Fisking Red Tory

I am taking a brief break from my reading to critique a recent post by Red Tory (By Request: Fisking Goldstein). According to Wikipedia, fisking is "a point-by-point refutation of a blog entry or (especially) news story. A really stylish fisking is witty, logical, sarcastic and ruthlessly factual; flaming or handwaving is considered poor form. "

Well, Red Tory may have failed on a few of those points. I'll let you decide which ones.

I do not intend to drone on point-by-point, mainly because I want to get back to Paul Wells' excellent book Right Side Up, but Red raised a few issues that need to be challenged.

First of all, RT questions Goldstein's premise that Liberals look for convenient issues to flog as a major crisis. To me, that is the essence of politics. They all do it to a certain degree. It's not necessarily a flattering attribute of the métier, but to say that the Liberal party categorically abstains from publicizing contemporary issues that may seem to play to their advantage is both ludicrous and disingenuous.


Then Red seems to be suggesting that Lorrie ignored the fact that wait times have not been reduced:

"It’s also interesting to note that during the last election Harper said his proposals and patient guarantee would stay within the budget established by the Liberals, yet he vowed to reduce wait times for medical procedures as one of his infamous “five priorities.” But uh-oh, that one seems to have quite mysteriously vanished over the course of the past year..."

But in fact, Mr. Goldstein did indeed point this out:

"Which brings us back to wait times, a problem the Liberals say Prime Minister Stephen Harper isn't doing anything about, even though it was one of his five key election promises. True."

So he did acknowledge that.



Red took exception to this statement from Lorrie's editorial:

More on that in a bit, but first, back to global warming. While the Tory government is doing nothing about it now, the Liberals did, uh, nothing, about it for 12 years. But I know global warming is important because Dion named his dog “Kyoto” and gave out green scarves at the Liberal leadership convention.

Red practically called Goldstein a liar in response:

"This is a flat-out lie... Everyone agrees that the Liberal track record on the environment has been a disappointment, but to say they did “nothing” is totally inaccurate."

Well, here's the thing, Red. Let's define what is "doing something". Is it throwing piles of money at something with no measurable results and no accountability? Is it lining Rick Mercer's pocket while we watch him drone on with his annoying diatribe about the "One Ton Challenge"? Is it talking just for the sake of appearing to be "doing something?"



In any event, perhaps Red Tory could cite evidence of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions going down during the Liberals' 12-year tenure in office? In fact, they kept going up dramatically, both before and after they signed Kyoto at almost twice the growth rate in the U.S. during the same period.



Red also seems to be hopelessly gullible when it comes to any Liberal communications. He actually believes the wait-times propaganda that spews out of Queen's Park:

"Uh, uh, since August/September 2005, wait times have decreased by: 27.7% (86 days) for cataract surgery; 19.8% (87 days) for knee replacement; 19.9% (70 days) for hip replacement; 39.3% (22 days) for angiography; 13.3% (16 days) for MRI scans; 17.9% (5 days) for angioplasty; and 2.5% (2 days) for CT scans. Nice try Lorrie."

(Uh huh. And I've got a great piece of swamp land to sell you, Red. Just let me get my pal George Smitherman to be the broker.)


At least Ontario Auditor General Jim McCarter hasn't been hoodwinked. He questioned the methods used by the province to measure reductions in hospital wait times and said the statistics should be taken with a "grain of salt.''


But in any case, Red. Carry on. Never let facts get in the way of a good rant.