Really, which Conservative cabinet minister is not an embarrassment? There's Bev and her $16 orange juice of course. But then there's Rob Nicholson and his complete failure to repatriate Omar Khadr which, together with his attempt to extradite Omar's brother to the US on the basis of no evidence, makes for dispiriting reading, Nicholson being Canada's Attorney General with, apparently, no grasp of the law.
And we have Peter MacKay, Minister of National Defence, a guy who can't distinguish between using a government helicopter for a personal taxi and using it for a real search and rescue operation. It reminds me of a Lyndon Johnson story. A young Marine was showing Johnson the presidential helicopter: "This is your helicopter, sir." "They're all my helicopters, son."
The search and rescue thing is a bit painful since MacKay was rescued from a fishing trip by 103 Squadron at Gander so he could attend a political event in London, Ontario, transported by executive jet from Gander, and then got flown back to Halifax so he could attend the Pictou Lobster Festival, and then a kid got stranded on an ice flow off Labrador and died. There are practical reasons this happened, but the optics are terrible.
The search and rescue thing is a bit painful since MacKay was rescued from a fishing trip by 103 Squadron at Gander so he could attend a political event in London, Ontario, transported by executive jet from Gander, and then got flown back to Halifax so he could attend the Pictou Lobster Festival, and then a kid got stranded on an ice flow off Labrador and died. There are practical reasons this happened, but the optics are terrible.
Then there's Vic Toews..... well, it's all been said.
Jim Flaherty might possibly escape as Finance Minister, but it was Flaherty who stood up in the House of Commons in the dark days of 2008 and claimed the Canadian economy was just swell, and is now lecturing other countries on Canada's financial probity. I think crow gives you indigestion, or would if you had any integrity.
Then there's Jason Kenney, Immigration Minister, who improperly used his office to keep George Galloway out of the country for no good reason, while allowing in Anne Coulter, whose views of Islam are so offensive that were she to make the same remarks about Jews, she'd be labelled anti-Semitic.
So now Elizabeth May among others is suggesting that the whole "not" thing with the Kairos funding originated higher up the chain of command than Bev, the command that is now ditching (call Search and Rescue!) Bev Oda.
So not.
There's no good reason for this clip except it's so good.
So not.
