{"id":311,"date":"2005-04-19T23:37:00","date_gmt":"2005-04-20T03:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=311"},"modified":"2005-04-19T23:37:00","modified_gmt":"2005-04-20T03:37:00","slug":"311","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=311","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span style=\"font-size:130%;\">Vultures Circling<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Say I&#8217;m going to take on Tiger Woods one-on-one in a world televised match to determine the &#8220;<em>ultimate golf champion of the Universe<\/em>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now, let&#8217;s say I cancel the first match because I&#8217;m sick. Then I back out of the rescheduled game because I have some business to tend to. Then, I cancel because it&#8217;s Jean Lapierre&#8217;s birthday, a holy day for Liberals coast to coast. After a while, Tiger is going to think I&#8217;m afraid of playing him. Worse, our worldwide television audience is going to realize that I know I can&#8217;t beat the guy.<\/p>\n<p>Well, that&#8217;s exactly what this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politicswatch.com\/house-april18-2005.htm\">latest move <\/a>will make people think. This is probably the most desperate thing I have ever seen a party in power do and it&#8217;s only going to propagate the feeling that the upcoming election is hopeless for the Grits. Go to Blogs Canada and look at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogscanada.ca\/egroup\/CategoryView.aspx?category=Liberals\">two most recent posts involving &#8220;Liberals&#8221;<\/a>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogscanada.ca\/egroup\/CommentView.aspx?guid=6c5a37c1-3d88-4254-9e31-01d21bc729d4\">James Bow<\/a>, saying the party needs to be defeated in order to rebuild and a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogscanada.ca\/egroup\/PermaLink.aspx?guid=e42dc4b3-d9d5-43e2-b39c-fb9cbd535520\">card carrying party member <\/a>saying the Liberals&#8217; goal should be to form a strong opposition.<\/p>\n<p>The Liberal Party is <a href=\"http:\/\/daveberta.blogspot.com\/\">dismayed<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogscanada.ca\/egroup\/PermaLink.aspx?guid=e42dc4b3-d9d5-43e2-b39c-fb9cbd535520\">dejected<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tdhstrategies.com\/home.html\">divided<\/a>. The Conservatives can smell blood and Harper is looking <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/servlet\/ArticleNews\/TPStory\/LAC\/20050419\/ELECMATH19\/TPNational\/?query=opposition+day\">more and more confident <\/a>with each passing day, quite shocking considering how tentative he&#8217;s seemed this past year on everything from gay marriage to Goodale&#8217;s budget.<\/p>\n<p>To make matters worse, important policies like the Kyoto Plan and the Foreign Policy Review are being brushed aside as &#8220;electioneering&#8221; and aren&#8217;t being debated on their merits. With an election a month away, what could be more important than an honest debate on the environment and foreign policy? But we won&#8217;t get it because of a grandstanding opposition and a government that continues to shoot themselves in the foot to overshadow their own headlines.<\/p>\n<p>Honestly, at this point, it&#8217;s hard to say what Martin can do to save himself. But I&#8217;m going to go out on a limb and say that trying to shut down the opposition isn&#8217;t likely going to help. One of the most successful political parties in the history of democracy looks like a desperate, spent force clinging to power by the fingertips.<\/p>\n<p>Sad times to be a Liberal.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Wednesday Morning UPDATE<\/strong><\/em>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestar.com\/NASApp\/cs\/ContentServer?pagename=thestar\/Layout\/Article_Type1&#038;c=Article&amp;cid=1113947411656&#038;call_pageid=968256290204&amp;col=968350116795\">Chantal Hebert <\/a>has a good story on this in the Star.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vultures Circling Say I&#8217;m going to take on Tiger Woods one-on-one in a world televised match to determine the &#8220;ultimate golf champion of the Universe.&#8221; Now, let&#8217;s say I cancel the first match because I&#8217;m sick. Then I back out of the rescheduled game because I have some business to tend to. Then, I cancel [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}