Tory “attack” ads “poisoned” the election!

"Research" by Angus Reid pollsters Andrew Grenville and Mario Canseco proves that Conservative TV ads "poisoned" the election. (Canseco also appeared on CBC’s Politics (Friday, Oct 24 - about 17 minutes in) where he held Don Newman’s rapt attention.) This has to be some of the lamest, most idiotic drivel I’ve ever seen. According to their "research" the "attack" ads:

... persuaded 11 per cent of Canadian respondents not to vote for any candidate at all.

... were key to producing the lowest voter turnout in Canadian electoral history...

... were part of a disturbing trend that is "poisoning the well" of Canadian politics.

It’s hard to imagine people being this stupid. If I was otherwise neutral but extremely offended by one party’s ‘vicious’ "attack" ads I’d make damn sure I voted for someone else. One can’t help wondering whether the Angus Reid "researchers" controlled for the possibility that their poll questions might have suggested yet another lame excuse for respondents’ not bothering to vote - which they wouldn’t have anyway.

And oh, those ultra-sensitive lefty souls:

... Many supporters of Canada's centre-left parties tend to be more idealistic than Conservatives, said Grenville. Idealists, people who dream of a better world, are prone to drop out of the electoral process if they believe it has become corrupt or unethical, Grenville said.

What a load of unmitigated hooey! "Idealists" who "dream of a better world" and "drop out". Are they serious?! Also, these "idealistic" lefties are well known for their tendency to be violent should they happen to ‘disagree’ with their political opponents. For example, (and) they firebombed BC Premier Gordon Campbell’s wife’s school office, firebombed his constituency office and harassed him during a commercial flight ("So! He’s in a democracy.") The Angus Reid "researchers" are based in Vancouver so they have no excuse for not being aware of these events.

"More idealist than conservatives"? Methinks that’s the "researchers" nuanced way of keeping the "Conservatives are meanies" meme alive and well. Then, for good measure, they add the blatant insinuations - "corrupt or unethical".

And didn’t Grenville and Canseco watch the leaders’ debates? Never mind a few seconds of TV commercials, Stephen Harper was subjected to two full hours of sustained attacks from four of his "idealistic" rivals. They called him a "fraud" (May), uncaring and incompetent (Layton), a liar (Dion), a Bush stooge (many times, all of them). And these debates were replayed several times in full and segments were repeated in TV news stories.

This is all reminiscent of the loopy sympathy many media pundits developed for poor, sad Stephane Dion. Dion’s thrice restarted interview exposed his obvious ineptitude. Instead of keying on the obvious they turned it into an attack on that meany, Harper. And let’s not forget that moronic Andrew Coyne’s weeping over the "disgraceful" treatment of Dion - that "kind and decent man". What is this, election politics or the Oprah f***ing Winfry Show?

The ridiculous whining from a severely biased MSM peanut gallery has gotten way beyond tiresome.

“military sugarcoating what is going on..” - Newman on Afstan

This incredible baloney from Don Newman’s interview with John Manley on Politics today:

11:40 Newman: ..you say there has to be better communication, better understanding by Canadians ... the implication being the government is in a way, uh, or maybe the military is sugar-coating what is going on, uh because we hear about the successes all the time in Afghanistan and then we hear almost back-channel both NATO and the US are reviewing their tactics in Afghanistan because the Taliban is doing better than it did. So Canadians are not getting straight goods from the government?

Sure Don, all Canadians get from the media is the good news.
Correction from Manley:

12:50 Manley: Not that I would ever be critical of the media, but Don, ... when we visited a project in the center of Kabul, an amazing redevelopment project largely funded by CIDA ...the whole package ... A group of Canadian reporters came to see it because it was a CIDA project. That afternoon, regrettably a Canadian soldier was killed. The whole [CIDA] story was killed so that we could report ... the incident, then a couple of days later we show the ramp ceremony, then we show the return, then we show the funeral. Canadians have the impression that all we do over there is sit and get shot. Well we’re into a lot more and balancing that story is an important element of ensuring that Canadians actually know what it is they either support or oppose.

Good for John Manley!

For more see Mark Collins' posts at The Torch here and here; and Joanne's Journey.

Maher Arar - Newman in Wonderland!

Maher Arar, a dual Canadian and Syrian citizen, was detained by the U.S. INS while returning to Canada via New York. He was detained apparently on advice from the RCMP/CSIS that he had links with al Qaeda. Rather than deport him to Canada he was removed via Jordan to Syria where, Arar alleges, he was tortured. Naturally Syria denies this.

One rather absurd, 'Alice in Wonderland' theme that keeps recurring, especially among those (like the CBC) who leap at every opportunity to smear Republicans, is that Arar was deported to Syria explicitly to have him tortured for purposes of gaining intelligence. The assumption is that the U.S. was subcontracting its dirty work to Syria.

On the CBC’s ‘Politics’ show this afternoon Don Newman, in an interview with U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy repeated this preposterous line of thinking (twice). Leahy, a Democrat, obviously didn't offer up any denials for the Bush administration, and politely avoided setting Mr. Newman straight.

Leahy [48:00]: "...there's no question in my mind shipping him [Arar]back to Syria told us that he would face a very, very unpleasant time."

Newman: "Well that was the idea,was it not? To get information from him, and to get it extracted from him in a way that wouldn't happen in Canada or the United States."

[...]

Newman [50:20]: "Can you explain, briefly, because it is a bit of a puzzle to us in Canada. Syria seems to be one of the targets in the axis of evil from President Bush's speeches. Uh..Syria..he won't talk to them about Iraq because he sees them as an enemy supporting the insurgency and yet somehow American intelligence officers send off to Syria, to the Syrian intelligence service, a Canadian [and Syrian] citizen . How does this co-operation work between Syria and the United States on one level and there's no co-operation on any other? ... Why would Syria be prepared to co-operate with the United States in an activity like that if they're on the other ... be sort of like ...sending someone back to Nazi Germany in order to get some information?..."

Well, it doesn't "puzzle" me particularly. This loopy hypothesis is mainly a politically motivated 'story' for which there is no factual evidence and which has no reasonably logical basis. The U.S., with good reason, treats the Syrian regime as hostile to its interests and so would hardly trust any ‘intelligence’ supplied by Syria. There is no reason to expect co-operation between the U.S. and Syria in the war on terror.

So what happened? The simplest scenario seems most likely. The U.S. INS took at face value the information on Arar provided to them by the RCMP (and perhaps had their own information). He was treated as a terror suspect and rather than send him to Canada the INS chose to send him to his other 'home country’, Syria - as far from the U.S. as law would permit.

Was Arar unjustly treated? According to a Royal Commission he was. The head of the RCMP has apologized and resigned, and lawsuits are under way. And now that the Democrats control the U.S. House and Senate it will become a political issue there.

Update (Jan 27th):
Maybe there was more to Don Newman's 'puzzled' assertions than I had thought. David Frum's column in today's National Post peels back a layer or two on Syria - the regime's conflicts with its majority Sunnis and al-Qaeda and on the possibly nefarious relationship between the U.S. state department's "Arabists" and their co-operation with the Assad regime. Anyway, perhaps this is yet another instance proving that when it comes to Middle Eastern politics it doesn't pay to go with the simplest scenario but with the most convoluted and devious one.