27 Fructidor CCXI (September 13, 2003)
50th Entry Celebration Bonanza !
"Dalton McGuinty: He's an evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet," said a release from [Ontario Premier Ernie] Eves's campaign headquarters, e-mailed to news organizations across the province on Friday morning in the latest, and most bizarre, Tory attack on the Liberal leader.
I swear I'm not making this up, folks. You can read the story for yourself. Now, why can't New Brunswick politics be more exciting? I mean, on a quick run down we've got:
- Tory leader (and premier) Bernard Lord: Described by one commentator as "vanilla ripple." Most people would be hard pressed to name something he's done other than get elected twice. Oh, and remove the highway tolls right after he came to power. (That was, after all, the issue that got him elected in the first place.)
Liberal leader Shawn (Sean?) Graham: I seriously can not tell you a single thing about this guy. That's how boring he is.
NDP leader Elizabeth Weir: Seriously, the only one here whom anyone would recognise. Also largely because she's the only NDP member who's been elected in the past 3 (4?) elections.
That's it folks, that's New Brunswick politics for you. Oh sure, there's occassionally other parties (like the Confederation Of Regions party, or COR, ex-Tories who didn't like bilingualism and who quickly sucumbed to in-fighting.) But for the most part it's just plain boring. Say what you like about MacKenna's policies, at least the guy was interesting.
On another note, I'm instigating Operation: Get Nancy To Post An Entry. That means if you know Nancy and you have a website then you should post a reference to getting Nancy to post an entry (and tell other people to do so.) Why yes, I am looking in you general direction, Peter.
In politics, I'm thinking more along the lines of "No news is good news". Sure, Lord hasn't done much. But while that means he hasn't cut taxes and raised minimum wage, it also means he hasn't cut throats and raised hell.
I'd be more inclined to vote for a boring person than a person who promised unrealistic expectations. Although I do admit I enjoy a good blatent mud-slinging now and then.
I actually though for a minute, when I read the article, that maybe Eves knew something we didn't, and McGuinty does eat kittens. It's possible.
My brother brought up an interesting point, and that's that this was sent via email. Meaning it's possible for someone to have forged the headers so that it appeared to have come from Eves' campaign. If that's the case then chances are good that they're so confused about it that they haven't found out that they didn't actually send it. Or someone wasn't thinking. Or, shades of Kang and Kudos, McGuinty really is a reptilian, kitten-eating alien.
(Actually, it's odd you should mention tax cuts and raising the minimum wage... It sounded familiar so I did some searching. Turns out he did do that, the latter shortly after taking office. I should have remembered the tax cuts, he made a big deal of it during the election campaign this summer.)
As much as I bitch about politics being boring here, I quite like the legislature division we have right now: 28 to the PCs, 26 to the Liberals, and 1 to the NDP. Which of course means that concessions actually have to be made, unlike the "democratic dictatorship" that was in place about 10-15 years ago when one party won all the seats.
Posted by g026r at 27 Fructidor CCXI 02:41 (2003/09/13)
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