Of Attack Parrots and Lowly Fishies.

How many Attack Parrots™© are required for the loathsome ReformaTories to hang onto power?

The Attack Parrot™© tactic was officially branded in December 2008, when Stevie Spiteful's Harpocrats tried to discredit the nascent Progressive Coalition. An e-mail flew out from the PMO with specific talking points, very detailed scripts for Tory partisans to use on radio phone-in shows, a template for letters to newspaper editors and a couple of "Just The Facts" cheat sheets.

Dr Dawg neatly summarized that episode in Canadian political history:

Our PM and his media allies, trading on the average Canadian's abysmal ignorance of our political system, talked of coups and separatists and (horrors) back-room deals and cabals. A flowering exercise in political democracy was made to look so scary that Canadians got worried. A PM that they never elected was about to be toppled by three other parties, one of them separatist. (Never mind that the fear-monger in question made his own deal with the devil in 2004, and his then-party the Canadian Alliance tried the same thing back in 2000.)

We noted the regurgitation of speaking points from the PMO - it was a constant yammering loop of fallacies and prevarications, including the shameless accusation that the Progressive Coalition was attempting to illegally seize power in Parliament and "overturn the election". Remember, the Opposition parties held the majority of elected seats. They still do.

So - the return of the Attack Parrots™©. Daniel Petit of course. And the biggest, loudest, open-screeching-maw, repeat-repeat-repeat-repeat Attack Parrot™© of them all - John Baird.

They're proliferating, it seems.


Meanwhile, back in our poor abused oceans, the lowly and once plentiful menhaden may be facing ignominious extinction.

So what? Well, it turns out the menhaden may be the only living creature that most ressembles the schmoo, in its uncanny capacity to minister to a range of human needs. And it also cleans the water in the oceans!

Won't someone think of the little fishies?