{"id":312,"date":"2005-04-20T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-04-21T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=312"},"modified":"2005-04-20T22:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-04-21T02:00:00","slug":"312","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=312","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span style=\"font-size:130%;\">Voted Off the Island<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;Mad as Hell&#8221; tour will become &#8220;MadTV&#8221; tomorrow night as Paul Martin addresses the nation. From the sounds of things, Martin will make a 6 minute plea and will be followed by the opposition leaders (well, he&#8217;ll be followed by Harper, and then everyone will turn over to Survivor at 8. Tough luck Jack!).<\/p>\n<p>What will Paul say? My guess is he won&#8217;t say he&#8217;s &#8220;mad as hell&#8221;. He won&#8217;t say &#8220;there was political direction&#8221;. He won&#8217;t blame &#8220;rogue bureaucrats&#8221;. He&#8217;ll likely plead with Canadians to wait until Gomery has finished his report and try and distance himself from the scandal. Is this a good strategy? Hard to say. Normally, going on National TV to turn a scandal involving your own government into a national crisis <em>isn&#8217;t<\/em> a good idea but we&#8217;re so beyond downplaying things at this point that it&#8217;s likely worth a shot. Desperate times call for desperate measures (&#8220;We have nothing to lose but our 25%&#8221;). Only problem is, an increasingly confident Stephen Harper will follow him so Canadians will be given a chance to compare the two. Heck, screw Survivor &#8211; why not end the broadcast with Ben Mulroney saying:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you&#8217;d like Paul Martin to be your next Prime Minister dial 1-900-VOTE-PAUL. If you&#8217;d like Stephen Harper to be your next Prime Minister dial 1-900-VOTE-STEVE. Then, tune in next Tuesday when I reveal the winner in a special two hour show!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As a somewhat related offside, both <a href=\"http:\/\/www.warrenkinsella.com\/musings.htm\">Warren <\/a>and <a href=\"http:\/\/weblogs.macleans.ca\/paulwells\/archives\/week_2005_04_17-2005_04_23.asp#001212\">Wells <\/a>are on fire today &#8211; check &#8217;em our for some real analysis of what has been a wacky week in Parliament. Oh, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adamradwanski.com\/blog.html\">Radwanski <\/a>has been quite good lately as well. Who needs the NHL playoffs when we&#8217;ve got this Parliament to follow, eh?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Voted Off the Island The &#8220;Mad as Hell&#8221; tour will become &#8220;MadTV&#8221; tomorrow night as Paul Martin addresses the nation. From the sounds of things, Martin will make a 6 minute plea and will be followed by the opposition leaders (well, he&#8217;ll be followed by Harper, and then everyone will turn over to Survivor at [&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\/312"}],"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=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}