King Arthur Movie Tristan

What an apt choice by Governor General Michaelle Jean to prorogue Parliament: It would hard to find a larger gallery of rogues, and, as Brian Mulroney would tell ya, they're a pack of old pros.

I was not planning on blogging about Elliot Spitzer unless I felt I could add something to it, but I wanted to point to Lorrie Goldstein's column in today's Sun Governor should've zipped it:

If you're wondering what my wife is doing up here on this podium beside me looking miserable -- again -- it's because that's what f...ing idiots like me do whenever we're caught being f...ing idiots.

We believe having our wives stand beside us while we do our half-baked mea culpas, will somehow send out a message to the public that what we did can't be all that bad because, after all, our wives have forgiven us.

In any event, please allow me to continue.

I am deeply sorry ... that I got caught.

I can't tell you how sorry I am ... that I got caught.

I am devastated ... that I got caught.

I apologize ... for getting caught.

But if you think I'd be up here apologizing if I hadn't been caught -- like, if, say, I'd had an attack of personal conscience and could no longer live with my shameless self-righteousness and hypocrisy -- boy, do, I have some ocean front property in Wyoming I'd like to sell to you.

And speaking of Spitzer's milfish wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, I agree with Rondi Adamson that Silda looks like Jennifer Aniston - it was my first thought when I saw the pictures of her yesterday. What is it with Jennifer Aniston types that us men seem to want to leave them behind while we go off with some skanky tramp?

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One thing I would add. My original inclination looking over this story Monday was to say, you know your having a bad day when you read your name in the paper in the same paragraph as "federal wiretapping operation." Your having a worse day when your wife reads in the paper your name in the same paragraph as "spent Valentines day with a prostitute."

I wish I could say that Elliot Spitzer doesn't deserve the kind of week he's having but, by all accounts, he does. And if Silda Wall Spitzer is giving him that rough week, all the better.

I have been pondering la affair Cadman all weekend, trying to get my head in the right place for commenting on it. My concern was that I was quite prepared to pooh-pooh this whole thing because my team are the bad guys. That's not good enough thinking, and I tried to turn it around: if this was a Liberal scandal, how would I react?

My conclusion, there wasn't enough there yet. Legally, there is no crime committed, only hearsay evidence. Ethically, again it's one a few peoples word vs. the hearsay of what a dead man said (if Cadman was alive, we have a different story). My conclusion was going to be, until the other shoe drops, there's not much here. However, I also felt there was more to come, and it could complete this story. The question was, who was going to look worse once the story played out?

Well, Stephen Harper dropped a shoe today, a big one, by threatening to sue Stephane Dion, Ralph Goodale and Michael Ignatieff:

The prime minister served notice Monday that he plans to sue the Liberals if they don't apologize for comments they made concerning the Chuck Cadman affair.

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, the Liberal Party of Canada and MPs Ralph Goodale and Michael Ignatieff were all served letters over statements published on the party's website.

Those statements question Stephen Harper's alleged involvement in financial "offers" made to Cadman to sway his vote in a crucial 2005 Commons showdown.

Harper's lawyer, Richard Dearden, calls the statements "false and devastatingly defamatory."

"These malicious and reckless defamatory statements impugn the reputation of Prime Minister Stephen Harper," Dearden writes in a letter of notice.

Who knows what's coming next, but one things for sure: Harper has decided he doesn't want an election over this issue. Unless the Liberals have more proof to offer (and believe me, the folks at the "Warren Kinsella coffee house and war room" are looking), they won't be inclined to bring down the government over this issue - at least not yet.

It's a sad state of affairs when the local newspaper starts reading like The Onion, but that's the case today. These guys are nuts, and they're running this province.

Health care in Ontario is a +$30B dollar ministry in Ontario, and the guy running the show doesn't have the native intelligence to figure out how unpleasant it might be to wear a soiled diaper:

Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman says he's considering personally road-testing a new absorbent adult diaper to see if it's appropriate for the province's nursing home residents.

"As a matter of conscience, it's something that I have been seriously considering," Smitherman told reporters yesterday.

The super diapers have become a flash point in the debate around adequate staffing in long-term care facilities.

It's a mighty cold day in hell, and Hespeler when Sid Ryan and Peter Kormos are the guys making sense in a debate, but in Dalton's Ontario, that's how effective banning pit bulls has been against global warming:

Ryan:

"So if the minister wants to play silly games, let him put on a diaper and sleep in it all night long and come into the legislature and wear it until 12 o'clock, and let him soil that diaper and lay around in it for the length of time our seniors have to do in this province."

Kormos:

"Smitherman's a damned embarrassment. One doesn't have to use or exhaust one's imagination to understand the humiliation, the indignity, of sitting in one's own waste for what could be hours at a time."

Really, wet socks are annoying, how much brains and imagination does it take to know spending hours in wet diapers is not good enough.

Then there's Aboriginal Affairs Minister Duncan Bryant, who is telling developers not to pay extortion to the Six Nations Development Institute, a group who is demanding $7,000 fees to develop along the Grand River, land which the institute has no legal claim on:

Ontario will not stop Six Nations from charging developers fees on disputed land near the Grand River, Aboriginal Affairs Minister Michael Bryant said.

He spoke yesterday as calls mounted for the government to halt what some are calling extortion.

A Six Nations development institute is demanding developers pay fees to build around the site, while protesters continue to occupy a former Caledonia housing project.

Developers who got letters seeking fees say the province is hanging them out to dry by not intervening or guaranteeing their safety.

But Bryant said it's up to police to intervene and press charges.

"Developers ... didn't just fall off the turnip truck," he said. "They know very well what the rules are and the laws are."

But Bryant won't step in and nobody can reasonable expect the OPP to do anything about it. Not after Caledonia. So the developers pay the bribes necessary to do business in Ontario (how about a new slogan? "not your average third world country." That ought to rake in the tourists). So the developers pay, the Liberals pretend the issue has gone away, businesses moves on to the next province, and Ontario sinks in to have-not status.

Speaking of which, Dalton is doing a fair bit of whining this week:

Federal politicians have to stop "talking down" the Ontario economy, Premier Dalton McGuinty says.

The premier said he wasn't prepared to follow their advice to cut taxes because he would have to close hospitals, cut social services and stop buying textbooks for students.

Instead, the Stephen Harper government should be partnering with his government on strategic investments in training, jobs and infrastructure to help grow the provincial economy, he said.

"It'd be nice to have the federal government in our corner," McGuinty said. "It'd be nice to have a federal government which doesn't seem to take so much delight in talking down the Ontario economy." Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's comment that the McGuinty government is letting Ontario slide into "have not" status and should cut taxes to improve the business climate did not go over well at Queen's Park.

It would be nice to have the federal government in our corner. Instead, the feds are reduced to acting like stern parents, warning the province of the consequences of it's actions. Dalton's response? Right on cue, here comes the petulance. Answer one question Dalton, are we or are we not heading for have-not status according to the federal equalization formula? If not, answer the argument with facts. If so, why? And don't say it's Mike Harris's fault.

Better yet, someone give this guy a diaper.

Finally, we go back to article two, Bryant Skips Home Fight, for one last item:

Meanwhile, Tory party leader John Tory wrote Gary McHale yesterday opposing the Richmond Hill activist's "inappropriate" planned Caledonia demonstration Sunday at OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino's home in Woodbridge. Public figures accept protests with their jobs, but "have a reasonable expectation that our families and our private homes will be left out."

While I agree in principle, don't the people of Caledonia have a reasonable expectation that there families and private homes will be left out of protests, whether by native bands, angry unionists or local nutjobs? And if they do end up in the middle of "inappropriate" protests, that their leadership, both politically and in the police, will aid them? And if that doesn't happen...?

Ladies and Gentlemen, your Government of Ontario: a rash on all their asses