Thursday Evening Links

Assorted content to end your day.

- Thomas Walkom highlights why we should be nothing but dubious about the austerians' call to slash public supports:

The Harper Conservatives are scaling back spending on national parks to save about $20 million. But at the same time they are planning to spend $25 billion on 65 new fighter jets.

My guess is that most Canadians would make do with one less jet in order to fund parks properly. But in this, as in so many decisions, the voters — once they have elected a majority government — get no choice.

In Europe, restraint means disaster. Spanish government restraint has put about 24 per cent of the country’s labour force out of work. Even this week’s decision by other European nations to bail out Spanish banks won’t solve that problem.

Indeed, by putting pressure on Madrid to accelerate its restraint measures, the bailout may make matters worse.

- Apparently Dean Del Mastro's campaign misdeeds include submitting a false invoice to Elections Canada - making for a particularly problematic development for the Cons' point spokesflack on ethics and election fraud.

- But if only everybody would just accept their orders to stop pointing out what the Cons do wrong, such trifles wouldn't create the slightest problem.

- Finally, Don Braid floats the theory that the Calgary Centre by-election may be far more competitive than most of us tend to think, particularly if the Cons nominate a particularly extreme reactionary as their candidate.