Have all the recalibration jokes been taken?

I've paid a bit more attention to today's budget than to yesterday's throne speech because budgets actually do lead to legislation, though I always try to bear in mind that our Minister of Finance has only a passing familiarity with arithmetic and an even shakier relationship with the truth. What I take from the reporting I've read is that the Conservatives aren't anxious to go to the polls right now. When you put aside the political posturing they've given us a corporate-friendly budget which makes it awkward for the Liberals to oppose it unless there's something really provocative in there. And I don't see it.

When you combine that with the conciliatory noises the Liberals have made about negotiating a solution to the standoff on the Afghan detainee file, I'm guessing that the Conservatives will be off the hook on the most potentially damaging issue they face and there won't be an election until the fall. And if the Conservatives haven't gotten their mojo back in the polls, not even then.

And I agree with the prominence The Jurist gives to this point: aside from his other failings Flaherty buys into the spin that the worst of the recent economic unpleasantness is over and we're in recovery. So he's conducting himself accordingly despite the fact that in the U.S. — the trading partner whose demand drives a big chunk of our economy — the foreclosure crisis is far from over, unemployment levels remain dangerously high and precisely nothing has been done thus far to address the fundamental causes of the recent near-collapse of the global financial system. The American economy is still being run for the benefit of the banksters and their cronies first, and everyone else second.

I don't see much to be optimistic about.