At Home in Hespeler

A commenter on a piece on Gerry Nicholls’ blog wrote:

You are in select company Gerry.
Neither you or Jack Layton have seen the budget, but you are slagging our Prime Minister for it just in case it might contain something you dont like.
It is quite tiresome.

Add me to the company. Here’s what we do know about the budget: it will put Canada in a massive deficit position for the first time in ten years; it is based on the flawed theory that government can, as we Ontario conservatives laughed when Bob Rae did it, spend itself rich. The Bob Rae analogy, by the way, isn’t superfluous: stimulus of the kind we are dealing with here is exactly what Bob Rae did, and we mocked. We mocked because he was wrong and because it failed miserably.

If you are a conservative in philosophy, you cannot possibly support this budget because it is wrong headed and based on bad political philosophy. If you are a Conservative Party supporter, you should not support this budget because it could banish the party to the political wilderness, just as spending themselves rich did to the NDP in Ontario.

What Jack Layton has against the budget I can’t tell, it has all the makings of an NDP budget. But we know enough about what is coming, enough has been leaked that we know it is going to contain a lot that we don’t like.

Economic Fundamentalism, Gerry Nicholls, Jacobian Piece of Impertinence, Stephen Harper, taxpayers, The Layton world view, watergate - shawanigate - profligate

“We’re not going to win this war,” Brig. Mark Carleton-Smith said this weekend. He is the most senior British military commander in Afghanistan, and he was talking about a war in which almost 100 Canadians have lost their lives. He may be right, at least at present troop levels, we may only be able to reduce the risks “…to a manageable level of insurgency that’s not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army.”

But it is unimaginable that someone who claims to be running for the Prime Ministership of Canada would respond to that declaration with these words:

I’m heartened actually by the words of this senior military commander…

He’s heartened by the country he leads suffering a military loss! He is heartened that he was right and his country will, according to Mark Carleton-Smith, not win a war in which they are engaged! He is heartened by the defeat of his country at the hands of mysoginistic, hateful terrorists who want to tear down the progressive society he has worked his life to try and build up.

For the record, here’s the quote in context, because some apologists will say it matters – it doesn’t:

“I’m heartened by the words of this senior military commander who is adding his voice to those many, many Canadians and others around the world who believe that the prosecution of the continued war effort has got to be changed,” Mr. Layton said.

“The New Democrats came out very early with this view and we’ve continued to argue respectfully with those who disagree that there’s got to be a new path … Let’s hope that more and more people are reaching this conclusion.”

Again, read it how you want, but Jack Layton (pictures above, riding away) is “heartened” that a senior military adviser has said what Jack Layton has been saying, we will lose this war.

Being heartened by Canada’s defeat, makes him unfit to lead it.

Afghanistan, The Layton world view