You may have missed this yesterday

A couple of things that you may have missed yesterday thanks to the ever vigilant and balanced Canadian MSM.

McGuinty prorogues the Ontario legislature. Heard about it? No; why not? Wasn't the outrage over the "anti-democratic" practice of prorogation recently the subject that the media couldn't stop talking about? When the PM prorogued it was on TV for days on end, it was the subject of hundreds of columns in the papers across the country, and there were few if any political blogs that didn't weigh in on the topic. But when McGuinty does it we get almost nothing for coverage other than a couple of stories and some of those deal more with a bizarre press tradition than the subject of prorogation, which we were recently told by that very same media, outraged Canadians so much. Why the double standard? Kady? Anyone?

Does anyone but me find it odd that legislative press galleries have actually developed their own traditions revolving around prorogation? It is almost as if proroguing was a common occurrence or something, but that couldn't be because that same press was saying something entirely different just a few weeks ago. Weird.




And speaking of outrage, or rather a lack of it, where was the MSM on the recent revelation that an outbreak of Liberal flu is imminent and that they are going to be playing games with the vote on the budget?

Yesterday Ignatieff came out and said that the Liberals were going to vote against the budget, but there would not be enough Liberals to show up to vote against it to force an election.

Wow. Just freakin' wow. Why is the MSM in this country just regurgitating Liberal press releases and taking democracy lessons from Ignatieff, a man who has NEVER won any nomination/leadership contest in his life, or the Liberal Party who ignored the wishes of its own members and party constitution by letting a handful of unelected people appoint Ignatieff?

Think about it for a minute. There are only 2 possible ways that the scenario Ignatieff expressed can occur. The first is to ask for volunteers from among the ranks of Liberal MP's for those who want to avoid doing their job (remember prorogation and how important it was to be on the Hill working) and to not represent those that elected them by being absent from the vote, or Ignatieff chooses which MP's are going to be allowed to be there to represent the people who elected them to do their jobs. Either way it is not an example of how democracy should work and considering all of the outrage over prorogation from the Liberals since before Christmas and which continues to this day as shown yesterday when in oral questions the first question that Ignatieff asked was on prorogation, how the hell are the Liberals getting such a free ride from the media on the hypocrisy of the whole thing?


I should not get my hopes up too high because even if the media did ask Ignatieff about the particulars of how he is going to accomplish his plans for the budget vote (or on anything else for that matter) he would use his standby answer and say that he 'does not answer hypotheticals' in one breath and then claim that he is offering the Canadian public a real alternative in another. An alternative that does not answer any specific questions or offer up any policy I guess, but the media would buy it and give him yet another pass. I might as well hope that the MSM call out Jack Layton for his complaints about tax breaks for banks and corporations, the very same tax cuts that he signed off on and agreed to implement when he was negotiating to be part of the coalition. Sadly though I doubt that either one will happen.


Update: another Liberal talking point bites the dust.
"Flaherty’s travel arrangements became news last weekend when CTV broke the story that he had flown to London on a government jet rather than going commercial at a cost of $800.

As it turned out, one reason Flaherty used a government plane was so he could be up in time to do an interview with, uh, CTV, which initially reported he had commandeered a Challenger at a cost of $9,000, much more than the Cessna Citation he actually flew on at a cost of $3,100. Oh, and because he was doing 11 radio and five TV interviews in the morning, three staffers were along. So their equivalent commercial costs of $2,400 meant Flaherty was actually saving $100."