Tuesday, August 19, 2008

He's baaaak!

I think Jean Chretien just announced that he's back and he's pissed off.
Gomery and Martin kept him out of the last election campaign, but I don't think he'll be sitting out another one -- which is good because Dion needs all the help he can get.
I wonder if Harper will still keep threatening an election now? Noni Mausa at Galloping Beaver notes some of the strange stuff that Harper has been focusing on lately:
...like most leaders about to be toppled, he appears to be moving to get a few things done before he asked to hand back the keys and the garage door opener for 24 Sussex Drive.
With many governments there is a rush of legislation for the greater good as the lame duck begins his descent -- election funding laws, for instance, or amnesties. We rightly value our government for the wide array of services it provides -- is Harper acting to put some more in place?
Not as far as I have seen. Instead, he has pulled out his machete. The cuts to funding and programs are underway, and weirdly prominent among them are huge cuts to the tiny federal budget supporting the arts.
And here's some more weird news about Conservative candidate recruitment:
In what a cynical observer might suggest is an attempt to tighten any potential future legal challenge to the party’s now notorious in-and-out scheme – which it maintains is entirely legitimate under existing election law – Tory hopefuls are now required to agree, in advance, to any “reasonable financial arrangement” with the party to provide “campaign services” before they will even be permitted to run for the nomination. They also aren’t allowed to talk about it before, during or after the fact, since they also have to sign a non-disclosure agreement that covers the entire candidate selection process.
Well, that'll attract the best and the brightest, won't it? Harper is just so bullheaded about Elections Canada he will distort and demean the party's whole candidate recruitment process just to cover up what the party is doing.

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