At Home in Hespeler

OK, it seems pretty obvious what Jim Flaherty really means by:

Instead of seizing opportunities and taking steps to strengthen our economy we are seeing a lack of leadership, a lack of vision and a lack of economic stewardship. And we are seeing it right here in the manufacturing heartland of the country, the place I proudly call home: Ontario.

But to put this speech in perspective, lets go back a few years. In fact lets go back almost two years, to April 2006. Back when we were still digesting “Canada’s New Government,” back when they were in fact new, and the ministers for this government were all newly appointed: Rona Ambrose was in Environment and had upside. Garth Turner was in the back-benches of the governing side, and his blog was Stephen Harper yaa tis, and Stephen Harper yaa that.

And Jim Flaherty was Canada’s new Finance Minister. In that environement, I spoke thus:

When Dalton’s Liberal’s came to power in Ontario, they bitched and moaned about the state the Conservatives left the finances. They made statements such as ‘they cut taxes too quickly’, ‘they acted irresponsibly’ and &tc. The problem is, one of those Conservative Finance Minister’s, one of the tax cutting ones, was Jim Flaherty.

If you are Jim Flaherty, are you sorely tempted to tell Dalton McGuinty that a) the house was once in order b) the house is no longer in order and c) we blame you for b? For a tax cutter fiscal conservative like Flaherty, is this even more so after the last Ontario budget, in which Dalton McGuinty intentionally built a deficit into the budget for political(?) purposes?

Not being content with that, in October of that year Dalton spoke somewhat out of turn:

“A lot of those people who used to run Queen’s Park, the ones who didn’t get what it takes to succeed in the 21st century, they’re back. They’re running the federal government. It’s kind of like a recurring nightmare,” McGuinty told the closing rally of the Ontario Liberals’ annual general meeting.

“I’m increasingly concerned they still don’t get it that they still don’t understand that it takes more than competitive taxes alone to build a high quality of life in today’s world.”

Good Lord, Dalton! Put away that stone before you break one of the panes on the wall.

So who was surprised yesterday when Flaherty went after McGuinty? Who was surprised when he said “Dalton McGuinty likes to blame others for his problems. But I suggest the problems, in many cases, stem from a lack of innovation, a lack of foresight and a lack of leadership.”? Not me, that’s who. I saw this one coming two years ago.

More at Jack’s Newswatch and Blue Like You. (Hey Joanne, did you consider “Blue By You”? It’s catchy and you could hum along.)

Dalton Dalton Dalton, It's all about me

Well, I never really went away, I just stopped caring what was happening, both in the world I scribble about (i.e. politics) and the blog itself. The truth is, when the weather got nice in around June, and I was pulling 15-20 readers a day, killing this blog was high on my mind. Instead of doing so, I decided to just go away, and not come back until Labour day. Just go away for the summer, and see if I want to do the work necessary to try and resurrect this blogged up corpse.

It was, frankly, hard to stay away this past few weeks, and as the last two posts show, I only sort of succeeded in staying away. The goal now, is return At Home in Hespeler to it’s former glory. This involves returning to mostly short, humorous posts, with occasional longer more serious work.

The weekends will see the return of three features, which have never appeared before together. Saturday will feature the Saturday Fluffernutter, my take on the weekly Hollyweird stories. I am aiming for a shorter feature, with one or two stories, instead of running five to seven as I was doing before (although some weeks, there is just seven can’t ignore stories). Sunday will see the return of the Blogging Tories Site of the Week, which I inherited from Blue Blogging Soapbox and have been uncomfortable ignoring the past three months. And finally, Sunday morning will also give you This Week on my I-Pod, a weekly look at who I’ve been listening to, with some general reflections thrown around.

That’s it. Come tomorrow, the kids go back to school, and I will start to look at politics again. As I say that I note this weekend that Andrew Coyne has suggested “Canadian politics is uniquely stupid.” And Susan Delacourt, talking about PuffinGate©, has said “humour seems to have gone out of fashion in politics in Harper’s Ottawa.” Never mind the nonsense about it being somehow Harper’s fault that Liberal’s and progressives are insulted, degraded and disgusted every time some Conservative makes a joke. Humour is gone from politics, and the reaction to Ignatieff’s ill-advised, but otherwise humorous little bit about Puffins is a stunning example of exactly what Andrew Coyne is talking about. Good on Christian Conservative, who got into the proper spirit of the thing, and hammed up a new Liberal Logo, which you see above.

Blog Administration, It's all about me