Herman Gooden has unleashed a baby-sized tantrum upon The Voice of London today. And by baby-sized, I mean red-eyed, snot-bubbling, purple-faced, on the floor kicking his tiny chubby feet kind of tantrum. Usually the best bet is to let them cry themselves to exhaustion, or, I guess hugging. Bad fathers like me point and laugh and take pictures.
"I was interviewing Joe Fontana...I absolve Joe for all of that because his affiliation with the Liberals was clearly beyond his control. As he explains in our interview, his party allegiance was sealed for life one morning in 1967 when Pierre Trudeau spoke in his high school auditorium in Timmins. And that was all it took. Voodoo or black magic . . . whatever it was . . . I regard it as a kind of kidnapping, a form of brainwashing against which the poor lad had no resistance."
Shorter: Joe is dumb. Poor Joe. See Joe vote liberal like a zombie.
"I also pride myself on having kept my journalistic cool so completely that Joe probably didn’t notice I was suffering the political equivalent of a nervous breakdown as we sat there amiably chatting over our mugs of dark roast."
Shorter: I wanted to throw my coffee in his face.
"He said he was a clergyman, which gave me hope that he might be a reasonable human being."
Shorterish: I think people who (mis)interpret the words written by stone-age tribesmen about their imaginary sky god, are people who think like me. Alas, alack, alarm! I am undone!
"Clearly, I knew there were people who thought this way walking about on Canadian streets and some of them are probably even allowed to handle heavy equipment."
Shorter: Liberals eat paste. Now that's good journalism.
"I was already a profoundly suffering unit, Joe, but then it got worse. He went and did the impossible thing; he topped himself for smug, shameless, Liberal inanity, saying, “I’ve never been so proud as a Liberal as on the day that Jean Chretien stood in Parliament and said we will not engage in that illegal war in Iraq.”
Again, Joe, you know I don’t hold you responsible, but once again your reply – “Yes. That was a defining moment” – could have been very upsetting.
Except this time you were right. It was a defining moment for a lot of us; crystallizing the shame we felt in living under a government that was always ready to let America take care of all of our defence needs as we bled our own military dry. And then sniped at them as warmongers."
Well, here you are just wrong Herman. The invasion of Iraq was not in defence of Canada, or the U.S. You know it, we all know it. So maybe stick that one back in your nappy because it stinks. It is a steaming shit-pile of lies and distortions and has been proven so over, and over, and over. By the way, did you miss all the heavy lifting we have done in Afghanistan while the US was busy in Iraq? Isn't that butchy enough for you? So we didn't go to Iraq, but we did go to Afghanistan, and Harper and cabinet have had no trouble pointing out that is was Chretien and Martin who got us in there.
Why do you hate building schools Herman?
As for bleeding the military dry, again, you are wrong. Demonstrably wrong. But why let facts get in the way of your tantrum.
Because they do get in the way.
Prime Minister Mulroney started slashing spending on the military in 1989, in what has been described as an "excess of enthusiasm for cutting the defence budget" by the Institute for Research on Public Policy. Chretien's so-called slashing of defence spending amounted to little more than cancelling the EH-101 helicopter contract. From his book, My Years as Prime Minister, Chretien wrote:
"More significant in terms of savings - but just as important as a symbol - was the Cabinet's decision, taken at its first meeting, to fulfill our campaign promise and cancel the Conservative government's order for 43 new EH-101 military helicopters, even though it meant having to pay a $500-million contract penalty. Given the size of the deficit the Tories left us, we would have had to borrow $6 billion to pay this additional bill and, as a result, been that much further from balancing the books. Indeed, when all items were accounted for, we would have had to borrow even more than that: it's a reasonable calculation that those helicopters would have cost the people of Canada at least another $6 billion in interest over ten years. compared to that bill, the penalty didn't look quite so bad"
As for Mulroney's spending on the military:
The Mulroney government ordered the Ch-148/149 Petrel/Chimo with certain knowledge they were over-buying. The federal deficit was massive and the order would clearly have laid a bill, which would have taken years to pay, at the feet of Canadian taxpayers.
Mulroney overspent, then cut. The Liberals cut one contract, then assented to more spending. As for not sneering at the face of Prime Minister Harper, maybe you should look a little more askance at this "patriot" who has cut salaries in the military, while expecting them to salute him as head of state. Oh yeah, he's also planning on cutting the defence budget by 2.5 billion dollars.
Maybe somebody needs a snuggle, a Boynton book, and a little nap. I'm going to suggest Snuggle Puppy as it covers both the snuggling and reading in one go. Plus, there's lots of kissing and hugging, and that always cheers up my little fellow.
Night night little buddy.
