I am becoming so sick of reading and hearing the Canadian media telling me that it really is none of my business where Danny Williams goes for health care with what is, after all, his money.
Danny Williams, and so many others like him, have spent their political career insisting that you, and I, cannot be allowed to make the same choice he just made. Danny Williams, promoter of Canadian socialized medicine deemed it not good enough for him. For you, it’s too good. For him, not so much.
Lets be clear here. If I wrote an argument on these pages insisting on a private option in my health care, Danny Williams would say I was un-Canadian, that I had health care in my cross hairs. So you see Danny Boy, if I’m un-Canadian for suggesting such a thing, your unfit to lead Canadian’s for doing such a thing.
That’s what this story is about: those of us with some means, but not means enough to hop on a jet and take us to the Mayo Clinic, would like the choice to do as Danny does, not what Danny says.
pimply minions of bureaucracy
Danny Williams, Healthcare
Greg Weston was one of the journalists in the Parliamentary Gallery who got his nose particularly out of joint with the PMO when it got invaded by Conservatives. He has since calmed somewhat and seems to be offering fairer reportage. Today, he offers up a tidbit I never heard before, but which gave me a good laugh:
"Stop wasting my money!"
It has been almost 30 years since a flock of geese flying across Canadian television screens caused a national flap over taxpayers’ money being used for partisan political propaganda…
Liberal MP Bob Rae, then a member of the NDP, said at the time: “I will never be able to look at Canada geese in the same way again. I’ll see them as Liberals in disguise.”
Turns out Bob Rae was the Liberal in disguise, who knew?
Besides providing an easy swipe at Bob Rae, Weston makes an error of, if not fact then certainly, content. Writing of the Conservative’s “we’re spending your money so fast we hardly have time to count it,” ads. Here’s what he wrote:
Even right-wing commentator Gerry Nicholls decried the campaign as “an abuse of tax dollars,” describing the ads as “clearly partisan, clearly Conservative propaganda.”
Entirely true, G
erry Nicholls has been critical of these ads,. However, the way Weston writes this it suggests Nicholls is an otherwise compliant Conservative who never criticizes the Harper Tories, and that’s simply not the fact. In fact my friend Gerry is often criticized for speaking out against the Conservatives.
Gerry Nicholls, Ink Stained Wretches
Bob Rae, Conservative Party, Gerry Nicholls, Greg Weston, Liberal Party, NDP, Pierre Trudeau, Sun Media, Toronto Sun
Running the scoop of the century, Greg Weston today reveals that, while trading barbs with David McGuinty, Peter MacKay may have insinuated that Belinda Stronach is a dog.
On the day when newspapers were reporting that Jack Layton decided that environmental policy was enough to call a confidence motion, the day when Jack and Stephen Harper agreed to meet to discuss a Jack Layton environmental plan, the acceptance of which could mean a fall election.
But the Sun’s national politics columnist is all over Belindog-gate? Eleven days after what Weston himself calls an “otherwise trivial faux pas.” And why is this still the story? Weston is, on this point, most illuminating:
Finally, the fact that MacKay’s otherwise trivial faux pas in the Commons has endured as news for the past 10 days — anyone remember the Conservative environmental plan? — should serve as a wake-up bark for Harper and his communications strategists.
The PM’s obsession with message control and his open disdain for the media doesn’t leave a lot of goodwill with the hounds when things turn ugly. Kick a dog enough times, and sooner or later it will come back to bite you in the butt over nothing much at all.
This is still a story because the press gallery is fighting with Stephen Harper? Clearly this is not a trivial faux-pas, but a major admission by Weston – his judgement has become so clouded that he is no longer able to perform his job properly. Lets hope his boss is reading.
Which leads me to Conservative Life’s new sidebar image:
Meanwhile, the real news is here, and here, and here and, oh here! Even here.
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You have to admire good work when you see it, even if it is a cheap drive by smear; From Greg Weston, Ottawa Sun:
The joke going around the local Parliament Hill watering hole is that the Conservatives are limiting their entire legislative agenda to only five priorities so they can keep their other hand free to drink.
Whatever its advantages for the thirsty and arithmetically challenged, Stephen harpers tightly focused agenda is also proving to be smart politics.
Greg has taken the ‘feud’ thing worse than most, and has demonstrated a positively diaper-rashy whine over the whole thing. But this is a beauty. Note the smears; the Tories aren’t smart, and they drink. Nicely wrapped up in one sentence.
The problem is two fold:
One Stephen Harper has a masters degree in economics, he can do math. Believe it. How well he knows the difference between an adverb and a pronoun, active voice and passive voice, who
knows. But he can do math.
Second, isn’t it a little rich to be passing along a joke about other peoples drinking that you heard in a bar? As he passes this story along as first hand information, it seems fair to assume Greg Weston himself heard this joke in ‘the local Parliament Hill watering hole’. Can we assume Mr Weston had a few drinks while there?
So sitting having drinks with his other reporter buddies, Greg Weston heard a good one about how the Tories like to drink, and passed it along like it was news.
Nice Smear – lousy journalism, but nice smear.
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