The Contemptuous Rob Anders

Those who've assumed the invisible MPty suit known as Rob Anders couldn't find his ass with both hands have incorrectly underestimated his ability.

Au contraire!

Anders has not only found his ass, he's also publicly flaunting it for all to see what a MASSIVE asshole he has is.

Meanwhile, two Conservative MPs, Rob Anders and Ed Holder, are taking it a step further, asking their constituents in surveys whether the government should keep funding the CBC.

Mr. Anders, a Calgary MP who has always been a controversial maverick on the right wing of his party, now features a petition on his website calling on Parliament “to end public funding of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.”

The petition represents an escalation of Mr. Anders’s campaign against CBC funding. He has made appearances on Sun TV to express his views on public funding for the CBC.

From here.

#AlternateUniverseJob for Rob Anders - Rupert Murdoch's Asshole.

Oh. Wait.

Photo from David Climenhaga's Alberta Diary.

What a party pooper!

A female Radio-Canada, likely freezing her butt up on Parliament Hill whilst awaiting the arrival of Emperor Stephen the Phirst for the ReformaTory HarperCon Party celebrations of his 5 years of reign, waxes churlish.

She reports that it's not been all rock & roll for PMSH; he has become notorious for using tactics that divide his progressive and moderate Opposition in order to maintain his rule in Parliament. In fact, she reminds us, the PM's reflex during the 2008 market collapse leaned toward starvation and famine; it was a unified Opposition that insisted upon the government injecting fiscal incentives as well as funds into the Canadian economy.

Oh dear. I suspect this gal will be covering the town council meetings in Wadena should ever Stevie Spiteful get the majority he lusts after.

The Thick and the Brain-Dead.

One would think that the odious little pedants and sycophants who were appointed to the board of Rights & Democracy by Stevie Spiteful might have learned their lesson.

But it doesn't seem to have registered with the organization's current president Gérard Latulippe, who can be heard in this Radio-Canada interview regurgitating the same manure that Aurel Braun spread last year even though the Deloitte and Touche forensic audit, thousands of of R&D dollars later, does not support their tawdry attempt to smear Remy Beauregard.

And so chialeux et rechignant, he is. You'd think that someone who just enjoyed an all-expenses-paid sojourn in Ottawa, on the tax-payers' dime would be less whiny.

Mind you, Latulippe and Braun's bivouac in luxurious accomodation near Parliament Hill was a set theatrical piece, a veritable Lobsters' Quadrille played to perfection. We predict the "scoundrels" who are attempting to run Rights and Democracy into the ground will never appear before the House of Commons' foreign affairs committee.

More about the "scoundrels", here.

More Con jobs and lying liars.

It's getting to the point where no cover-up so stinky or no lie so MASSIVELY obvious from the Con jobs and the lying liars could be a straw that breaks the camel's back.

The media routinely reports these gaffes, fuster clucks and deliberate obfuscations; it seems at this point the Canadian public expects dishonesty and incompetence from Harper's New©™ Government and has become jaded.

First, from Montreal Simon, we hear more confirmation that Bev Oda is not only a Con job, but a total idiot as well.

A whodunit mystery captured Parliament Hill Friday after the international co-operation minister said she didn’t know who tampered with a document that bears her signature but one she is not certain she signed.

A two-page memorandum recommending the approval of $7,098,758 in funding to the church group KAIROS for its human rights activities was originally signed by two top bureaucrats at the Canadian International Development Agency in September 2009. But someone — it’s unclear who — handwrote “NOT” between the words “you” and “approve” on the memorandum’s last line. [...]

“It’s like a Clue game. We have the minister in the committee with the pen that says she signed it and killed the deal,” said NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar. “I think the minister needs to come clean … she used the department to explain away what was in the end an ideological position.”

Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae said the document was tampered with and changed retroactively so it would look as if CIDA was recommending the faith-based group be chopped. “If you put 'not' in front of a cheque or if you put 'not' in front of a number on a cheque, it is called fraud,” he said.

Then this Con-veeenient (imagine Preston Manning saying the word) event, which blasted the credibility of the last functional Commons Committe that Stevie's bullies had not yet managed to destroy.

It might be Grand Guignol theatre - diverting and crudely funny as hell - if it weren't the future of our country that Stevie Spiteful is willfully and malevolently screwing up.

Circus Ringmaster Stevie Peevie and his troupe.

My virtual roomie fern hill discovered this brilliant website of Canadian political satire.

From one of UrNews items:

Con­ser­v­a­tive spokesman Dun­ning Kruger announced today that he is launch­ing Cirque du Steve’s Freaks and Geeks, a new circus-style show that will com­bine fund-raising for con­ser­v­a­tive causes with get­ting the mes­sage to the grass­roots in key ridings. [...]

“All right-thinking Cana­di­ans love a cir­cus – just look at the polls,” said Kruger. “But they’re sick of Pepsi per­former types from Que­bec with their New Agey ‘foreign-cultures-are-more-spiritual-than-yours’ crap and their fairy cos­tumes. What they want is to get back to the good old days of clap­ping seals, scary strong­men, hall of mir­rors, bearded women, bad suits and cre­ation­ists. Cir­cus for the base is base circus, baby!”

Fea­tured in the show are: Duff­ster, the Human Can­non­ball; Iggy, the Danc­ing Bear; tight-rope walker Big Tony C.; Vic Toews, the Human Pret­zel; John Baird, the Human Han­key; Bev Oda as Humper the Clown; the Amaz­ing Taz­ing Fan­tino; Peter Mack, trained to jump through burn­ing hoops; bearded lady Jason Ken­ney; and more.

More? Oh yeah, babeee! Larry Cannon as MeeMoe the Mime! Reverend Knife-thrower Vellacott aka "Flak the Ripper". Rod Bruinooge in his Magical MASSIVE Kidney Suit! Helena Guergis on her flying trapeze!

And let's not forget the little people: Dimitri Soudas, elephant-poop-scooper extraordinaire! Flaming Regurgitator 'Fatwa' Flanagan!

As US circus founder P.T. Barnum (allegedly) said: "There's a sucker born every minute."

Con blue sweater has officially jumped the shark. (Update)

Too much of a very baaad thing, I'd say.

And doesn't Fuzzy Fantino look absolutely overjoyed in this photo op?

After the by-election results were confirmed, k'in - a loyal reader and clever commenter - observed at Bread'n'Roses:

Is there room in the Con party for two dictators? I just can't see Fantino sitting down and shutting up and hiding out in the box where Steve keeps Cheryl Gallant. He doesn't take orders, and Steve doesn't tolerate insubordination. Plus the Cons have become scarier with this new addition. Even Blatchford (!!) doesn't support Fantino. Hopefully this much touted breakthrough in the GTA will backfire. Two fascists, three (Harris) stooges, and a bunch of refoooorm party leftovers. That's your "new Canadian government" folks!

Expect more of the Con 'Stupid On Crime' blather, with extra-super authoritarianism.

Update: Scott Feschuk has uncovered young Julian's tough-guy letters to Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.

'Fatwa' Flanagan crawls back under his rock.

Many Canadians would rather not look at what's living under the ReformaTory rock. Then Wikileaks comes along and does the heavy lifting.

'Fatwa' Flanagan's perorations were disgusting propaganda but typical of that fundamentalist mindset. Also illegal - incitation to murder someone is crime - so 'Fatwa' Flanagan' coughed up some desultory regrets. And thanks to Buckdog, we learn from the Calgary Herald that 'Fatwa' Flanagan's academic career won't be squashed like a bug.

University of Calgary spokesman Grady Semmens said the school had received numerous complaints about the comments. "At this point, the university is not considering any disciplinary action. We had discussions with department and faculty heads, but that's all we can really say," he said.

Flanagan was representing himself, not the university, when he made the comments and had a right to his opinion, said Semmens. "He has publicly backed down from statements and said he regrets making them in such an offhanded way," he said.

And that's the way to avoid criminal charges under a supposedly "Tough On Crime" Harper's New©™ Government because it's okay to break the law if you're a ReformaTory Conservative.

Grand merci to our blogging pal Blevkog for further fanning the 'Fatwa' Flanagan fire.

Aawww, they like us, they really, really like us ...

NOT!

Too, too funny - go read Curiosity Cat, now!

The look of transparency is in your eyes ....

Well, looky here.

Citing unnamed government sources, the broadcaster said Wednesday night that the Investment Regulatory Organization of Canada is trying to determine why shares in Taseko Mines Ltd., fell nearly 40 per cent on Oct. 14, more than two weeks before the federal government announced that it was blocking the firm’s plans to develop the Prosperity Mine, a development 125 kilometres southwest of Prince George.

Federal officials fear that the steep drop in stock was caused by a leak of information that the development would be stopped, the broadcaster reported, adding that the decision was taken secretly, in hopes of preventing such stock market fluctuations.

And that's why Stevie and his Reformatory Party are called Cons. And leaky lying liars.

The departure of Jim Prentice, in this context, is verrrrry interesting.

Lying Liars as Mentors and Role Models.

Who knew that our very own undeclared emperor Stevie the First has the occasional moment of modesty and self-effacement?

DJ! has concluded that there's a second training program unfolding in Afghanistan, one that Harper's New©™ Government has had to keep MASSIVELY hush-hush for security reasons.

Since we don't know what the ReformaTory name is for this program, we'll call it the Lying Liars' Mentoring Program for Politicians.

While Karzai could certainly teach Stevie a thing or two about bald-faced lying, the Nouveaux Cons©™ have much to share about systemic obfuscations and fabrications.

More about that other training mission which Stevie Peevie's Politburo, aka the PMO, is promoting.

If Stevie gets his way, this will be a crime in Canada. And also.

This - posting excerpts from, and linking to it, that is.

Two Israeli nonprofit groups that focus on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, HaMoked and B’Tselem, recently reported that Israeli agents have mistreated and even tortured Palestinian detainees. The groups’ findings were based on interviews they conducted with 121 Palestinians who had been held at the Israel Security Agency’s Petach-Tikva interrogation center in the first or last quarter of 2009. The full report, “Kept in the Dark: Treatment of Palestinian Detainees in the Petach-Tikva Interrogation Facility of the Israel Security Agency," can be found here on B’Tselem’s website.

In the report, the authors allege that prisoners were mistreated in a variety of ways, including: Thirty percent of those interviewed reported physical violence being used during their arrest, including beating, kicking, and painful shackling.[...]

The report points out that abuse of detainees is against Israeli and international law. In addition, B'Tselem and HaMoked write that these cases can't be excused as "ticking-bomb" scenarios where police have to get a detainee to talk immediately or disaster will strike -- according to them, most of the detainees "were not suspected of serious offenses." The authors of the report connect the mistreatment of detainees to a wider pattern of prejudice against Palestinians. Detainee abuse, they write, is "made possible due to the dehumanization of the Palestinian population."

Read Dawg's Blawg for an overview of what to expect, and how Stevie Spiteful plans to engineer this feat of sycophancy.

Meanwhile Alison at Creekside proves once more that reality and reason have an anti-rightwingnutter bias.

And also bonus: In The Star's exposé on how the PMO engineered the takeover of Rights and Democracy, Siddiqui notes that Braun and his acolytes' sustained attacks upon Beauregard was key to creating the illusion that the organization was anti-semitic.

The majority voted 7-6 to repudiate three grants of $10,000 each to B'Tselem (an Israeli NGO critical of human rights violations), Al Haq (in the West Bank) and Al Mazen (in Gaza), approved by Remy Beauregard [...].

It all fits together. Stevie's monomania, as always, is impeccable.

Harper's Cons say they're 'Tough on Crime™' but ...

they're soft - limp even - when it comes to the malfeasance displayed by one of their caucus illegally representing himself as a member of the Canadian military forces.

Go read: The Galloping Beaver: Dear General Natynczyk now.

Everything Old is New Again.

Yo! Stevie! You're not one tenth the man that George Diefenbaker was. So stop with the inane and tacky posturing already.


For a little nostalgia hit, check this out. Though imitation may be the most sincere form of flattery - it has to be done well to work.

Ooops - the plates come a-crashing down.

Back in the 1950s - those years fundamentalist christians and various rightwing neo-cons believe to be the golden era of the 20th century - plate spinners were standard fare on variety shows like Ed Sullivan.

Harper's New©™ Government has deployed the same diverting qualities as professional plate-spinners since it lurched into Parliament. Minority after minority, Stevie Spiteful and his bunch of goons and bullies have whirled and twirled information to suit their propaganda needs in order to hold on to political power.

Events in the last year have cranked up the frenzy level in the PMO as minions scurry about to control the spinning: the second prorogation and the backlash it engendered, the ersatz maternal health initiative and the fall-out, the G8/G20 horror show, the long-form census questionnaire trashing and the tentative Québec sports stadium funding.

But Teneycke's recent gaffes - first with his opinion piece on the Avaaz petition and then with his NRA 'freudian lingerie" - may finally have taken down the precision-spinning efforts of Emperor Steve the First and his own little politburo.

Good.

Breaking news: Teneycke has resigned from his position with Quebecor.

Is Bernier being played by the PMO?

This headline at the top of Full Comment at the Natsy Post gave me pause.

Maxime Bernier: The Nordiques must stand on their own two skates

Though I'm not an admirer of Bernier, this phrasing - which doesn't appear at his own blogpost btw and thus was provided by a NP flunky - smacks of that 1950s vintage joke told about the strapping young Quebecois hockey player who was drafted by Toronto. He spoke no English so one of his new team-mates offered to teach him basic expressions, such as: "Me, I be strong like bull, smart like street-car" that would be useful when reporters spoke to him.

When the Cons got blow-back as a result of their bizarre decision to slash, trash and burn the census long-form questionaire, Bernier was sent out to defend it. It wasn't a stretch for him, since he had expressed a similar view when he was minister for Industry.

But now that Bernier has come out against the funding of arenas for professional (for-profit) organizations and he is advancing substantial arguments, it's likely Stevie's Politburo is deploying damage control to discredit his view and make him appear like a Beauce Goober.

Because it's what Stevie and his bullies do, even to their own ReformaTory team members.

NaPo: Self-proclaimed authority on Truth vs Truthiness?

A Creative Revolution's pale blogged about this:

A girl is in hospital and a boy is in custody after an alleged sexual assault Monday afternoon in northeast Calgary that was witnessed and possibly filmed by eight other young people. [...]

What else to say? A couple weeks ago there were reports of people in Calgary driving past a dying man lying in the road after a motorvehicle accident.

Now this one. One of those youths, who cannot be named, told CBC News that everyone involved had been drinking heavily. He said the alleged victim is 12 and the boy accused of assaulting her is 16. "I didn't do nothing. I know I could have stopped it, and should have, but I didn't because I didn't want to get involved and all that," [...]

"So - we're not supposed to gawk, but we're supposed to call something in. The last time I called about a traffic accident, the 911 operator was quite rude - very annoyed that I was calling because, he said, "lots of other people had already called" and I didn't need to."

That was what "Jan" said in the comments in an article reporting the apathetic cruelty of Calgarians who simply ignored that dying man on the road. What has she taught her children if she has any?

It was inevitable that the Natsy Post should cloak itself in self-righteousness to defend the reputation of Calgary and to lecture non-ReformaTories about The Truth©™.

The author of that disingenuous work of obfuscation is Kevin Libin, an ardent defender of Harper's New©™ Government. The sleazy weasel seems to suggest that the 12 year-old was asking for it, since she initiated the 'hook-up' - and she allowed the sexual assault happened in public view. "What a slut" appears to be the implicit message.

Here are some actual facts - as opposed to Natsy Post truthiness and insinuations - regarding sexual assault, as defined by the Criminal Code of Canada. From here:

The law about consent can be complicated. Basically, the legal age of consent is 16 years.

On May 1, 2008, the federal government amended the Criminal Code of Canada to raise the age of consent to sexual activity from 14 to 16 years of age.

If you are 12 or 13 years old, and you have sex with somebody more than two years older than you are, the other person can be charged with sexual assault.

Nor can the alleged sexual assailant, the 16 year-old male, use his own state of alcohol intoxication as an argument to defend his actions.

When CanWest starts investigating Con lies ...

the tide has finally turned against Harper's ReformaTory government.

In his recent visit to the Arctic, Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned that Canada must remain vigilant because of "foreign aircraft probing the skies."

But statistics requested by the Ottawa Citizen from the joint Canadian-U.S. North American Aerospace Defence Command show that at their high point in 2008, Russian aircraft only made a total of five flights near Canadian territory.

In 2007, when the Russians resumed such patrols, they flew near Canadian airspace four times. In 2008, it was five times, and in 2009, three times. So far in 2010, they have made three flights near Canadian airspace. In all cases, the Russian aircraft were shadowed by Canadian fighters.

Darn. The Russians aren't coming after all to liberate us from the tinpot dictator and glorious leader of all Con jobs.

Freud and his acolytes would have a field day, however, decoding Stevie Spiteful's words and his need for, as well as Petey MacKay's obsession with, big, shiny, flying and probing objects.

And also - read the excellent series of posts Dave has written about the F-35 purchase that Stevie's Politburo is desperately trying to spin, at The Galloping Beaver.

We say newsworthy, Stalinist Steve's Politburo says "media generated event".

We say legal obligation - the Cons say concession.

We say endangering public safety by covert deregulation - they say the private sector will manage those risks.

We say better resources for preventing and reporting crime - they say more and bigger prisons.

We say intrusive prying into people's lives - they say the means justifies the end.

We say speak out - they say STFU.

We say MASSIVE Con Job - they say Harper's New©™ Government.

Isn't it time for Canadian voters to call off Stevie Spiteful and his subversion of democracy public affair with Stalinism?

Thanks to the goddess who brought Chet back to blogging at The Vanity Press - one of his posts inspired me to present today's episode of 'We say - the Cons say'.

Please contribute more examples.

And I forgot to give credit to this Scott's Diatribes post where the Cons spin term 'media generated event' is mentioned.

They're making a movie, you see?

At Willy's FFIB and Impolitical, we read that Stevie Grudgiepants' PMO - also known as Harper's Politburo - said:

it is "extremely disappointed" federal funds went to a theatre festival that will stage a play this week that features, in the words of the playwright, a "sympathetic portrayal" of a convicted terrorist [...] Catherine Frid's one-act play "Homegrown" opens Thursday night in Toronto as part of the Summerworks theatre festival [which] received $35,000 in federal funding to mount "Homegrown" and 41 other one-act plays.

No surprise there - remember, the young Spiteful told Susan Crean, the co-author of 'Two Nations' with Quebec activist/sociologist Marcel Rioux: "You should not have been allowed to write that book."

First the Con-Fabulators trash the long-form census questionnaire because they don't want to be accountable to pesky data, facts and scientific stuff. Then they morph into the Con-Jecters©™ who insist their ill-conceived program to build mega-jails is valid, using ancient (2004?) StatsCan info to craft a story that fits their ideological needs. Stockwell "Doris" Day's performance yesterday left media and most folks thinking WTF that all about?

Everything the ReformaTory cabal does is scripted for the screen and for the glory posterity of their narcissist/sociopath leader. Oh, and the Party too.

It's not about the troops, the economy or even governing, stupid!

It's all about the narrative. They're making a movie, you see.

With our tax munee.



Here's someone who was way ahead of the curve: the dazzling and prescient genius of Joe Hall et Le Drift Continental.

The systemic erosion of democracy (more)

This is how it starts. A narcissistic sociopath takes control of a political party and proclaims: "We can create a country built on solid Conservative values [...] the kind of country I want to lead." Here are a few more quotes:

"Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed."

"Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs."

"The writer is the engineer of the human soul."

"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas."

"Print is the sharpest and the strongest weapon of our party."

"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."

The first pronouncement is from Stephen Joseph Harper. The rest are from Joseph Stalin.

Notwithstanding his tactical deployment of tricks perfected by contemporary Republican operatives, Stevie Spiteful's strategy is eerily similar to Stalin's view.

Of the Stalinist regime, Alexander Solzhenitsyn said: "In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State."

Yesterday's display in Parliamentary committee of the contempt which Harper and his thugs have for Canadians is breath-taking. Tony Clement reprised his Attack Parrot™© role, but it was Stockwell Day who cranked it up to a new level of sheer political chutzpah with this:

“Do you think it is right that you can threaten your neighbour with jail time if she doesn’t tell you if she has mental issues or not?” he wrote. “Or who does what chores in the house? Or whether she is a Jew or not? Don't you find that one even a little bit chilling?”

What I find chilling is the sustained campaign of propaganda and disinformation Stevie Spiteful's PMO has waged on every issue it has shoved down the throat of the electorate since the ReformaTories formed their first minority government in 2006.

And as the continuing debacle over the G-8/G-20 demontrates, the Cons' electoral promise of transparence and accountability in government is nothing more than a typical Con job.

The only obstacle to a Canada controlled by Harper's steel fist and administered by his cowering cadre of lying bullies is a purposeful response by Canadian voters.

More crumbling away: Who needs to get nasty feedback or pesky facts entered into the public record?

Federal civil servants won't get to fill out a workplace survey this year because the Conservative government has axed it. [...]

A Statistics Canada official broke the news to colleagues last month in an email obtained by The Canadian Press. "I regret to inform you that plans for the 2010 Public Service Employee Survey are cancelled," Geoff Bowlby, head of the agency's labour statistics division, wrote on June 2. "We received notice from Treasury Board secretariat yesterday evening that funding for the project was not approved for this year. [...]

Neither Treasury Board President Stockwell Day nor his department were immediately able to say how much the survey cost. The government solicits voluntary feedback from its workers every three years to improve programs and services. The survey gives a snapshot of workers' demographics, skills, career expectations and concerns.

ADDED by fern hill: A plug for the Facebook group, Canadians Rallying to Unseat Stephen Harper, which today passed the 5,000 member mark. We've been raising money and placing newspaper ads to raise awareness of just this issue. Totally grassroots, volunteer. Check it out.