prorogued

The Governor General has allowed parliament to be prorogued. Whew!

I watched Harper's speech and the reaction to it by Dion, Layton, Bob Rae, Duceppe -- all predictably negative.

Here's another take on what happened today. Under the headline: "Why the PM must persist," Terence Corcoran writes the following opinion piece in the National Post:

The Tories and the Prime Minister must seize the moment. It is a rare opportunity that could be the road to a Tory majority. More importantly, they must do so for the good of the Canadian economy.

Let me explain. Into the grand fable of their attempt to take control of Ottawa, the opposition coalition and its backers have woven an imaginary tale of Tory economic negligence. They were at it again yesterday in the House of Commons and last night in Liberal leader Stephane Dion's address to the nation, repeating claims that the Harper government's economic plan leaves Canada's economy sailing rudderless into an economic hurricane.

There is no substance to the Dion coalition's alleged reasons for existence, no basis for its false claims of looming economic peril and job losses due to Conservative policy. Nor is there much truth in the media's caricature of Stephen Harper as an arrogant strategic dolt whose monumental economic and political blunder has plunged his government, the country and the economy into a crisis.

The whole production is a page from the work of the greatest academic authority on the subject, Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt, author of the 2005 best-seller, On Bullshit. Liars, says Prof. Frankfurt, need to know the truth. Bullshitters, interested solely in advancing their own agenda, have no use for the truth. They just make things up to win over their audience.

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