A thirsty guy walks into a bar ... you finish it.

Wow. Yowch. The Sausage Man rebuts.

Now, normally, we would not rebut a rebuttal -- kind of a tedious experience for blogger and reader alike.

In his blog, Dan denies our assertion (in a rather thin-skinned way, wethinks) that in his post-election analysis piece he bought into the Tory thesis that the election might have been theirs had there not been a "flood" of pre-election advertising by the government.

Just for the record, we have no problem with Dan or any journalist reporting what one side says. That's all fine.

It is a silly point of view, of course. Utter nonsense to say that a few ads from the government (as all governments do) somehow fooled Manitobans who would have otherwise thrown Gary Doer out. But instead they decided to hand the NDP an historic 36 seat third majority.

Our point was that if government advertising could change the mood of the public, then Gary Filmon would have reigned beyond 1999, because the Tories advertised like crazy in the pre-election period.

In fact, just a few days before the recent election, Mia Rabson revealed in one of her pieces that as Hugh McFadyen was spending the last days of the campaign suddenly complaining loudly about government advertising, setting up this strange excuse for losing the election -- back in 1999 as Filmon's Chief of Staff, McFadyen was in receipt of a memo from his campaign manager Greg Lyle advising him to crank up the provincial ad machine. Which he in fact did, but to no apparent avail.

Nonetheless, if Dan wants to report McFadyen's and Scarth's ridiculous post-justification, fine.

However, for Dan's and others' edification, here is a key line from Dan's story:

However, the deft timing of the writ, combined with the flurry of pre-election advertising, seemed to do the trick: The NDP lead grew to double-digit levels almost immediately.

Note this is assertion by the author. Unless we are mistaken, this statement is not attributed to anyone. It appears to be the analysis of the writer.

This is allowed, of course. We believe it was valid to run this story not just on the Op Ed pages, as it did, but it could have run in the news pages. But statements such as the above clearly signals that it is an ANALYSIS piece, not just straight-forward reportage. It appears that it is indeed Dan's view.

It is that view we disagreed with in our previous post.

Dan, indeed, did drink the Kool Aid -- unless he now feels the above statement is not his view, that it is not his analysis.

'Nuff said. Belaboured point is now over.

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Business to clear up -- we have heard from scriblers such as Dan and the soon-to-depart Curtis Brown that our references to the Mountain Ave. Typing School and calls for reform of the tired and pedantic FreeP Editorial Board seem to include them.

Rest assured, gentlemen.

While we don't always agree with our friends mentioned above, we are not saying all the opinion and analysis printed by the Free Press is completely lacking. We are, however, actually speaking specifically about the hidebound, trite troglodytes of the Editorial Board itself -- the likes of Flood, Oleson and Mitchell, as we have noted here before.

And if publisher Andy Ritchie doesn't do something about this, then he might as well sell the Op Ed page space to make way for car ads -- which has the benefit of both raising Free Press Publications' profits and doing the readership a favour. Please, Mr. Ritchie, stop the pain.

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We're taking a break.

This space will darken for an undefined period -- the summer, anyway -- to rest and reflect on the purpose of this experiment of the past 18 months.

Take care all. Have a good summer. Have a few beers.

Dan drinks the PC Kool-Aid

We've been away a few days, so we're just catching up on the pile of papers in the porch.

Not tons of things of interest, but Dan "the Sausage Man" Lett's election retrospective on the weekend had some points worth discussing.

Apart from creating titters around the Leg, we understand, by mislabeling Doer Chief of Staff Michael Balagus as the Clerk of the Executive Council, Dan offers up some interesting views from NDP and Tory top operatives.

However, it seems that Dan bought the Tories' rationalization of their loss as being largely due to massive government advertising.

It's nonsense, of course.

On one hand, the Tories can't even keep their story straight. In the "massive government advertising" they point to, they include the total $2.4 million spent over the past year on the Spirited Energy campaign, which in fact, a) was not government advertising but a community effort supported by the government, and b) includes lots of stuff which was not advertising at all.

But more importantly, just last week, Tory MLA Leanne Rowat noted the one-year anniversary of Spirited Energy by admonishing the government, calling the effort a "lead balloon" that landed with a resounding "thud".

Not only are the PCs trying to have it both ways, but they are wrong on both counts.

Spirited Energy will likely go on because the main movers and shakers in town want it to go on and know that over time the grousing will go away and promoting Manitoba is absolutely necessary.

But the other point they are wrong on is that government advertising, of course, does not win or lose elections.

If it did, Gary Filmon would have won in 1999.

We should not need to remind the greybeards in the crowd (and we certainly shouldn't have to remind Dan) that back then, the PCs ran tons of government advertising in the run up to the election. And it apparently did them no good whatsoever.

Objectively, there were similarities between the 1999 and 2007 elections: the incumbent governments had been in for multiple terms with well-regarded leaders, but the Probe polling showed a tight race shaping up.

However, there were big differences. So many that we will only touch on a few -- like the fact the government in 1999 was seen as terrible on the top public issue, health care, was bruised badly on the trust issue due largely to the vote-rigging scandal, and the mood of change permeated the air.

All the government advertising in the world can't actually change public perceptions. It may help highlight perceptions that are already out there, but to assert a few ads changed pubic opinion around 180 degrees in just a few weeks is to believe that the public is fundamentally stupid.

And they are not.

It's not surprising, though, to see Jonathan Scarth trying to explain his way out of accountability for a lousy campaign and advertising is a convenient excuse. But it is a bit surprising to see Dan seeming to buy the same basic premise.

And, by implication, Dan is asserting in his piece that Manitobans are dumb -- easily swayed by some advertising.

C'mon Dan. You can do better than that.

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As a postscript to the above, another common thread between Dan's piece and the PC's story is a belief in the Probe numbers of March 2007 that there was a statistical tie between the NDP and the Tories, just weeks before the writ drop.

As Balagus stated, if that was true, do you think Gary Doer would call an election? Are you nuts?

But Dan positions that point in a way to try and wedge in the scenario that there was indeed a tie as Probe stated, then there was lots of government advertising which led to a lead for the NDP going in to the election.

That's just crazy. That kind of a short term lead, if it existed, would not have been enough to call an election on. For sure, Doer would have waited until the fall if that scenario were true.

The real story is, that Dan conveniently seems to push aside, is that Probe consistently underestimates the NDP support -- for lots of reasons we have detailed here before time and time again.

It just seems very strange to us that a newspaper ostensibly interested in reporting the truth would continue down this path, knowing how consistently flawed their pollsters have been.

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Oh, and if anyone needs reminding how desperate the Tory campaign was in its final days, you need only play the ads below, which ran in high rotation on Manitoba radio stations the last several days of the campaign.

Mountain Ave. typing school provides platform for the Flat Earth Society ....

Yikes!

It's as if our note yesterday on the FreeP Editorial Board resulted in an immediate brain fart.

How else can you explain a big opinion piece from well-known and completely discredited climate change deniers in today's paper?

As we have stated before, it is not simply good enough to put up 'one side of the debate' on climate change when that side is represented by the tiniest fraction of climate change 'experts' and that side is made up of stalking horses for the oil industry who conceal their dirty and self-interested benefactors.

Tim Ball, one of the authors of today's piece, is well known locally as a former professor of geography at the University of Winnipeg (although he claims he was a climatology professor) and a long-time climate change denier. He is one of the infamous 61 signatories to a letter sent last year to Stephen Harper urging him to eschew the prevailing climate change science by the vast majority of experts in the field.

Ball is usually associated these days with the Calgary-based Friends of Science (FOS), a shell organization that has long been exposed as funded by the oil industry, including in reports in the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star.

He has also been exposed for padding his resume, torquing his former position with the University of Winnipeg as "one of the first climatology PhDs in the world", before his early retirement in 1996, which is a ludicrous claim. He also regularly bills himself as "Climatologist and Prof Emeritus of Geography at the University of Winnipeg." He is in fact not listed in the U of W's roll of professors emeriti.

He also sued the Calgary Herald and CanWest for printing a truthful article about him. He is billed by the DeSmogBlog -- a leading watchdog source on climate change deniers -- as someone whose "credibility lies in shreds".

His co-author, Tom Harris, is head of an organization called the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP). The NRSP is controlled by the High Park Advocacy Group, a lobbying firm that specializes in the oil and natural gas industry.

It is becoming increasingly common for the fossil fuel lobby to take a page out of big tobacco's playbook and set up shell organizations to attempt to influence public opinion on climate change. It's clear the NRSP and FOS are false fronts for special interests in the oil industry.

Even very basic research by the FreeP Editorial Board would have easily dug up this stuff on Ball, for example, which is very well known.

To put up these stalking horse frauds on the editorial pages, whose game has been prominently exposed by independent research groups and the media, is completely unsupportable. It's a sham and terrible journalism. It does the Free Press readership a great disservice. It's complete amateur hour.

Mr. Ritchie, you have to do something.

Lame duck columnist

We just spotted the several-days-old blog post of our buddy Tom Blowback, in which he calls Gary Doer a "lame duck" premier. His reasoning: That Doer's past 7 1/2 years have been about "nothing", so expect four more years of "nothing" and therefore this is a lame duck administration.

Ha. Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Whew. Excuse us for a sec -- gotta wipe a bit of a tear from the eye.

This is the same Bunkbeck who has dined out since 1999 on the Doer government, reinventing himself from an erstwhile leg reporter into a neo-con columnist? The same guy who has railed about the lack of radical tax cuts, the lack of privatized health care, the lack of turning Manitoba into a police state, and on and on?

Nothing?

Well, that's one hell of a revelation from our Tom.

So based on what he states, we can therefore expect poor Tom to have "nothing" to write about for the next four years. (And beyond that we predict, as 2011 could well be a four-peat based on Manitobans' continued affection for more of "nothing".)

It's so sad -- nothing to write about for the next several years. Sounds like a lame duck columnist to us.

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Memo to Andy Richie: Time to start taking deadwood on the Editorial Board out behind the woodshed with an axe.

And we would begin this chopping spree with the frequently off-topic and oft-sotted Tom Oleson.

On Saturday, he rambled on with a clumsy, disjointed thesis about how free access abortion in Canada is perhaps responsible for our society going to hell in a hand basket.

This, we submit, was not remotely worth the trees killed to provide the space. The pound of flyers that fell out of our Saturday edition were a better use of paper by far.

We would have no problem with a thoughtful discussion of whether free access to abortion services is a good policy (though we'd likely disagree with it). Oleson's piece, however, was just more evidence the Free Press Editorial Board is a vapid wasteland occupying space that could be filled by something better -- like more car ads.

Mr. Richie, show some kindness to your readership with some tough love. Do the deed, sir.

Perhaps he did his best

The notion put out by the opposition yesterday that the Throne Speech was worthy of derision due to the fact it was a repetition of the NDP's election commitments is laughable.

No new ideas, said Huey.

The election was just over two weeks ago and the opposition is trying to sell the line that the government should govern on something other than its promises? Ha.

You could just see their reaction if the Throne Speech was not reflective of the recent campaign. "They lied to Manitobans. They won't fulfill their promises."

Ah, well. We suppose they had to say something.

This morning, however, we read with interest Sausage Man Dan Lett's take on the political scene in the deadwood version of the FreeP. He states that, "Despite having lost a seat in the election, McFadyen's Tories did not run a bad campaign."

Whaaaa?

Now, we are more than happy with the notion that the NDP campaign was run brilliantly, bowling over the PC wunderkind's excellent but ultimately futile strategems. But in all seriousness, despite a very strong NDP campaign, if that campaign was indeed Hugh's best, then look out, the PC long knives should be coming for McFading, but fast.

For Dan to make the assertion that McFadyen ran a good campaign not only flies in the face of common sense, but also of his own paper's polling -- which would be an interesting non-endorsement of the Free Press's continued investment in Probe's services on the part of our Sausage Man.

In Probe's May 18 pre-election poll, they claimed Team Huey lost the respect of a full 18% of Manitobans during the campaign, which the Probites then calculated into a new metric called "momentum". They stated the PC's had a "momentum" value of -14% due to a net worsening opinion of the PCs over the course of the writ period.

If you chalk that up to the strength of the NDP campaign and its ability to paint Huey in a negative light, great. However, you would think that if McGriddle had at least done a very basic job introducing himself to Manitobans over the past year, getting into the media, creating a minor persona out there (instead of largely being invisible), then ran a good campaign -- he would have been bullet-proofed to a certain degree against the NDP attacks.

But no. The NDP attacks appeared to work like a charm: A backroom boy that helped privatize MTS and consulted with Mike Harris and Ernie Eves when they were trying to privatize Ontario Hydro (hence putting Manitoba Hydro at risk if he were premier); A policy wonk that was there to help fire over 1000 nurses and reduce doctor training, and can't help himself from defending those disastrous decisions because he believes in it; A hidebound ideologue who would repeal basic water protections that are just now starting to pay off for Lake Winnipeg and all our water resources; and lastly, someone willing to make unending reckless tax cut and policy promises that would endanger the services like health and education Manitobans so value.

All these attacks were not only verifiable but also rang true with voters. That combined with a general comfort level with 7 1/2 years of NDP rule and the public's strong affinity with Gary Doer led to not only a return to power, but an increase in seats.

As much as it may be gratifying to New Democrats for Dan to give Team Doer all the credit, he shouldn't get away with the claim that Huey ran a great campaign.

Perhaps he did his best, sure. We're willing to concede that. But a good campaign? Surely Dan is kidding.

(Oh, yeah, did we mention the Jets promise? No? Hmmm.)