Silly Little Country

Liberal attack ad #2 in my list

I can either spend a lot of time going to look at these ads on some web site, or just wait for them to flow by as I watch TV and report on them.

I have now seen a second. Now I think what the voice told me was that Stephen Harper gave a speech to some people in Montreal (I believe they were 'Americans'), and he apparently said that our unemployed got pretty good benefits. Now this apparently, as the voiceover continued, marks him as someone with too little compassion to be a Canadian Prime Minister.

So I would have to infer he had also proposed cutting back our Employment Insurance benefits. No evidence was provided that such is the case. But actually, the benefits have been cut back significantly, as I seem to recall, in the last dozen years, i.e. since Paul Martin became our Finance Minister.

Now it is true that this sort of misleading nonsense can work really well when almost the whole national press is signed up to ignore any critical thought or logic in commenting on the ads. I am curious to see how this plays with our standard media. Last year this as would have had many others pitching in helping out.

What is cute about the ads is that they are so poor on facts, and so high on implication, and constantly mention 'American' items. Apparently Harper talks to those devilish people!

I have until Monday to decide how to vote. I think I have four alternatives, each distasteful in some ways, and with its positive points in others. But the Liberal campaign has removed one of the options I was actually considering a couple of weeks ago. If this is all you can say to convince me to be on your side, you have convinced me there are no reasons.

Actually there is one way I could contemplate voting for this party. Andrew Coyne posts the question nicely - if my local candidate showed the courage to publicly repudiate this total nonsense being promulgated, I would even be impressed by her again (as I was when I met her face to face recently, until she started enumerating her pork barreling successes for my riding).

posted by Alan Adamson @ 10:36 PM