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June 15, 2004
Health care! Health care! Health care!
Brent Tarleton: Not going to be any health care?
Stuart Tarleton: Why, honey, of course there's going to be health care.
Scarlett: If either of you says health care just once again I'll go in the house and slam the door.
Hey, it's not like there is a war on or anything. Give it the six weeks or six months until the bombs go off in the Toronto subway system and I am on the phone trying to make certain my sister is still alive, to calm my parents and to wait until I hear the name of the first person I know among the dead. I will then look back at this festival of non-entities and spit.
Stephen Harper (Conservative) weathered the NDP/Liberal attack on his shifty position on gay marriage and abortion rights as well as could be expected. The verbal contortions needed to maintain this shifty position relied strongly on the "meaning of 'is' is" school of debate but I expect it will be enough to get him the fifty or so seats in Ontario he needs for his minority.
Jack Layton (NDP) is the biggest disappointment to me here. I was never a likely NDP voter and Mr. Layton is going to take his seat in a walk. He is still a lot of puffed up nothing. Naming a Muslim woman NDP candidate to show he understands the problems of Muslim women is typical of a comprehensive group-think politics of identity. Who cares if the candidate in question might have positions of her own? Not Mr. Layton. What matters to him is her subject position. It strikes me to be condescending and racist. Such is his party's postmodern Know Nothingism.
Gilles, le Compte Duceppe (Bloc Qu�b�cois) must have thought the social democratic alternative looked tastier than I did as he stuck his fangs into Jack Layton. This may account for the eldritch springy delivery Mr. Layton had for the rest of the night. So... why attack the NDP over the Clarity Act? Is there any mileage in having a go at the only socialist party nobody in Quebec will actually vote for? A bit like making fun of Abba. Much too easy for anyone to actually be impressed by it.
Ahh, Paul Martin (Liberal), you are perhaps the least convincing of our enemies. "Believe you me"? That sounds about as hip and happening as your... whatchamacallit?... "blog" you were writing awhile back. Why, as Mr. Harper put it, should anyone believe you?
And then... 21:28 update. Ok, that's better at least on the question of gay marriage. Take the matter to Parliament and let Parliament decide. Here Mr. Harper's position was finally clear to me as it lined up with Mr. Layton and M. Duceppe. Mr. Martin's fearmongery got tackled from the left such that he had to turn twice, pathetic and lost, to Mr. Harper and hope some deranged response would save the day for Liberal waffling. There was no response. Mr. Harper let the Prime Minister hoist himself on his own petard and in that moment won the election for a Conservative minority.
Posted by Ghost of a flea at June 15, 2004 08:48 PM
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Comments
Random thoughts from Shaidle & Associates...
We wished that Harper had mentioned Canada Steamship more than once. Heck, I wish he'd ok an attack ad about it.
Martin (as head of the Abortion Party?) looked like he was reading cue cards that weren't there. Standing between Layton and Harper made him seem baffled, looking back and forth helplessly. We don't recommend that position on the dias...
Gay marriage is in the Charter??
You are so right about Layton. His "we have a Muslim woman" thing will get three responses. One, "right on!" Two, "sounds too much like, 'some of my best friends are...'". And three: "Her? Screw that!" If a conservative had said 'Hey, we have a black person and everything' people (like Layton) would attack.
If Harper doesn't believe in Kyoto, why doesn't he just say so? Why not say, "Well, I understand Canadian climatologist so-and-so says the science is deeply flawed"? Kyoto is the new Evolution: a Starbuck's society litmus test of intelligence. Opposition to it must be framed in scientific terms not just financial. Although it would be helpful to say that we'd be spending trillions and losing jobs to try to fix something we may not even be responsible for, and that has warmed the earth only 1 degree in 100 years.
Martin: hey bud! Maybe I think 'peacekeeper' is a dorky role for Canada. Without some kind of credible army, we are a joke at the international table. Yeah, "the Cold War is over" but there's another one on...
Posted by: Kathy Shaidle at June 16, 2004 06:06 AM
Sorry, forgot one thing.
When I was diagnosed with lupus and myositis more than 10 years ago, I would have been screwed without socialized medicine. On principle, as little miss armchair anarchist, it broke my heart everytime I walked into the hospital, the one that just got torn down as a matter of fact. (The exact opposite of the character in Barbarian Invasions, come to think of it...)
I felt like a hypocrite. I also felt like I was being electrocruted, so...
But I'm a big girl now and while I may not be able to get private health insurance anymore (kids, don't wait. Get it the day you graduate from university!) I do have two credit cards with big spending limits.
Why can I (just for the sake of argument) get an abortion faster than an MRI? Doesn't that say something creepy about our culture? And why can't I spend my money on what I want to spend it on? Why aren't we even allowed to talk about this?
If people could choose to go to private clinics, my mother's wait for public cancer treatment would have been shorter, no? Yes, she was going to die anyway, but a lot of suffering could have been alieviated -- for more people at the same time.
Posted by: Kathy Shaidle at June 16, 2004 06:16 AM
My most important objection to most attacks on two-tier medicine is the blindingly obvious fact Canada already has two-tier medicine. Wealthy Canadians, and let's put Mr. Martin close to the top of that list, can head to the States to have any procedure they want from the best physicians in the world.
Mr. Martin opposed the Coalition liberation of Iraq but had Canadian troops on the ground, will not state his personal view on gay marriage or abortion but attacks any view on the subject right or left, and runs a campaign based on base nationalism even as his own re-flagged ships throw Canadians out of work so he need not apply Canadian employment law to the people who work for him.
Sickening.
Posted by: Flea at June 16, 2004 09:04 AM
And I think an attack ad on Canada Steamship Lines is an excellent idea. Lawren Harris paintings are about the only thing that inspire a soaring sense of Canadian patriotism in me but the sight of Mr. Martin wrapping himself in the same flag he removed from the ships that made his fortune turns my stomach.
Posted by: Flea at June 16, 2004 09:16 AM
