Thursday, February 04, 2010

This is Who K-W Elected to Represent Us in Federal Parliament

Watch this:



Update: I'm re-imbedding in the hopes that this won't start automatically anymore. (Thanks, Bert!) While doing that I noticed that someone changed the title from something like, "Peter Braid lies, sweats, nearly cries" to "Conservative MP Peter Braid is dressed down and upbraided on CTV". I'm not sure who that change benefits...

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13 comments:

D said...

When Dewar emasculated Braid with his "frank" address, I nearly spit coffee all over my monitor.

The people of KW should be embarrassed for Braid.

For additional commentary, check out my blog.

Anonymous said...

Didn't Braid beat Andrew Telegidi by a whole 15 votes?
Tom Clark was really after him!

Yappa said...

Yup, Braid won by 17 votes.

I thought everyone gave Braid plenty of opportunity to say something sensible, but he was incapable of doing more than repeating those few lines he had memorized. What a buffoon. I wouldn't buy a used car from him.

Anonymous said...

Telegdi a Liberal and Braid's main opponent is even worse.This is a riding the Liberals could have won had they a decent candidate.

Top Can said...

Tom Clark said "I don't allow talking points on this show" to Braid during the middle of a bunch of them. Maybe Clark should have just cut his mike, because we're not hearing anything substantive on these panels everytime they come together.

Yappa said...

Here's what I wrote about the last election in K-W:

Anatomy of Defeat

Bert said...

Peter's interview wasn't the best I have seen. However (you KNEW this was coming), he was going up against 2 other politicians, AND Tom Clark, who isn't known for his love of Conservatives. Also, Bob Rae had interupted him a number of times, which isn't cool. I think that's why he said a number of things that weren't true, which I'm willing to write off as nervousness, but still, Mr. Braid should have been better prepared.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting this. I had not come across it, and it's good to know what our local MP thinks. Or that he doesn't think.

Andy said...

Gary Goodyear (Cambridge MP, Conservative) also spouted this nonsense in the House of Commons during the debate on whether the House would be given access to documentation pertaining to the handing over of detainees, claiming that the Liberals and NDP were smearing the troops for "engaging in torture (a patently false statement), and also that the delivery of the documentation to Parliament for scrutiny would constitute a security risk and put our troops in harm's way (again, there are safeguards in place for MP's to access documentation that may include sensitive information).

I also heard Pamela Wallin (now Senator, once CBC newsperson) make the same claim on CBC Radio (what ball she had to do this...shameful), that anyone questioning the Afghan detainee situation was questioning the patriotism, ethics, morals, behaviour, etc. of the Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

The whole thing stinks of Rovian (read: American neo-con) political machinations, where you take the criticism of your opponents and twist into something clearly unpalatable (and usually quite unrelated to the original criticism but close enough that people who aren't paying attention get sucked into the warped logic), and then throw it back in the faces of your critics and call them unpatriotic or undermining of national security. The sad thing is that this technique is very effective.

The other side of the tactic is to get the talking points out to all media outlets as widely as possible (vis the comments on all media articles that discuss the prorogation issue - Chretien did it, it's standard procedure, anyone criticizing this process is a Liberal shill or socialist, etc.), including talk radio, Conservative bloggers, MPS and Conservative Senators, etc. Get the message out far and wide and repeat, repeat, repeat. No wonder the current PMO is the largest ever...all for communications.

The same Rovian tactics were used to smear Richard Colvin when he presented his evidence WRT to the PMO's interference in the Afghan detainee process: didn't read it, no credible evidence, Liberal shill, diplomat with axe to grind, and so on and so on.

Personally I think these are a disgusting set of tactics and not to be tolerated. Everyone needs to hold their MP (and the government at large) accountable for whatever comes out of their mouths.

Andy said...

Thanks for the video BTW...very instructive.

Andy Rogers (Hrothgar)

Andy said...

Here we go...the Conservatives are taking it to the next level...disgusting: http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/02/02/12714896-qmi.html

Yappa said...

Hi Andy!

I agree with everything you say (of course). That ten percenter article really drove it home to me how Harper is going to do it again - that is, despite how scandalously untrue his smear is, he'll convince a huge number of Canadians it's true. And I imagine this is just the beginning of the latest set of attack ads. Within a few months, millions of Canadians will probably believe that Ignatieff should be deported. It is very depressing.

It reminds me of the early popes. All was going well until the papacy got a lot of property, wealth and armies. Then there were wars over who was pope, schisms, etc.

I wonder if it would be possible to reduce some of the wealth-producing aspects of politics so the office of the PM wasn't so powerful... of yeah, that's what parliament's for. That prorogued thing. ;-)

Bert said...

Darn. I'm mentioned semi-prominently on a Liberal Blog post. What will that do to my reputation ?. ;-)