moore spent question period...on the Internet...looking at...a scantily clad woman!

"There was an image of a scantily clad woman in very flimsy lingerie" on the computer of Parliamentary Secretary for Public Works James Moore, New Democrat MP Irene Mathyssen told reporters. "It was dark in color and she was a brunette."

"It was, I would say, not hard porn by any stretch," she said.

"I would describe it as soft porn, Playboy-type stuff .

My first thought upon reading this was: ewww...Irene Mathyssen is, like, some sort of pornography classification expert. But those unnerving thoughts quickly turned to feelings of anger and rage. While Moore has flimsily tried to defend himself, this is perhaps Canada's biggest sex scandal since the Munsinger Affair. I am therefore proud to be the first to call for a full public inquiry in order to answer the following lingering questions:

Was Stephen Harper aware of this? Just how flimsy was her lingerie? Was this "playboy-type" soft porn or "Toronto Sun-type" soft porn? Is she Moore's "girlfriend" as reported in some stories or just his "friend" as reported in others? Are they "in a relationship" on facebook or are they at "it's complicated"? If she's single, what is her phone number? Given it's a sex scandal, I assume Peter MacKay must be somehow involved - how? Who is Irene Mathyssen and why have we never heard about her before? Did James Moore ever donate money to Jean Charest's leadership campaign? Has he ever signed golf balls? Did he dream of being a back bench MP when he was in kindergarten?

Canadians demand answers. We're mad as hell and, come hell or high water, we need to get to the bottom of this!