Coup leader Stephane Dion sends video from his bunker (late)

Unfortunately for Stephane Dion and his coalition of the swilling, sheer incompetence prevented him from getting his grade-school-quality rebuttal tape to the networks on time for a full airing this evening, after the networks cleared time until 7:30 EST for the free publicity. Good news! I’ve got it for you here! As a conservative and a Conservative, I want to make sure as many people as possible see the work of the man who wants to be PM (please note: a book named “HOT AIR” appears above Steffi’s right shoulder on the bookshelf. It was in clear focus and easily spotted when the video appeared on its original broadcast, but appears to have been blacked out when posted online).

UPDATE: If you can’t get the YouTube clip to play, you can get the video from this direct CBC link here: http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/8752/news/features/opposition-reacts-081203.wmv

Here’s the amazing, hilarious story behind this video fiasco, from CTV:

Liberals apologize for late delivery of Dion video

Updated Wed. Dec. 3 2008 10:48 PM ET

Josh Visser, CTV.ca News

The Liberals have apologized for Liberal Leader Stephane Dion’s taped televised address, after it was delivered to Canadian networks almost an hour past deadline and in near-cellphone quality.

“I apologize for what happened tonight. I apologize for the poor quality and the lateness. I am livid and am doing an investigation as to how this happened,” Johanne Senecal, Dion’s Chief of Staff, said to CTV News tonight.

Dion was supposed to deliver the networks a pre-taped statement to the nation Wednesday between 6: 15 p.m. and 6:30 ET. It was to air after Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressed the country at 7 p.m. ET about the political crisis on Parliament Hill.

CTV, along with other major Canadian networks, pre-empted regularly scheduled programming to deliver the addresses. Harper went to air shortly after 7 p.m. but networks were left scrambling to fill airspace when Dion’s tape was nowhere to be found.

Alphée Moreau, a senior Liberal communication staffer, explained how the series of technical mistakes on their part resulted in an embarrassing snafu.

The timeline (all times ET):

• 6:15-6:30 – The Liberals miss their promised deadline to deliver Dion’s statement to the television networks.
• 6:40 – Liberals arrive with a single tape at the press gallery in Ottawa. They were supposed to deliver two tapes: one in French, one in English. They arrived with a single tape in DVD-minicam format, which is not broadcast quality.
• Shortly after 6:40 – The Liberals decide to run back to their offices — a block away — because the French portion of the tape needs another edit.
• 7:05 – Liberal staffers are still in their offices as the networks go to air with the Harper address.
• 7:07 – Harper’s statement finishes and network anchors are forced to kill time as they wait for Dion’s address.
• 7:10 to 7:15 – Liberal staffers arrive back at the press gallery on Wellington Street with a DVD-minicam player that they had taken from their own offices, along with the associated cables. There is still only one tape, not two. A press gallery official tells the Liberals that the gallery is not the feed point and an argument ensues. The Liberals ask why they weren’t told that earlier. The feed point is next door at the CBC building, which is the long-established feed play point for all network pools. The Liberals are informed that they need to be walked into the building by authorized staff.
• 7:20 – English network anchors are still live on television, wondering where the tape is. CTV has still had no communications from the Liberals about Dion’s address.
• Approximately 7:15 – CBC receives the tape and begins dubbing into French and English versions. This takes about 10 minutes.
• 7:28 – CTV decides to go off-air and back to regular scheduled programming at 7:30. CTV has still not seen a feed of the tape.
• 7:28 – CBC incorrectly punches out the finished feed only to their network.
• 7:30 – CTV signs off broadcast at scheduled time.

“We missed our deadline,” Moreau said. “The shot was not all that professional. It was soft-focused.”

CTV received angry emails within minutes of signing off. Some viewers thought CTV was ignoring the Liberal leader, while others thought Dion was purposely snubbing the network.

Dion’s coalition partners were both angry and embarrassed by the Liberal address.The NDP said Wednesday’s fiasco undermined the credibility of the coalition, CTV’s Robert Fife reported.

“I’m told that (Bloc Quebecois Leader) Gilles Duceppe ran into Mr. Dion in the elevator and asked ‘What the hell happened?’ and Mr. Dion said, ‘We’re not used to being in opposition,” Fife said.

Jean Lapierre, broadcast journalist and former Liberal MP, mocked the party’s video address.

“This was the cheapest video. I don’t know if the Liberal party has financial problems, but they didn’t have to go to a high school kid to get their video made,” he said on CTV’s Mike Duffy Live. “You ask people to forget about their normal TV show tonight. We did that on TVA. We had a million people waiting for a show call ‘Le Poulet’ — ‘The Chicken.’ We didn’t even get the egg!”

The blogsphere was quick to pounce on Dion’s bumbling performance.

“Stephane Dion was late for the show, looked kind of red faced, and seemed to be getting a couple of bucks for the bankrupt Liberal Party for the product placement of a book entitled, and I kid you not, “Hot Air,” wrote the Alberta Ardvark blog Wednesday.

The Libs still don’t get it: Andre Arthur on Quebecers’ hate for Stephane Dion

The Coalition-pushers at the CBC were hoping Quebec Independent MP Andre Arthur – the former talk radio iconoclast from the provincial capital – would help promote the myth that the Separatist-Opportunist-Socialist coalition (as coined by Monte Solberg) will be popular in Quebec (and thus, in the pathetic Europhilic arse-licking world of the urban left, an obviously good thing). Arthur wouldn’t bite at any of Don Newman’s promptings, and instead told him what Quebecers really think of the Coalition’s PM-wannabe, Stephane Dion (hint: they’d rather see him on a shrimp boat in Louisiana). Watch and enjoy!

Did anyone vote for this? Separatist-Opportunist-Socialist Coalition wants to run Canada

Is this a dream, or a nightmare? Just weeks after a Federal Election that returned a strengthened Conservative Minority Parliament to Canada, the three losing parties have joined together in an attempt to govern the country. To cut through the bull, here is what is happening, in a nutshell: the lefties in all three parties, inspired by the Barack and Bailout mania sweeping through the USA, want to join the party here North of the border. When Harper refused to join the Keynsian/New Deal redux to disaster, the socialists freaked.

Now, it’s up to them to convince ordinary Canadians – who, I would guess, are about 75% against this nonsense – that they are a legitimate government. Constitutional, maybe. Legitimate to the voters? Good luck with that one.

More soon.

UPDATE: Are you buying the “economic crisis in Canada” rhetoric of the three pinheads? Buried (purposely) by the media today: Canada’s GDP Rises in Q3. That means: no recession, folks. And, from first-hand experience as the proprietor of a consumer-discretionary-goods retail business – Canada is in much better shape, relatively speaking, than the US right now.

Liberals in Meltdown: Stephane Dion Won’t Go Quietly

These Libs are too much. Canada’s “Natural Governing Party” is in complete meltdown after the leader who presided over two disastrous years (who ever thought, after Paul Martin, that it could get worse?) not only refused today to step down as party leader, but showed a mind-boggling lack of humility by refusing to take even a shred of personal responsibility for his party’s ugly showing in last week’s election.

If you want to torture yourself, here’s the link to his entire press conference in RealTime format. Dion blamed: a) “Conservative Propaganda” that bamboozled the Canadian public about his personality; b) stupid Canadians failing to understand the brilliance of his Green Shift; and c) bad fundraising efforts that didn’t allow the Liberals to advertise his brilliance enough. I would argue that the loss should be blamed on a) the intellectual bankruptcy of the Liberal Party of Canada, which allowed the worst possible candidate to win their 2006 leadership contest; b) the inevitable, and well-deserved, unpopularity of any scheme that puts a financial penalty on carbon emissions; and c) the well-deserved financial bankruptcy of the party, whose own election finance rules made it impossible for its one solid remaining base (Canada’s business elite) to fund it through an election.

Dion may sound like a simpleton and a rube when he speaks, but he’s not stupid. He’s staying put until someone ponies up his still-standing $100,000+ debt from the 2006 leadership race – only then will he walk away gracefully. Ripping apart his own party at the seams in the meantime doesn’t seem to matter to him (which is fine with me). According to Bourque, Michael Ignatieff’s people are already planning a coup for later this week. Bob Rae has been positioning himself as the lone serious candidate for months. Vainglorious ones like Martha Hall-Findlay, Gerrard Kennedy, Denis Coderre, and Joe Volpe are still floating their own names around. Some are pimping Frank McKenna, John Manley or – gasp – Justin Trudeau – as Liberal Messiahs capable of lifting the reds out of the dumps. It’s getting ugly – and funny!

What does it all mean? With a lame-duck Leader of the Opposition, we’ve got at least 8 months of an effective Conservative majority ahead, and at least two years of Conservative minority rule until the next Lib leader would even consider going to the polls.

And some would have you believe that Harper somehow lost the election!

The Weakness of Stephane Dion: ATV Interview Exposes a Pitiful Leader

If you haven’t already seen it, here’s the video that has sent the Liberal blogosphere and media into a state of complete deranged apoplexy: ATV’s Steve Murphy attempting to ask Stephane Dion a simple question.

What do we, on the right side of the political fence, see in this video?

1. A Liberal politician who was given directorial control over an interview. “We need to start again.” Has this courtesy ever been extended to a Conservative? I’d like to know. Seems highly unlikely to me.
2. A Liberal leader refusing to answer a simple, direct question, and not being smart enough to deal with it properly. An intelligent person, if he didn’t want to have to commit to specifics, would have weaseled out of it by saying “I don’t like to answer hypotheticals, but I will tell you why we need a change in leadership”, or something to that effect. Or, a bold politician would have said, “if I was PM today, I would fire the finance minister…”, etc. But Dion was so pathetic, he had to pretend he didn’t understand the question! And if he truly didn’t understand the question, then there’s got to be serious doubt cast on his ability to even be a public figure, let alone a national leader.
3. A Liberal leader who is prompted by his handlers from off-camera in even a simple friendly TV interview. This tells us that even his own staff knows that this man is not up to the job.

As for the fevered leftist reaction, here’s what they’ve come up with:

1. This is akin to making fun of a physical deformity.
2. Releasing this tape is journalistic malpractice.
3. CTV is in the tank for Conservatives (!)
4. Murphy’s question was phrased improperly. (Ridiculous. First lesson of interview prep: if you don’t like the question, re-ask the question as you would have like it phrased, then answer your own question.)
5. In the words of Stephane Dion himself, “it’s unfair!”

And in case you thought this was the first time Dion showed himself to be a complete dork, check out this classic (one of my all-time favorites, Dion at the Calgary Stampede):

The Rae-avoiding gambit: Stephen Harper, doomed Dion, and the Election call

Welcome, Canada, to the issueless election campaign. On October 14, 2008, we will elect a new Parliament that will, most likely, return either a strengthened Conservative minority, or a slight Conservative majority, to Ottawa. The Conservatives’ justifications for abandoning in spirit, if not in letter-of-the-law, their own fixed election date legislation that called for an October 2009 poll, have been weak at best. They have offered no discernible agenda to the public, and seem happy that the fascinating, supercharged U.S. campaign will relegate our own campaign to page-two status.

Calling an election without losing a confidence vote in Parliament comes at a cost to Harper. It chips away at hard-earned reputation as a principled, do-what-you-say politician. And, it means he doesn’t get to define an election campaign on a key issue of his choosing (as he attempted several times last year – Afghanistan, the budget, the Senate – only to have the Liberals walk out and abstain rather than force a writ.) But this cost was certainly calculated in by Harper’s strategy circle, and was determined to be worthwhile.

Why was it determined to have been worthwhile? Because, in the end, no one believes the public will vote the Liberals into power simply because the election was called a year early. So, the question becomes: what is the potential gain to be had here, to make the blow to the reputation worthwhile? The answer, I believe, has to be something more than simply a hail-mary shot at getting a coveted majority in Parliament. I think it also has to do with the tenuous status of Stephane Dion’s leadership, which, unless a miracle happens, will be coming to an end shortly.

My guess is this: word got out that, if the Liberals showed poorly in the now-cancelled September by-elections, Steffi would have been dumped, and Bob Rae would have been installed as leader, with nearly a year in the position ahead of himself to prepare for the guaranteed October 2009 showdown. I’ve been saying it for nearly two years now: the only Liberal that the Cons fear is the slippery, slick media darling, Bob Rae. A one-year campaign of personal destruction against the Conservatives, combined with a one-year Obama-esque deification of the former Ontario premier, was the nightmare scenario that Harper did not want to face.

With a new mandate earned this October, the Dion dumping will be delayed at least a month, and the next election will likely be delayed far beyond October 2009 – in the case of a majority, the delay will be as much as four years. Methinks this issue-less, agenda-less election call is all about the Dion-Rae dynamic, and an attempt to pre-empt a showdown with a re-energized Rae-led Liberal Party, and extend this period of Liberal decline to span a generation.

Does it bother me that the Harperites are shrewd political calculators? No, not in the least. Why would one NOT want their party to understand how to play the game? Without obtaining and maintaining power, there’s no way to make positive conservative gains. Further, there is every reason to fear Bob Rae – a man with the financial means, rhetorical skills, and unprincipled opportunistic nature, to make a serious run at Harper’s job.

All that bothers me is that Harper’s Ontario-Harrisite inner circle seems to be of the faulty mindset that social conservatives are holding the party back from earning a majority; that, somehow, if the Conservatives are positioned as tough on crime, tough on the International scene, fiscally sound, and, like Liberals, absent on social issues, the media and Toronto elite will somehow fall in love. Whether or not this is the case is irrelevant; social conservatives are an equal “leg” of any successful conservative “stool”. Without them, fiscal conservatives and security hawks always eventually fall flat on their faces.

Delusional Dion Proclaims: Canadians Pining for Election!

Delusional Dion, Dynamic Man of the People. (Photo from Armenian Church of Canada dinner)

I nearly spit up my iced tea when I saw this item reported briefly, about 25 minutes into tonight’s The National on CBC: Canadians hungry for a federal election this fall, says Liberal leader (Canadian Press) .

“We have seen over the winter and the spring more and more interest for federal politics,” Dion told reporters Wednesday at a hotel in Ottawa’s west end. “And more and more appetite for an election.”

I was all ready to make the obvious point myself: that no one is talking politics in Canada right now, which means that the most tone-deaf, delusional politician in Canadian history, who in nearly two years as Liberal leader has led the Reds to nothing but humiliation and the brink of bankruptcy, has truly outdone himself. Then, I came across Kelly MacParland’s spot-on column written earlier this evening, “Stephane Dion’s Midsummer Night’s Election Dream” at The National Post, which says it all:

Hmmm. Mr. Dion must be going on highly confidential internal polls, because if there’s a clamour across the land for a chance to spend $300 million or so on a general election, it’s not apparent to us unschooled observers. According to my own proprietary polling figures, here’s the breakdown on issues currently occupying holidaying Canadians, ranked by priority:

1. Boy is it ever raining a lot.
2. What the hell is up with Christian Bale?
3. Is Mats Sundin nuts or what, sitting around Sweden wondering whether to accept $20 million from Vancouver, or $14 million from the Leafs, and claiming he can’t make up his mind.
4. What the hell is up with gas prices?
5. If I sneak off work early this Friday, will anyone get upset, considering I also snuck off last Friday and the Friday before?

Looking down the list, I can’t find anything that says “Boy, wouldn’t it be great to have an election as soon as possible so we can all vote for the same person we voted for last time.” But the list only extends to 500 issues, so it’s not entirely comprehensive…

There’s only one reason I can think of as to why Dion may want an election: the approx. $2 in public funding per vote would help keep the party financially afloat.