Sometimes a Cigar is just a Cigar

Yvonne Jones will win her riding on October 9th, 2007.

How do I know that at least one Liberal will have a parking spot on Confederation Hill come October 10th?

Because Jones has managed something hitherto thought impossible; being a strong Liberal MHA who not only looks like a better choice than the Tory candidate in her district but can also gain some bonus points by being able to praise Danny "The Size of my Poll is not Compensating for Anything" Williams. This would be one of those "I'll eat my hat" moments but fortunately for me I neither wear hats nor made any sort of prior statement regarding such activities.

That said, Dennis Normore made himself a pretty easy target for slagging by all sides. I think he was under the impression he was running for a seat in the Supreme Soviet instead of the House of Assembly; I don't believe I've heard things like "we need to be on the government side [...] otherwise we're going to pay dearly for it" or "this region may be sacrificial in the upcoming election" spoken so plainly since the days when Communists roamed the Earth.

Although Normore is in most likelihood right in his statements (if you look at how politics have worked in this province running back to Danny Williams IJoey Smallwood), it's not exactly kosher for the man to come out and say those things. To his credit, the Premier refused to play Emperor Palpatine to Normore's Darth Vader and put his foot down to snap Normore back in line. Regardless of the practice of government actions, the theory of government action must remain pristine. Or at least, don't go spilling the secrets to anyone who doesn't know the secret handshake, and especially not the media. We can say what we will about the Premier, but to borrow Yvonne Jones' terminology, he is most certainly a talented statesman and he knows the rules of the game.

The only problem is that in this game we're the ball, and the rules work in such a way that no matter which team wins, loses, cheats or steals, we're still the ones who end up getting kicked around in the dirt. Dennis Normore was way out of line, but there's no way he didn't say anything everyone else - Liberal and Tory - weren't already thinking.

I'd call it a Freudian slip, but it looks like Normore's subconscious is wearing teflon shoes on a sheet of wet ice.