Preston Manning Is Gonna Shit A Phonebook!

An outdated and insulting column from an appointed hack.  The dumbest bit:

Members of various ethnic communities are fed up with platitudes. They are active members of our society at all levels, and they demand no special status – they just want an equal opportunity to contribute to the continued development of their communities. That’s what they should expect and that’s what we should demand of them.

So according to Leo Housakos, immigrants get special status while the rest of us schleps pay the bills.  I`ve heard that line before, and it is exactly the kind of toxic blithering that Preston Manning warned his fellow conservatives against last weekend.  And kudos to him, by the way.  He is telling his own that if they want to get the keys to the nation they have to stop behaving like the intellectual equivalent of drunken frat-boys.  That he`s getting some flack from right-leaning pundits like Chris Selley simply highlights the difference in seriousness of the projects they are engaged in.  Manning wants Conservatives to prove themselves fit to rule; Selley wants to them to remain the clowns of chattering class.

Inside Preston Manning’s Secret Deal With Carleton U

Dennis Gruending looks and finds an Alberta oil-man, a passel of old-time Reform Party operatives, a few token Libs, and of course no smelly hippies.  Something funny going on?

Your Daily Nazi: On Nazi Analogies

In politics, they're hardly ever a good idea;however, they do appear to be a staple of the Canadian version. For example, as far as I have been able to determine, there was at least one analogy of some government policy to Neville Chamberlain made in every parliamentary session from 1998 to 2007. My favorite came from 1995, when Preston Manning himself famously uttered:

Any government that can talk itself into believing that a separatist veto over the Constitution of Canada helps national unity can talk itself into any other kind of concession. It is the Neville Chamberlain approach to constitutional negotiation: unity in our time through irrational concessions. When Winston Churchill was asked how to deal with a Prime Minister taking that approach, he replied: ``If the Prime Minister trips, he must be sustained; if he makes mistakes, they must be covered; if he sleeps, he must not be wantonly disturbed; but if he is no good, he must be poleaxed''.

To which the honourable Herb Gray replied:

Mr. Speaker, in the justice system there is a provision whereby a judge can order somebody to be sent for a mental examination for a period of 30 days. Mr. Speaker, I was thinking that we might give you that authority and that the leader of the Reform Party be the first candidate for that procedure.

To which some honourable members responded: Oh, oh. Sounds like an appropriate response in this latest instance as well.

Draft Preston

Albertans: you want rid of the Stelmach government? Dig this:

[Preston] Manning would not comment Wednesday about the upcoming Wildrose Alliance leadership contest.

Although he has been touted as a possible leader of the small conservative party, Manning has reportedly turned down the job.

Reconsider, Preston. Please.

Update: But has he strayed too far left?

More Tory On Tory Violence

First, there was Harper vs. Mulroney. Next up as the coalition unravels: Harper vs. Manning?

Given Harper's "multiple betrayals", that seems quite possible

Gruending On Gerwing And Morgentaler

Dennis Gruending discusses a decision by the family of Alphonse Gerwing (specifically, his nephew and sister) to return the man's Order of Canada medal over Henry Morgentaler's being made a recipient of the same medal:

I don’t know how it was decided that Al’s Order of Canada medal should be returned. Al never married so there was no immediate family to make such a decision, but at least one relative has expressed his displeasure with what has happened. Jim Gerwing, a former Benedictine monk at the monastery near Humboldt, wrote a letter to The Globe and Mail on July 23. “The Order of Canada was not given to the Gerwing family,” he said, “and they have absolutely no right to return it simply because they disagree with the fact that Henry Morgentaler is also a recipient. Canada should not accept the return of such an honour unless it is explicitly written into the deceased person’s will.”

It does sound as though Alphonse Gerwing was pro-life. But there is a long leap of reasoning from that fact to the conclusion that he himself would have wanted his snowflake returned. Preston Manning, after all, has kept his.

And here is Jim Gerwing's letter in its entirety. I agree that the families of Order of Canada recipients should not be able to exploit a medal they are not entitled to in order to score political points.

Preston Manning Invokes Chamberlain, Diminishes Holocaust, Insults Jews Everywhere

From Hansard, December 14th 1995:

Mr. Preston Manning (Calgary Southwest, Ref.):

Mr. Speaker, the minister provides no rational answer because there is no rational answer.
Any government that can talk itself into believing that a separatist veto over the Constitution of Canada helps national unity can talk itself into any other kind of concession. It is the Neville Chamberlain approach to constitutional negotiation: unity in our time through irrational concessions...

So lets have the Canadian Jewish Congress come out and bitch and whine and demand an apology, shall we?

Incidentally, I've done what I imagine the industrious Aaron Wherry did, which was to run the search term "Neville Chamberlain" through Hansard's search engine. Although I can't claim his brand of journalistic rigor, I can state with near certainty that there has been at least one Neville Chamberlain analogy made in every parliamentary session back to at least 1998. I can't find references in 1997 or 1996, but I didn't look very hard, and then there is old Preston's example from 1995.

So at least one Neville Chamberlain reference in 10 of the last twelve years. Even Alexa McDonough indulged.

Talk about the non-controversy that set the world aflame! A word of advice: just because they're outraged over there at the Natty Post, or any of the newspapers associated with Canada.com, it ain't necessarily news.

I hate it when people beat me to a story. But at least Philippe Gohier seems to have missed the Preston Manning bit.