The way you 'posed' it was a snide attack on his grandparents. You are trying to make us think they were rich people.
I dont disagree that he would like to be seen as 'working class' but in the context of his comments he wasnt and this attack on him is unworthy of you.
No Bachus read again -- you made that up.
I simply stated it as a variable that I did not know the answer to. It is not at all a snide remark to open it as a question worthy of an answer.
And if they had helped him and even if I said that it would never be a snide remark on them -- it would be a question of his honesty.
You are way off base in your interpretation of what is a simple comment.
Acuse me of not trusting Hudak-- I agree-- but you can get absolutely nothing out of my comments saying I was going after his grandparents.
And no we are not talking about working class vs capitalist class which is based on relationship with means of production -- we are talking about middle class which is a term based on income. He did not have a middle class family income -- it was higher than that -- more fortunate -- even if somebody wants to tart that up as rude.
Bachus wondering if someone was rich is not an insult or a snide attack.
Especialy since I never said that they made any claims themselves one way or another.
Please up your care in reading
Please up your care in spelling 
I understand just fine. Motives as well as reading
Please try to come up with better personal attacks, or at least more inventive.
I dont disagree about your overall description of Hudak, just your method of twisting things so they mean what you want them to mean
Well you understand wrong.
And since I know my motivation and concern more than you I think you are being pretty arrogant to read beyond what I wrote even over my objection.
You have nothing in my words and I have explained why I wrote what I did-- I thin I raised a valid question to which I'd still be interested in an answer if one can be found.
You still have not explained how my statment could be an attack on the grnadparents since the only thing I did was to say I did not know how well off they were. If they had been well off how would that be an attack anyway?
You speak to protect Hudak or his relatives from an attack I did not make while attacking me for doing something I did not do--
You ignore replies and questions -- seems that is the style of this thread and there must be something I am missing here in terms of why that would happen-- most of the time on rabble people actually respond to what is being said rather than making shit up.
I can't respect you for that.
Spelling flames are cool too for you I guess
Why so defensive? ecause we all caught you out on this?
And the spelling 'flame' was just a response to your "reading" flame which you seem to want to continue. Why the personal attacks? Even a mod has said you were wrong in this context but you persist and instead call it a pile on towards you instead of using incorrect context for someones statements.
Now your basic premise is no doubt correct, but the things you cite are not. Or at least the one about "I was normal" especially about a guy that got his education on a full scholarship and worked as a civil servant to keep afloat (according to wikipedia at least)
It sounds like he has stooge syndrome rather than being a member of the ruling elite as you seem to wish to paint him
As for saying it was about the pot-- go look at his face book page, speeches, everything he has to say about himself-- he pretends to be an ordinary joe in all of them -- that's his schtick.
I don't doubt that he does try to portray himself as an 'ordinary joe'. But I look at the sentence; [b]"I was a normal kid, I had a normal upbringing, a normal life in university so I experimented from time to time with marijuana"[/b], and what I see is an admission about his past pot consumption. If he were merely trying to emphasize his normality I would think he would pick a relatively safer way to end that sentence (i.e. I was a normal kid, so I liked watching tv. I was a normal kid, so I disliked doing homework). But then again, maybe I just haven't been following him close enough to pick up on the real meaning of his words.
What I want to know is if his hyper-religiousness came from being part of a normal family. Most "normal" families I knew in the 70s-80s-90s were only nominally Christian or Jewish. Isn't he in thick with some pretty hard core dominionist type Christians?
What's fair to say is that Tim Hudak is the son of unionized public sector workers in small town Ontario. His life while growing up was made comfortable by having parents who earned relatively decent salaries and he probably had his teeth fixed as a kid because of union negotiated benefit plans.
As an adult, Tim Hudak has turned his back on folks like his parents. The government he used to be part of declared war on public sector workers. No doubt there will be another war on public sector workers if he gets into office this fall.
Why so defensive? ecause we all caught you out on this?
And the spelling 'flame' was just a response to your "reading" flame which you seem to want to continue. Why the personal attacks? Even a mod has said you were wrong in this context but you persist and instead call it a pile on towards you instead of using incorrect context for someones statements.
Now your basic premise is no doubt correct, but the things you cite are not. Or at least the one about "I was normal" especially about a guy that got his education on a full scholarship and worked as a civil servant to keep afloat (according to wikipedia at least)
It sounds like he has stooge syndrome rather than being a member of the ruling elite as you seem to wish to paint him
I can admit when I am wrong -- and I did concede that my view of what was normal could be different than someone else--
That is not what the pile on was about -- it was shit like you going and saying I was attacking his grandparents just by saying that we did not know what they had or contributed.
The pile was also there when a couple people insisted on deflating a part-time politician and full-time teacher along with a full time principal as being just two teachers. I respect intellectual honesty and that is not an example of intellectual honesty. You want to say a part time politician and teacher and a principal did not fit what I was saying -- ok fine but to make them into just two teachers --which would have changed their salaries by almost half since the comparison was made to people at the start of their careers is just garbage. This thread has been littered with that kind of crap-- we even had the expensive city of Toronto in 2011 thrown in (everything but the kitchen sink) in order to make this a winnable argument.
Winnable, perhaps but quite irrelevant to the issues first raised with the facts so twisted as to become almost laughable. Then you come after me with your thought control about what you assume I must have been thinking since I did not actually say anything against the grandparents and that did not fit your agenda in the discussion so you just made it up. What a fucking joke.
I could be wrong on what I raised sure but we'll never know because the conversation has been twisted so far from it with people not having the intellectual honesty to debate what was said rather than some straw man they can knock down more easily.
As for one being a mod-- who cares? Is a mod god? Are they infallible?
And it keeps going on -- I am implying that he is exaggerating his humble beginnings because his family had a quite high income and was not just a normal family-- but then you throw in now the scholarship-- well the scholarship was nice no doubt but are we disputing that his parents could have paid if he not had that? Because why else would it be relevant.
My point has always been that the equivalent of a $200/year income in 2011 dollars does not make him a normal ordinary kid and he should not trade on that so much.
And I'll add-- that he does not know how most people in the province -- including those of middle income -- live and he is suggesting he does.
Since I am one of the people being labelled as intellectually dishonest...
My post was not so much about the fiscal equality between two teachers and a teacher/municipal politican and a principal. It was to challenge your notion of the term "self reliance". You dismissed the idea that Hudak could possibly have learned anything about that in such a household. Your next line after that in post #4 basically says that because he likely did not have to "scrimp and save" that his claim is nonsensical. That is an extremely narrow view of the term "self-reliance" which I do not share. To me "self-reliance" is not only (or even mostly) about being able to deal with fiscal adversity, but about taking ownership of one's life circumstances precisely because one was NOT born with a silver spoon. Just to be clear, I am not talking about some "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps" BS that is used to bludgeon the less fortunate. I am saying, someone who comes from a background where they don't have family money to fall back on may well develop the trait of self-reliance. That is how I read Hudak's use of that term as applied to his parents, his background and I think many Ontarians wouldunderstand the use of the term in that context.
Look, I don't like the use of the word "normal" and I agree thgat Hudak overuses it. But it also seems that you are taking it awfully personally, ie., that if Hudak is "normal" then you are not (post#42). It honestly seems a bit over the top. I don't doubt for a minute that plenty of Cons WILL use the term that way, but I don't think that calling one's upbringing "normal" necessarily implies that people in less fortunate circumstances are not.
I absolutely agree that our social locations have a huge impact on how we translate these sorts of remarks. But you are so sure that Hudak's background would be alien to most people in Ontario. Looking at it from a slightly broader perspective than the PRECISE occupations held by his parents - moving to the broader categories they represent, I just don't see his background as being quite as rarified as you.
When I first read the title I thought we would find out that Hudak was from a background a la Rob Ford - fat family business or some such. When the reveal was, well, revealed as his parents being a principal and teacher/municipal councillor I thought that was not much of a "gotcha!" moment.
Seriously? Of all the things to get upset about when it comes to Tim Hudak, you pick this? The word normal is not used even once on the "about Tim" page of the website. He says he was normal for smoking pot. I'd agree that is normal. I'd also agree that his upbringing qualifies as middle class, albeit upper middle class. He's probably trying to distinguish himself from the silver spoon "elites". Personally, I don't vote for my politicians based on their socioeconomic class or their drug history. I prefer to base my vote on policy. Tim Hudak's policies are bad for Ontario. What else matters?
As a Globe and Mail letter-writer has observed, "Perhaps if he had also exhaled, he would understand you can't increase spending, decreaserevenue, and balance the budget all at the same time.
What you are up against here, Sean, is a liberal perspective ready to defend pot smokers whatever their neo-con position and (lack of) policy pronouncements. And Harris's attack on teachers as a wedge issue in the late 90s must be remembered as unfair...even though he and Hudak understand the sentiment out there among the folk scraping by and facing a bleak retirement in voterland.
