Beginning with Minister Oda
I suspect what has happened here is that after the Minister signed the $7 million Grant her Chief of Staff received a call from either the PMO or from Immigration Minister Kenney's Chief of Staff saying you must not allow it. At this point her Chief of Staff added the "not" to the approval.
Where Minister Oda went wrong is when she lied to her Standing Committee that she did not know how the "not" got there. Of course she did and for lying the only proper recourse is for her to resign.
I suspect Harper will come to that conclusion but if he does not - you can expect to see his polling numbers slide. In fact, I suspect that they will slide anyway given his defence of Oda to date.
All of this is somewhat bizarre when you consider that all MPs are constantly lying - i.e. defending policies that they really do not always support. The only thing saving them is the fact that their lying cannot be proved.
Hudak
I have for sometime now despaired with Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak's logic and he seems to only be getting worse.
His great pronouncement of a "buck a beer" - at a time when Ontario is going to Hell in a Hand Basket Budget Wise - leads the voter to conclude he is out of touch.
The next example shows this even better. He has come out this week in favour of keeping the dreaded Health Sur Tax - you know the one that Pinocchio McGuinty said he would never impose (I will not reduce taxes nor will I increase them).
I have been critical for some time now in regard to Hudak's unwillingness to say what his Government would do if Elected. Many have said that he is simply being smart and use John Tory's example of coming out too soon with a stand that can be attacked. In Tory's case, it was funding for religious and private schools.
But that was not the same - Tory came out with an ill conceived and divisive policy which had nothing to do with McGuinty's mismanagement of Ontario.
All Hudak has to do is attack McGuinty's record and provide some solid popular alternatives.
Here is a guy that should be 10 to 20 points ahead of the Provincial Grits and yet he is finds himself in a neck and neck duel. Hard to understand!!
Okay - so we go back to our example of the Health Sur Tax - Hudak should be saying I will deep six it or at least drastically reduce this tax and replace the lost revenue with the proceeds to be realized from scrapping the Health LINS which is one thing Hudak has said that he proposes to do if Elected. This despite the fact that the vast majority of Ontarians would be at a loss to understand what the Hell a LIN was in the fist place.
But the one thing the Folks would understand from this is that Hudak has a solid plan to save them money.
It's a win win and Hudak would go up in the Polls.
Sadly, this will not happen and if the Tory's are not more careful McGuinty just might squeeze back into power next time out.
Layton
Yesterday, Jack Layton met with the Prime Minister to see where they might have common ground re the March 22nd Budget.
The Press Reported it as an attempt for Harper to see how he could craft this Budget to ensure needed NDP support.
Layton came out of the meeting looking well satisfied and saying that there are a number of areas where his Party is in sinc with the Tories.
If I were Layton though I would check and see if I still had my wallet.
My guess is that Harper was sizing Layton up and determining where he and the NDP are most vulnerable and then exploit vulnerability in the coming Budget.
And finally Obama and the Middle East
Things continue to deteriorate for President Obama in this important part of the world.
After having cut his friend Mubarak loose other Middle Eastern Strong Men are now back peddling away from America - most notably in Saudi Arabia.
I have already pointed out that when Obama lent his support to Democracy in Egypt what he failed to realize is that it was the least likely thing to occur in that impoverished nation. Now I think it is starting to dawn on him how naive he was.
Simply stated, the Western World and most notably the United States need a safe and abundant supply of oil. It is now going to become ever more difficult for that to continue as the Middle East retreats closer to Theocracy.
The US and Israel could have forestalled these events if they had taken concrete steps to deal with Iran. It is now probably too late.
As I see it...
'Galagher'
