Merry Christmas

Wishing everyone Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

That's "Senator" Partisan Hack To You

Congratulations to Jabba the Duff on finally coming out of the closet. It was always rather a poorly kept secret that Duffy was a Conservative hack in journalists' clothing, but at least now he'll be guaranteed an income till age 75 and a cushy pension thereafter.

But quite aside from Senator Duffy wallowing in pork that was heretofore utilized merely as a topping for his ample servings of poutine, there remains the blatantly obvious flip-floppery of der Führer Stephen Harper stuffing the Senate with 18 patronage appointments after staking a part of his political career on vowing to institute an elected upper chamber. I'm sure we'll hear all the usual Conservative propaganda about how you have to break it in order to fix it, or fix it in order to break it, or something like that. Some see Harper as a "pragmatist". I see him as a man so crazed by the prospect of losing power, that he will throw anyone and anything (including his own ideals) under the bus when the going gets tough. Like atheists, it would seem that there are no Reformers in a foxhole.

Bailing Out

Jim Arnett, appointed only 3 weeks ago as special auto industry advisor to Stephen Harper and Dalton McGuinty, has quit his job. Although he will continue to work with McGuinty, he appears to have had irreconcilable differences with the Harper Conservatives over the plan for restructuring the auto industry.

Federal insiders said yesterday the Conservative government never really saw eye-to-eye with Arnett on what needed to be done, and Ottawa has no immediate plans to look for a successor.

That sounds pretty bad. This sounds even worse:

Instead, Ottawa will rely on internal advice on how GM, Chrysler and Ford can be made more competitive.

Fantastic. Hopefully, these advisors will be as productive and credible as other giants of Conservative "internal advice":

Wajid Khan: Harper's former special advisor on mid-east affairs. Khan's report on the middle east was so top-secret it was never released to the public, and so influential that Stephen Harper was single-handedly able to use it to bring lasting peace to Arabs and Jews. Khan worked all of these miracles while possibly only violating Elections Canada spending laws to the tune of $30, 000, which most Canadians considered a bargain.

Jim Prentice, Lisa Raitt, John Baird: Together, these three intellectual superstars comprise Harper's environment & energy committee. Just like Obama's energy czar Steven Chu (who won a Nobel Prize in Physics and is the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), this team's scientific credentials speak for themselves. Prentice is a lawyer who specializes in physical property rights and served as director of the Calgary Winter Club. Raitt is a lawyer who was the former CEO of the Toronto Port Authority. And Baird has a Bachelor of Arts from Queen's and has been a vegetarian since 1997. Toss in Rona Ambrose, and you have a true scientific powerhouse that has helped to make Canada the envy of the world when it comes to action on the environment.

With internal advisors like this, I have no doubt that Canada's New Government can guarantee the automakers a rosy future, just as Jim Flaherty projected bugdet surpluses for the next five years. And we all know how that turned out.