Ralph Speaks Out

Live blogging Ralph Goodale on John Gormley's radio show this morning:

Ralph says this is a minority parliament "acting out" and that there are "tense patches." No kidding it's tense.

He says this is what happens when "hormones take over rather than common sense." 

Hormones?

Ralph thinks most people want the work of the country to go ahead in the hands of reasonably responsibly adults (I'm guessing he doesn't mean the Liberals?)

John: Why did you let Paul Martin rewrite your budget? (good question!)

Oh, Ralph's whining about Stephen Harper withdrawing his support of the budget and trying to link him to the Bloc. Sad.

Tsk. Tsk. He's touting the budget and calling opposition concerns over the government a "hissy fit." Way to minimize people's concerns about his party's way of doing business.

A question about common sense and whether the Liberals' spending has any. The caller says the Liberals are "proverbial pranksters" throwing money around and dangling $100 bills in front of people before jerking them away.  Ralph answers: blah,blah,blah we planned all this before blah,blah...We're fighting the pine beetle!

Ralph's defending his jumping into bed with Jack Layton... something about new spending on education, health, foreign aid and the environment changing the "profile" of the budget but not the principles. Uh-huh. I didn't know they had any principles.

Oooh...a question about whether they're giving Lorne any money. Ralph answers: "We're not there yet." Referring to himself, Ralph says he  has a "constructive point of view" towards what Lorne wants, and then he goes on about, well, "progress" that has not crossed the "finish line" yet. Whatever. That's a good example of using a lot of words to say nothing at all.

Caller: "That sounds like a no, he's not coming home with an energy accord this week."

Ralph: Something about having big hats and no cattle and scribbling numbers on the back of envelopes. Lots of nothing, here. No equalization deal. He keeps talking about "an economic development issue." Basically, he's saying no.

A question about how they're going to get our money back because government or Liberal coffers (I love the way she equated those) are getting low vis-a-vis sponsorship: Ralph starts talking about housing and how to spend the surplus. WTF?

Oh, now he's acknowleged that she's really talking about sponsorship. He's trying to distance the Liberals from "the wrongdoers." Nice try. He's using words like "safeguards" and "internal audit" strengthening. He's breathing quickly. Interesting.

They cut to commercial. I wonder if he appreciates the break. I wonder if John will show him the e-mail I sent in asking Ralph to cross the floor.

More calls...

Commentary from a caller about Ralph's earlier "hissy fit" comment. The caller grounds the "hissy fit" to the corruption of the government. The caller acknowledges that the budget shouldn't be done on the back of an envelope but that the Liberal way of doing things seems to be to just stuff the envelope full of cash. The caller asks about Paul Martin's connection to sponsorship.

Ralph says Paul Martin is "clean as a whistle on this one." Oh, my. He says Globe and Mail readers are the most informed about this issue because the Globe dug into it all first through access to information. Really. Maybe the Globe should form the government.

Next caller wants to know how many millions are in a billion. He answers her. She asks how many billions of taxpayers money he's used to buy votes. She doesn't want a long, political, confusing answer. He says, okay, they have fiscal flexibility in the budget of 9 BILLION. *choke*

The next caller wants to know if, when Ralph was minister of natural resources, did he know about sponsorship. First he says no. She questions that. Then he says yes, just like everyone else, but not about the wrongdoing. She asks why an ad agency in Vancouver would be in charge of a $50,000 contract in Saskatchewan. He apologizes and mentions that a fire truck is going by him on parliament hill. Indeed, I believe that. Then he starts taking credit for throwing out sponsorship agency contracts. He forgot to say something about that being too little, too late. Stamping out fires, here, ineffectively.

Next caller: Why didn't you support Darfur before and are now doing it just to get Kilgour's vote? Ralph denies this and says they're making decisions based on the best advice from a variety of people. I wondering if he means their election strategy team too.

That's it. John says there were callers "even meaner" waiting in the wings who didn't get on the show. Ralph, you're defending your own political doom here. Defend Canada. Cross the floor.

UPDATE:  One of my readers has asked about Ralph's current answer regarding Darfur in comparison to Paul Martin's statements about Darfur during the last election, as reported on this blog. Good point. Here's my coverage of Paul Martin's Sudan comments from last year:

A student from the Sudan who has been in Canada for five years asked PM why Canada won't do more to help the Sudanese people.

Obviously drawing a blank, PM turned and asked where the next question was coming from. When he was told who would be asking the next question, he turned to that student and said, "I'm going to ask you a question." Then he turned back to the Sudanese-Canadian student and answered his question by saying something like "the world is not ready yet" to help Sudan.

The answer to this very difficult question was lame and hollow. He could have given an answer that was much more realistic and accurate. However, then PM was not going to let the issue go. Rather than graciously moving on, he started asking student after student, standing at the mics, whether they believed it was right for a country to interfere with the civil affairs of another country. The first student answered him by saying yes it was right if the conditions in the country were exceptionally bad and the leader was committing acts of genocide like Hitler. The crowd agreed and applauded heavily in response to her answer.

He didn't get the answer he was looking for so, after PM let her ask her own question, he moved on to the next student and asked this student his opinion on whether a country should interefere in other nations' civil matters if there's no genocide going on, "just oppression." This student said, yes, if the people of that country want you to interfere. PM challenged that student about how the rest of the world was supposed to know whether the people want you to come in if they're oppressed and don't have a free press. The student suggested to the PM that he look for signs of dissent and revolution. Clever answer.

Still not getting the answer he wanted, he asked yet a third student about her opinion on the matter. She said, "I don't know." Obviously this is what PM was looking for because he made a big deal of saying, yes this is how the UN feels, this is how the world feels, we don't know if we should do this or not. Then he turned back to the girl so she could ask her question. Before she did, she looked at the PM and told him something like this, "What I can tell you is that, if I were living in a country where I was being oppressed, I'd want someone in the world to come and help me. Now can I ask you MY question?" Brilliant.

You can read the full post here. Notice that Paul Martin used the words "just oppression" instead of "genocide" during that discussion. Obviously they didn't get it last year. What seems to have helped them to get it this year is their need for David Kilgour's vote, not their concern for genocide.