Each and every night of the DNC put me to sleep between the 8 and 9 o'clock hours. On Wednesday, I was brutally awakened by Sandra Fluke screaming at me about her ham-purse. If I could say anything to Ms. Fluke, it would be that it's difficult to maintain that you're a "private citizen" when you're addressing the nation on prime-time TV, okay SugarTits?
Then there were the Ontario by-elections in Vaughan and Kitchener-Waterloo. Lookee, I know that over have of you aren't Canadian, let alone from Ontario, so I apologize to you for all of the local stories I've done of late. I just couldn't bring myself to write about the conventions while they were ongoing. Just watching them was bad enough. I might do a couple of posts about them over the weekend though.
Last night's by-elections were important in that they would decide if Premier Dalton McGuinty would get the majority that was denied him last October. As I mentioned here, McGuinty's Liberal government has been wildly unpopular for years now. Those Ontarians not suffering from a head injury, advanced syphilis, or both suffer near-fatal douche chills at the thought of being governed by them another day.
The only problem is that there currently isn't a suitable leader to replace McGuinty with. The Leader of the Opposition, Progressive Conservative Tim Hudak can only be described in polite company as the Dumbest Motherfucker on Earth. Unlike our American cousins, Canadians will vote for bush-league corruption and general ineptitude when the alternative is abject stupidity. For example, Rick Perry couldn't get elected to shit here, but Bernie Maddoff very well could. For that reason - and that reason alone - we decided last fall to only reduce McGuinty to a minority instead of stomping him death like he had rabies.
Timmy, being Timmy decided last night to yet again prove every nasty thing I've ever said about him.
Some background is necessary before I go any further. You see there's a rich tradition in parliamentary democracies where there is a minority government. That involves bribing members of other parties into either resigning or crossing the floor. Bribery is a strong word, mostly because it's a crime, but it happens all the time in Canadian politics.
Last fall, Conservative Elizabeth Witmer (who is thought to hate Hudak every bit as much as a right-thinking person should) resigned the seat that she held for 22 years in Kitchener-Waterloo. I'm sure that it was entirely coincidental that ol' Dalton had a job as the head of WSIB waiting for her. And wouldn't you know it, the Liberals were just one seat shy of an effective majority! The serendipity was never ending.
Sure, the Tories had held the seat since 1990, but McGuinty knows as well as I do that Hudak is the Dumbest Motherfucker on Earth. It was as good a shot as the Grits were going to get at a majority without a general election. And the Premier was actually half-right, which is a fairly accurate description of his entire governing style.
Hudak lost the seat, but McGuinty didn't win it. Instead, it went to the NDP, who last held it when they were the CCF, back before the dawn of time itself. More galling to McGuinty was the fact that the winner, Catherine Fife, is the president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, with whom the provincial Liberals have been having a rather impressive pissing match of late. Oh, and it's rumoured that McGuinty wanted Fife to run for him, so there's that.
However humiliating this turn of events was for Dalton, it was worse for Timmy. His party had, after all, held Kitchener-Waterloo for over half of my lifetime. Moreover, they first won it in the same election that the Tories were driven into third party status for the first and only time in Ontario history.
But, being Timmy, he had to make the situation even worse for himself. It's a well-known reflex of his.
Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak is blaming his defeat in a key by-election on a “tsunami” of public sector union bosses who bought votes in a riding held by his party for two decades.
Mr. Hudak attributed the New Democratic Party’s historic win in the Southern Ontario riding of Kitchener-Waterloo to its ability to draw upon its traditional roots in the labour movement. Union leaders were out in force in the riding on Thursday, persuading teachers and other public sector workers to defect to the NDP from the Liberals.
“I think it’s dangerous and ominous for the province to see that power on display,” an embittered sounding Mr. Hudak said at a news conference Friday morning. “We were up against a tsunami of public union bosses.”Look. politicians buy votes all the time. Conservatives do it with poorly thought out tax cuts that ruin everything, Liberals do it with program spending that ruins everything. Increasingly third-party groups are doing it with organizational skill and money, which drives politicians crazy when it doesn't benefit them.
But a smart politician never actually comes out and accuses the electorate of being bought. Voters are every bit as craven and greedy as our representatives are, but we get pissy about that kind of talk.
And, to be fair, no one has ever accused Tim Hudak of being smart. Shit, I've spent the last three years saying in public that he should be stripped of his citizenship, deported to Uganda and eaten alive by whatever remains of Idi Amin's family. I've have quite a bit of fun saying it, too!
But now figures within the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario are starting to sound a lot like me, albeit less colourful and adorable about it.
The results leave the legislature in minority limbo and raise yet more questions about Hudak’s leadership after his party squandered a double-digit lead in the polls before last October’s provincial election.
While he survived a February leadership review with 78.7 per cent approval, Hudak, who holds a press conference Friday morning at Queen’s Park after spending the evening huddled at home, faces some internal dissent.
In a statement, he complained public sector unions “bought Kitchener—Waterloo and now we can expect the rest of Ontario taxpayers to pay for it as the NDP cut more budget deals to keep the Liberals in power.”
Some Tories, however, weren’t buying his excuses.
“This is hard for Tim to explain,” confided one unhappy Conservative, noting the leader has had “two and a quarter years of a free pass and that is over for him now.”If the Tories were smart, they wouldn't be talking about the end Hudak's "free pass," they'd be talking about the end of Old Yeller and looking for a barn to take him to the back of. This isn't the first of Timmy's magnificent fuck-ups, or even the most spectacular. It's just the latest.
To be fair, some Liberals are giving background interviews about icing McGuinty, as well. The only difference is that as long as McGuinty has Hudak, his job is safe. As I right this, Hudak is the only thing stopping the Grits from an endless slide to third place at Queen's Park, and anyone with any brains knows it.
Today is September 7, 2012. I can almost guarantee you that within 6 months - by March 7, 2013 - McGuinty will pull the plug on his government and flush Timmy down the drain of politics forever. That won't be smart, because there's no guarantee that he'll win a majority, but there's a really good chance that the Tories will replace Hudak with someone who can crush the already monstrously unpopular Liberals.
And there's the horrifying third option, which my great friend The Tiger on Politics and I discussed back in April: Andrea Horwath's NDP coming up the midle to win. All things being equal, I've been more than a little impressed with Horwath's political skills of late.
Sure, another Dipper government would be a fiscal disaster for a province tits-deep in debt from McGuinty's mismanagement. But watching her flush both Dalton McGuinty and Tim Hudak down the toliet of history might just be worth it. Neither would survive a leadership review in light of such an electoral apocalypse and they'd both likely end their concession speeches with their R. Budd Dwyer impressions.
I wouldn't bet on it happening, but I wouldn't bet against it, either.
What else happened last night. Oh, apparently the MTV Movie Awards brought us this delight ...
The one thing I paid no attention to whatsoever turned out to be the sexiest thing of all. I just can't win.
Enticing and adorable Rihanna-Katy Perry suggestively lesbo gif sexily stolen from Antiquiet.
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