I've always had profound respect for Mike Duffy. To me, he's an icon of professionalism and honesty. He's also been, in my opinion, very non-partisan in the way that he approaches his job.
But now that Mike Duffy has himself, brought doubt to the allegations the Liberal's are salivating over, with revelations that Chuck Cadman spoke to him privately about his intentions, and the fact that he asked Cadman's daughter some understandably tough questions on Mike Duffy Live , some Liberals are taking to referring to him as a "professional asshole".
At the blog CAITI-ONLINE (Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors), which apparently is a partisan organization, they are echoing Garth Turner's sentiments about Duffy's interview, which is that Mike Duffy's interview with Cadman's daughter amounted to "sleaze"; that he dared to ask if perhaps, Cadman's thinking may have been impaired by all the medication he was on, due to his advanced, terminal cancer.
On the surface, I can agree that such a question may seem insensitive. But this is a sensitive matter.
The question involves whether or not the governing Conservative Party engaged in criminal impropriety. That is, that they bribed Chuck Cadman to vote against the Paul Martin, Liberal government of the day.
There is much uncertainty, and even Cadman's daughter herself said that she thinks there are a lot of "gray areas" in all of this, in the very same interview.
The Liberal Party is clearly looking to capitalize on this uncertainty, and convince the public that the Conservative Party did, in fact, commit this crime. They are hoping they can turn this into their Adscam quid pro quo.
Given this reality, Duffy is being quite responsible by making sure that given the lack of conclusive evidence, and the fact that even by the admission of those who are making these very serious claims, cannot point to any solid evidence other than their own heresy.
The criminality of the actions of at least two members of the Conservative Party are in question, and potentially more by secondary or direct involvement.
Well we'll see their Cadscam and raise them a Shawinigate Redux. Let's see where the sh*t sticks...
I know where my bet's going...
I respect Mike Duffy. He is balanced in his reporting, and asks some of the tough questions that other reporters "forget" to ask. He was truthful about Cadman's remarks to him. He has balls.
So, if insurance is the issue, and Mike Duffy says that's why Cadman voted with the Liberals, what's the big deal?
It's going to be awful hard to have a criminal investigation when no law was broken. It is perfectly legal to offer inducements to switch or join one caucus or another. There is an actual reason Paul and Belinda were never charged with a crime. Paul's offer of a cabinet post was an inducement for Belinda to switch caucus not change her vote. If the conservatives offered an insurance policy to Cadman (as yet an unfounded allegation that would not stand up in court) Harper is on tape saying that the conservative operatives were trying to get Cadman back into the conservative caucus.
Excellent post. The Liberals' hit-and-run smear tactics are sickening. The Cadman story is so awfully inconsistent.
Not a big fan of Duffy...
although he does amuse me
Seems to me I remember him tuning another Duffy in last election...earned my respect
Here we have the Cadman's and the reporter/writer who stand to benefit from this book and what it sounds like a book written on here say. The reporter is selling cuts of the tapes for $500 a pop. Paul Martin has had a copy of the book for over a year, and why did he receive a advance copy. Who else received a copy? Cadman admits to Duffy why he voted with the Liberals, all due to insurance reasons. Here's a good question, is the reporter/writer a Liberal, CPC or a NDP, what's his history? I don't agree with the dealings, but this book is starting to smell big time.
MDL is a boring show. Each day there are the same panel discussions with partisan attacks. You can almost say the words verbatim that each panelist is going to say. It needs to change.
However, the Cadman story is fishy in a lot of respects including promising a $1 million insurance policy to a terminally ill man. What insurance company would approve such a policy?
This affair is putting Cadman's name and memory into the scap heap. Previously known as a man of integrity and forthrightness we now see a man who was worried about his personal situation and therefore voted to sustain a party who stood for everything he didn't. Several interviews show him saying that he was offered nothing to buy his vote but now we hear different and that he told his family about the $1 million insurance policy.
Could he have been simply telling the family this to show that the Conservatives wanted his vote badly and to build himself up in the eyes of his family (just asking). Did he misunderstand what the CPC was offering him? Why would the CPC believe that the Liberals needed to be defeated so badly they were prepared to spend $1 million to ensure it happened. Sounds far fetched to me.
As someone else mentioned..why did Paul Martin write the forward to this book? Why did Martin have the manuscript for a year and said nothing? What interest would Paul Martin have in this book? Cadman was a member of the CPC caucus and an Independent. Martin would hardly know him, if at all. Who contacted Martin about the book? Who is the publishing company and what political connections do they have?
Lastly if Donna Cadman was so incensed why is she running for the CPC in the coming election?
The author does not seem to be the brightest light in the closet and Donna Cadman was not well spoken on the interview I saw and in fact seemed hesitant in her answers?
Lots of questions here but there is no evidence of wrongdoing and certainly nothing that can be proven in a court of law. The RCMP will tidy this up quickly, I am sure.
In the meantime the Liberals will continue spewing their venom in an effort to hurt the Conservatives. However, even some in the media are questioning the accusations. If the Liberals think that this issue warrants bringing down the government then they should do it. However, if they asked my opinion I would say this is not the kind of thing that will get Canadians attention.
Many Liberals have simply made up their mind that these men are guilty, and that the government should be thrown out. But because Mike Duffy doesn't tow the line of Liberal political expediency, he is a "professional asshole".
How dare they? You should punish them. Publish personal details of their lives (home and workplace coordinates, names of children, hobbies...use your contacts at a library to find out books they read) on your blog.
Or perhaps banning left-tard trolls like you would suffice. Though you wouldn't care, as you would just find another site to infect.
Many Liberals have simply made up their mind that these men are guilty, and that the government should be thrown out. But because Mike Duffy doesn't tow the line of Liberal political expediency, he is a "professional asshole".
Feh. When the RCMP investigates, they are going to be asking hard questions like these and probably worse to get to the bottom of it. I wonder if these Liberal scandal mongers will bleat and whine then.
This is just one more "scandal" that will go nowhere that Liberals are desperatley clingling to with their political fingernails. While they are beating this to death they will continue to ignore their own internal strife, and thus as usual, offering nothing and doing nothing to prove exactly how and why they should govern as an alternative. This Government is at the end of its life expectancy. Lets have an election now. If the Liberals are so certain that this horribly corrupt Government should perish, then lets have at it and find out for sure. I suspect that they'll cave again. So much for Liberal "principles". I guess there is always the other Parties to provide real Opposition instead of acting as bench warmers or testing their sneakers as they flee votes.
It's tough to take this alleged scandal seriously after the liberals begin talking about bringing down the governement over it. At that point, regardless of the facts, the whole affair just becomes another example of liberal cowardice and that's become so funny.
You still can't explain the tape. It clearly contradicts what Harper said in the House of Commons. Harper lied to us. He lied.
Zytaruk: "I mean, there was an insurance policy for a million dollars. Do you know anything about that?"
Harper: "I don't know the details. I know that there were discussions, uh, this is not for publication?"
Zytaruk: "This (inaudible) for the book. Not for the newspaper. This is for the book."
Harper: "Um, I don't know the details. I can tell you that I had told the individuals, I mean, they wanted to do it. But I told them they were wasting their time. I said Chuck had made up his mind, he was going to vote with the Liberals and I knew why and I respected the decision. But they were just, they were convinced there was, there were financial issues. There may or may not have been, but I said that's not, you know, I mean, I, that's not going to change."
Or perhaps banning left-tard trolls like you would suffice. Though you wouldn't care, as you would just find another site to infect?
You got that right...not about "infecting blogs" (an odd accusation coming from a persistent troll such as yourself) but of not caring. Righty blogs (as every sentient person knows) don't provide anyone with anything useful, except perhaps case studies in various personality disorders.
Rarely are there links to additional or credible information (which would help construct actual, compelling, persuasive arguments...which you guys generally can't distinguish from assertions anyway, but I digress...) and the opinions featured are predictable and dull: incoherent and inchoate fury, witless sarcasm, unrelenting smearing, condemnation and vilification and of course, hate-mongering, bigotry, racism, vindictiveness and vigilantism.
What have I missed? Oh right...a commenting community of cheerleaders and ditto-heads.
It is to weep.
A bit of a tough spot for the Liberals then. If they defeat this Government now after they've stated that Canadians don't want an election and that they will not do so over the latest confidence votes, they look politically crass and acting below their "principles" as usual. If they don't, they ignore the only oppotunity to run on something, no matter how dubious, after having absolutley nothing for so long with no other future prospects.
If the Liberals think that they are going to milk this long term, they are sadly mistaken, just as with the whole KHS/Mulroney farce. It going to be fun to see the Liberals fall flat on their smug, arrogant faces again.
I fully agree with Joe's comment about no law being broken if the offer was to join another political party or swith caucus.
As I recall the short statement put out by Mr Finley of the Conservatice party states that they were negociating his return to the Conservative party. If this is so, that is the end of the
story because whatever those negociations were are none of anybody else's business.
The Liberals can't see it because they are partisan, but the worse they perform politically (and lets face it, an opposition that huffs and puffs and then supports the government, time and time again couldn't really perform worse) the more shrill and hysterical they sound.
And so the reification continues. A party already looking bad looks worse and worse.
What have I missed? Oh right...a commenting community of cheerleaders and ditto-heads.
LOL hardly. You can satisfy that fix with CC, RT and their drooling syphocants anytime you like. And you usually do, so you're not really missing anything, are you? :D
And Bob, the tape can hardly be "explained" because, speaking of "persuasive arguments", we have yet to hear the whole tape in its entire context rather than as profitable little tidbits for the author before using that as your proverbial smoking gun. However, such common sense in doing so is too "predictable and dull" for the likes of Ti-Guy The Chihuahua-Troll. Common sense and anything left wing is usually mutually exclusive like that.
LOL hardly. You can satisfy that fix with CC, RT and their drooling syphocants anytime you like. And you usually do, so you're not really missing anything, are you?
I don't even know what this means; is this communication or performance art?
Anyway, I'm a fan of these bloggers, that's for sure...one doesn't pull any punches and the other is a classic conservative (as are many Liberal voters these days, something which, in the fullness of time you radicals will hopefully come to realise), but "drooling sycophants?"
Get a dictionary, Kai. Words have meaning, you know.
LOL, pointing out a little spelling error? Thats it? Weak sauce Ti. If that is all you have left, then your time trolling here will surely be a short one.
Its not as if you're not amusing, its that the people with the brains cells are laughing AT you, not WITH you.
Anyway, enough time has been wasted on this "progressive" troll. My apolgies Mike. perhaps if we don't feed him he'll die of starvation. That might take a while though; this one is particulalry fat.
LOL, pointing out a little spelling error?
I didn't even notice your typo. I was just pointing out that what you had written wasn't very comprehensible.
I didn't realise I needed flash-cards and finger-puppets with you, Kai. I've seriously overestimated you.
My apolgies Mike. perhaps if we don't feed him he'll die of starvation.
Should have thought about that earlier, eh, Univac?
I realise my entry into this discussion was troll-ish, but Conservative bloggers, with their witless attacks, vilification and defamation, and in this case, propaganda that seeks to distract from or play down what is a very serious issue, are inviting exactly that reaction. Don't blame me for being generous and giving people what they want.
Anyway, enough of this. As the saying goes, this has been...no fun whatsoever.
Conservatives would NEVER resort to drive-by smears. Uhm...they won the election that way, falsely trying to link Martin to sponsorship and the outright lies about Goodale and income trusts.
Here at least we have two people, one of them a conservative candidate, indicating that somthing happened, and doing so with nothing to gain from it personally, and first line of attack is that they are liars, and of course, somehow this is the fault of the Liberals.
What childish garbage. This is what we have sunk to.
one of them a conservative candidate, indicating that somthing happened, and doing so with nothing to gain from it personally..
Could you provide a link showing that none of the royalties from the book will be going her way?
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Deconstructing Bob's comments: Explanations are in brackets
Zytaruk: "I mean, there was an insurance policy for a million dollars. Do you know anything about that?" (As the boss you must have known that the million dollars was on the table)
Harper: "I don't know the details. I know that there were discussions, uh, this is not for publication?"
(How would I know I wasn't at the meeting. By the way you're not some scandle monger are you?)
Zytaruk: "This (inaudible) for the book. Not for the newspaper. This is for the book."
Harper: "Um, I don't know the details. I can tell you that I had told the individuals, I mean, they wanted to do it. But I told them they were wasting their time. I said Chuck had made up his mind, he was going to vote with the Liberals and I knew why and I respected the decision. But they were just, they were convinced there was, there were financial issues. There may or may not have been, but I said that's not, you know, I mean, I, that's not going to change."
(I wasn't there so I don't know what they actually said but I know from talking with Cadman that he was looking to take care of his family after his death. I didn't want our guys to try to interfere with Cadman's choice but I not such a control freak that I would demand they stop meeting with people. That's how politics is done you meet with people and try to accommodate each other. As I said before Cadman had made up his mind and we were wasting time trying to make it otherwise.)
1. Paul Martin writes the forward to the book...Did he in fact help the author write it?
2. Martin probably thought the election was going to happen in spring 2008...Was he planning for this book to come out during an election campaign in order to cause the Conservatives to lose?
3. As Donna Cadman says her husband was really angry about the offer...Then why run for the Conservatives AT ALL?
Was it her intention to villify the Conservatives during the campaign by agreeing with the premise of the book?
Was it her intention to help bring the Conservatives down?
4. Dion has been itching to go to the polls...even though their numbers are down...why?
Did Martin and he know that this explosive book was coming out and they wanted to time it for the election?
I think Martin and Dion were colluding...
The only problem is some in the Liberal caucus were dead set against going into an election....thus thwarting the Dion/Martin plan.
Plan B... get the book out now.
Something sounds REALLY fishy to me.
Mike, point of order, here. I'm not a Liberal. I haven't voted Liberal since 1997 and I'm not going to next time around.
What I can't figure out is that why is Dona running on behalf of a party that tried to do this terrible maybe criminal thing to her husband?
Why didn't she instead report it to the police? Why is it coming out now?
Why didn't she or the daughter or the daughters' husband question Chuck about the details if this actually happened. No one in the family can give any details. Why? If that was my husband, I would want to find out as much as I could. I would try to find out as many of the details as possible. I would at least want to know the names of the operatives so I could contact them and question them.
It doesn't sound like any of that happened.
Kudos to Duffy who has been straight forward on this issue. Not the usual liberal journalist lemming out there. He's been pretty fair balanced I would say.
Well, glad to see that nasty troll business is behind us.
It is interesting that Paul Martin, who had an advanced copy of the book, indeed even wrote the foreward, chose to keep mum on such a henious act by the Tories. If he had this great of a chance to nail the Tories with this during the last election before they could become the Government and unleash their terrible, TERRIBLE hidden agenda upon all of us, why wouldn't he use it then before that could happen? Most likely because he knew there was absoltuley nothing to this story.
So many questions unanswered. I say call in the RCMP to investigate this in the most stringent way possible. That way, when they find nothing as well, it will backfire in the Liberal's faces just like every other "scandal" they've been trying to peddle. The Liberals have finally demonstrated that they can be somewhat reasonable on the Afghanistan issue. Who knows? Perhaps when they finally find the well dry they may even continue from here acting like an Official Opposition for a change instead of allowing the other Parties (good gawd Layton and Ducceppe) to do their job for them.
The only reason the Liberals were "reasonable on Afghanistan is that they're terrified to into an election. They have no leader, no ideas, no money, a bunch infighting. All they can do IS this scandal peddling trying to bring the CPC down to their level. At least the Bloc and the Dippers ask some credible questions once in awhile in QP.
The RCMP are probing this Cadman issue. The Libs asked them to. I agree they'll come up with nothing. It's all heresay.
Despite your fact-less assumption to the contrary, please be advised that CAITI is a completely non-partisan organization. We are simply interested in the truth. Happy to get it from one party as opposed to the next.
Brent Fullard
President & CEO
Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors
www.caiti.info
Frmgrl:
Appeared to many that the government policy on Afghanistan, as reflected in the motion put to the House, is nearly verbatim the Liberal draft of the motion. I am sure they are pleased to help the gov't draft policy, but methinks govt's typically draft their own policy.
With respect to "scandal peddling", methinks some have extremely short memories. Scandal peddling is the Conservative Party's stock in trade, and the LIbs are no where near as good at it, and I hope they don't aspire to it either. The Rat Pack school of politics, currently practised to a T by the current gov't is ugly and all but eliminates rational debate. It is politics at its worst and promotes the careers of blowhard fools like Baird, Poilievre, Van Loan, Copps, Nunziata, Holland and Pat Martin to name but a few.
It is a sorry state of affairs.
The interesting twist in all of this is it really says Cadman did sell out his principles. If, as Duffy said, he would not vote against the liberals because he didn't want to jeopardize his insurance policy, then he was in fact "selling" his vote to get that insurance.
Well, glad to see that nasty troll business is behind us.
Did someone call me?
This actually made me laugh, by the way. Thanks Kai.
"Methinks, methinks"
Who the hell do you "Methink" you are? Shakespeare!
Get with the current times.
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ah, mike... don't you just love the caring, compassionate (and so very often homo-erotic)
leftbot intelligentsia?
"Ti-Guy said... "Suck it hard, stalker."
Posted by Ti-Guy to halls of macadamia at 9:02 PM, September 06, 2007
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Brent Fullard of CAITI said ...
Despite your fact-less assumption to the contrary, please be advised that CAITI is a completely non-partisan organization. We are simply interested in the truth. Happy to get it from one party as opposed to the next.
Brent, I'll take you at your word when you say CAITI is non-partisan.
But the blog that Mike linked to is a member of "Libloggers".
Is the CAITI blog an "official" voice of CAITI? And if it's truly non-partisan, what is it doing as a member of a partisan blogroll?
(To be clear, it's no skin off my nose if CAITI is partisan or not - that's up to its members - but I'm curious as to whether the CAITI blog is your organization's official voice, or what.)