Deliberately misleading (Giant Novelty Cheque Edition)

Even by the standards of Gerald Keddy's tenuous connection to reality, the apparent explanation for today's blatant misuse of public funds for Con propaganda is a doozy:

The CBC reported getting an email from Keddy’s office late Tuesday that said the Conservative logo was “inadvertently” put on the cheque.

Let's leave aside for now the use of the passive voice to avoid saying who it was that actually put the logo on the cheque. (Though the "who" of the matter would figure to be one of the next areas deserving of investigation - and presumably some lower-level staffer will take a temporary fall as a result.)

More fundamentally, how on earth could one claim that it's possible to "inadvertently" place a Con logo on a large piece of printed material? Will Keddy's office clarify that it just happened to have a logo stamp the size of Keddy's hand which accidentally got waved around in the general direction of the cheque? Or that a logo graphic which by sheer coincidence fits perfectly into the cheque in terms of colour and size was cut-and-pasted by a staffer who just happened to be ending a shift working for the Cons and starting one working for Keddy's publicly-funded office?

Not that it's at all surprising that Keddy's office is trying to minimize the fallout in classic Con fashion by saying that the blatant misuse of the Cons' logo on a cheque representing public funds wasn't intentional, with anything even remotely resembling truth be damned. But how on earth can one pretend that Keddy's cheque design was anything but a conscious choice?

Deliberately misleading

Blogging Horse has partially demolished Con MP Gerald Keddy's sad attempt to attack the NDP's position on EI. But there are a couple more points in Keddy's letter which are equally obviously false or worse...so let's set the record straight.

Keddy:

If (the NDP) actually cared about improving the EI system, why did they join the Liberals in refusing to even sit on the panel?

Now, it's worth pointing out that this goes beyond mere falsehood to the realm of absurdity. After all, the "EI panel" which Keddy is referring to was based on a deal cut between Michael Ignatieff and Stephen Harper - who both had obvious reasons not to offer the NDP any chance to participate, and by all accounts designed the panel to exclude the NDP and the Bloc precisely to remove them from the table.

Of course, if Keddy wants to provide even a shred of evidence that the NDP was offered the chance to join the Libs in lunching with Pierre Poilievre but declined the opportunity, he's welcome to do so. But as best I can tell, this passage makes about as much sense as pointing fingers at the NDP for the progress of a bill through the Senate, or the Bloc for failing to represent their constituents outside Quebec.

In sum, Keddy looks to have taken a step past the Tom Flanagan standard for credibility. Never mind even trying to be plausible; better instead to make an utterly nonsensical accusation and let one's opponents try to spend explain why it's firmly grounded in the Cons' Kool-Aid rather than anything even remotely resembling reality.

Worse yet, the only suggestion the NDP have made to reform EI is to give a full year of benefits to anyone who works a mere 45 days!

This time, the statement can actually be classified as true or false based on some grounding in reality. But even if one ignores the fact that the criticism of the 360-hour eligibility standard as giving rise to a "full year of benefits" is itself false, the statement that the NDP hasn't offered any other proposals ranges somewhere between more false, even more false and so false it may have originated with Deficit Jim Flaherty himself.

Deliberately misleading and disingenuous come to mind.

Here at least Keddy deserves some credit for honesty: "deliberately misleading" and "disingenuous" are certainly words which deserve to be linked to him, both in the rest of this particular letter and in his general dealings with the public. Which leaves only the question of whether he can deceive enough voters into clinging to a seat which otherwise figures to go orange.

(Edit: fixed wording.)

Compulsive

We hardly needed another reminder of how far removed from reality the federal Cons tend to be. But the CP offers one anyway, reporting that Con MP Gerald Keddy couldn't even accept a personal compliment from Nova Scotia Premier Rodney MacDonald without taking the opportunity to pretend that Canada's No-Credibility Government had done something it hadn't:

Nova Scotia's premier is contradicting comments from federal Conservative MP Gerald Keddy that a deal on offshore oil and gas revenues is near.

The MP from the province's south shore made the comment on Tuesday to The Chronicle-Herald, after Premier Rodney MacDonald went out of his way to thank the federal politician for his hard work on the Atlantic accord.

Several hours after MacDonald's speech to the Bridgewater and Area Chamber of Commerce, Keddy said: "I think we're very close (to an agreement). I think the premier realizes we're very close."

"The worst thing that could happen right now is to raise the rhetoric rather than lower it."

However, on Wednesday the premier said he was surpised to read of Keddy's views because the province has not made progress on the controversial file.

"I was quite shocked, to be quite honest with you, because we haven't made progress in a couple of months," he said following a cabinet meeting.

Of course, given Keddy's apparent lack of credibility when it comes to the status of negotiations, it shouldn't be long before MacDonald has to start wondering as well whether Keddy has been working as hard as he may have claimed. But it's all the more clear that MacDonald is right not to trust Deceivin' Stephen and his crew - and that there's every reason for Nova Scotians generally to follow suit.