Angry in the Great White North

From the latest email from Rocco Rossi, National Director of the Liberal Party in charge of separating Canadians from their money and deliver said money to the Liberal Party (a lot more difficult now that the Liberals can't make up phony advertising contracts and collect kickbacks from their friends):

Canada can lead in a changing world, but only if we dare to act - and that starts with holding the Harper government to account and opposing it in Parliament.

We can do better. We will do better. Let's get started.

There is no editing here.  Those are the last two paragraphs of the email, in their entirety.

Now the "We can do better" thing is supposed to refer to how the Liberals will do the same thing as the Conservatives, just do it better.  Somehow.  See, if the Liberals were planning to do anything different, they'd say "We can do it differently".  But "better" is the comparative form of the word "good" or "well", depending on whether you want an adjective or an adverb.  "Best" is the superlative form.  So when someone says "I can do better", what they are actually saying is "You are doing well, but I can do better".  Using the word "better" is already an admission that the other person is doing well, just not as well.  This is grade school English. 

That means the Liberal Party slogan reads, in whole:

"Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are doing well, but we can do better."

I swear, no one understands the English language anymore.

For the cost of a $300 million election, the Liberals had better quantify just how much better they are going to be.  Otherwise Canadians might decide that good is good enough.

But that is "We can do better" taken in a vacuum.   Look at Rossi's email.  Here it is again, with some highlighting:

Canada can lead in a changing world, but only if we dare to act - and that starts with holding the Harper government to account and opposing it in Parliament.

We can do better. We will do better. Let's get started.

The first person plural is used over and over again -- "we" (and "us" in "let's").  Who are "we"?  The first paragraph identifies "we" as the Liberal Party.  Who else would be opposing the Conservatives in Parliament?

The first paragraph in the email makes this clear:

Over the past weeks and months, we've heard from Liberals like you all across the country. Your message has been loud and clear: Canadians deserve better and we've got a job to do.

So there is a job to be done by the Liberal Party.  The Liberal Party has not been doing it.  The Liberal Party can do it, but only if it dares to.  And that starts with an admission that the Liberal Party, 77 MPs collecting salaries from the taxpayer under the leadership of Michael Ignatieff, and 95 MPs in the previous parliament under Stephane Dion, could all have been doing better, but weren't getting the job done.

Does that sound like an apology to you?  It does to me. 

"We weren't doing as well as we could have been, and we weren't getting the job done.  Been coasting, really, and collecting our salaries.  Sorry about that.  Can I have some money now?"

An apology for just sitting around, and a hand out for cash.  Is it just me, or do the Liberals suddenly appear to be the vagrants of Canadian politics.

I guess it was a lot easier when the top officials in the Liberal Party could just steal money using fake government advertising contracts.  Now they have to come up with slogans to tempt people to hand over money.  Maybe the Liberals can use some of the money to hire someone who remembers grade school grammar.