Even the Sun chain is attacking the Conservatives
bootlegga @ Fri Apr 01, 2011 2:08 pm
You know it's a bad day when the media who is ideologically on your side attacks you...
$1:
According to the latest Nanos tracking poll, Stephen Harper has managed something of a miracle: He has raised Michael Ignatieff from the political dead.
The esteemed pollster says that as of now, there is just a six-point difference between the formerly triumphant Tories and the previously moribund Grits.
If Mr. Harper goes on to blow a near double-digit lead when this campaign began, (either to win another minority or hand one to the other side), his substitution of messaging for communication will bear a large part of the responsibility. The prime minister uses language to create facts, not to convey them.
Every day since the writ was dropped Harper has been shovelling coal into the runaway train of Tory confabulation — informational hallucinations aimed at endowing fantasies with reality. Only those who have drunk the Kool-Aid are impressed.
Consider the government’s untendered purchase of F-35 fighter jets. The government says the cost per jet is between $70 and $75 million.
Conservative MP Laurie Hawn says we get that price because we are buying at the bottom of the cost curve. The best test of that logic is to ask yourself how much flat-screen TVs cost when they first came out and how much they cost now.
But there are other problems according to the people who have checked the PM’s math.
Kevin Page, the parliamentary budget officer, says the planes will cost between $148 and $163 million each, double the government’s number.
Then the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported on March 15 that the cost of each F-35A, the variant Canada has ordered, will be $127 million — $50 million per plane more than the government claims.
For good measure, the Pentagon, which has seen its own projections for the F-35 acquisition double, pegged the price of each of the jets ordered by Canada at $151 million — $75 million more than the government’s estimate.
Lockheed Martin has simply lost control of the costs of this project. Just four months ago, the government of Holland put off their decision to buy when it was informed by the U.S. that the country’s order of 85 F-35s would cost $1.4-billion euros more than original projections.
Now that Turkey too has delayed its F-35 purchase, the per-unit cost has only one place to go — up, way up.
Failure to provide solid documentation on this sole source mega-contract, the largest in our history, was one of the items that earned the Harper government a contempt of parliament censure from the House of Commons.
Mere politics, he says.
Faced with a wall of solid estimates that the government has erred badly on the costs of Canada’s 65 F35s, Mr. Harper continues with messaging that looks more like self-righteousness than evidence. The Pentagon has it wrong, the U.S. Government Accountability Office has it wrong, Kevin Page has it wrong. Only the PM — and oh yes, Lockheed Martin, have it right.
The same approach has made the prime minister look delusional on his coalition fear-mongering. After Michael Ignatieff declared there would be no coalition and that the party with the most seats would form the next government of Canada, the PM harped on as if nothing had happened.
To Stephen Harper, perhaps nothing had.
The esteemed pollster says that as of now, there is just a six-point difference between the formerly triumphant Tories and the previously moribund Grits.
If Mr. Harper goes on to blow a near double-digit lead when this campaign began, (either to win another minority or hand one to the other side), his substitution of messaging for communication will bear a large part of the responsibility. The prime minister uses language to create facts, not to convey them.
Every day since the writ was dropped Harper has been shovelling coal into the runaway train of Tory confabulation — informational hallucinations aimed at endowing fantasies with reality. Only those who have drunk the Kool-Aid are impressed.
Consider the government’s untendered purchase of F-35 fighter jets. The government says the cost per jet is between $70 and $75 million.
Conservative MP Laurie Hawn says we get that price because we are buying at the bottom of the cost curve. The best test of that logic is to ask yourself how much flat-screen TVs cost when they first came out and how much they cost now.
But there are other problems according to the people who have checked the PM’s math.
Kevin Page, the parliamentary budget officer, says the planes will cost between $148 and $163 million each, double the government’s number.
Then the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported on March 15 that the cost of each F-35A, the variant Canada has ordered, will be $127 million — $50 million per plane more than the government claims.
For good measure, the Pentagon, which has seen its own projections for the F-35 acquisition double, pegged the price of each of the jets ordered by Canada at $151 million — $75 million more than the government’s estimate.
Lockheed Martin has simply lost control of the costs of this project. Just four months ago, the government of Holland put off their decision to buy when it was informed by the U.S. that the country’s order of 85 F-35s would cost $1.4-billion euros more than original projections.
Now that Turkey too has delayed its F-35 purchase, the per-unit cost has only one place to go — up, way up.
Failure to provide solid documentation on this sole source mega-contract, the largest in our history, was one of the items that earned the Harper government a contempt of parliament censure from the House of Commons.
Mere politics, he says.
Faced with a wall of solid estimates that the government has erred badly on the costs of Canada’s 65 F35s, Mr. Harper continues with messaging that looks more like self-righteousness than evidence. The Pentagon has it wrong, the U.S. Government Accountability Office has it wrong, Kevin Page has it wrong. Only the PM — and oh yes, Lockheed Martin, have it right.
The same approach has made the prime minister look delusional on his coalition fear-mongering. After Michael Ignatieff declared there would be no coalition and that the party with the most seats would form the next government of Canada, the PM harped on as if nothing had happened.
To Stephen Harper, perhaps nothing had.
http://www.ottawasun.com/comment/column ... ee2a0840,0
kenmore @ Fri Apr 01, 2011 2:14 pm
harper announced today he will pay Québec the money they owe us for the
HST. more vote buying from hapless harper.. too late sorry
FieryVulpine @ Fri Apr 01, 2011 2:20 pm
That faraway ball of fusing hydrogen in the sky has it in for Harper? HOLY SH-- wait a minute. You mean the TORONTO Sun? Yeah, it's bad news when your biggest cheerleader suddenly becomes your biggest critic.
Bruce_the_vii @ Fri Apr 01, 2011 2:24 pm
kenmore kenmore:
harper announced today he will pay Québec the money they owe us for the
HST. more vote buying from hapless harper.. too late sorry
HST. more vote buying from hapless harper.. too late sorry
What a stroke of genius.
Curtman @ Fri Apr 01, 2011 3:29 pm
$1:
The government says the cost per jet is between $70 and $75 million.
...
Kevin Page, the parliamentary budget officer, says the planes will cost between $148 and $163 million each, double the government’s number.
...
the Pentagon, which has seen its own projections for the F-35 acquisition double, pegged the price of each of the jets ordered by Canada at $151 million
...
Kevin Page, the parliamentary budget officer, says the planes will cost between $148 and $163 million each, double the government’s number.
...
the Pentagon, which has seen its own projections for the F-35 acquisition double, pegged the price of each of the jets ordered by Canada at $151 million
I'll bet the Conservatives really regret hiring that guy. Somehow he always seems to come up with better numbers than they do.