Campaign 2015: New Twist on "No Country for Old White Men"

It's almost over, folks. The longest, and dare I say, dirtiest election campaign in Canadian history will soon be toast.

I'm not going to speculate on the outcome -- I'm barely hanging on to my sanity as it is -- but I thought I should provide a round-up of the campaigns from a prochoice perspective.

We all know that Harper is the worst prime minister ever but he's been particularly awful for women of all sorts, and of course even worse for Muslim, Indigenous, and other minority women. Here's Shit Harper Did's look at his record, titled: "Shush baby! Just look pretty. 17 ways the Conservative government has controlled you like a terrible boyfriend."

The 2011 campaign had its bozo eruptions on the misogynist front, but Harper managed to maintain his tight-lipped "my government will not reopen the abortion debate" mantra.

And the stenographers we laughingly call the mainstream media mostly reported just that.

This time, though, there has been a little more attention paid to the most basic of women's rights, abortion. (Call me old school feminist, but if we don't have control of our reproductive lives, all the pay equity in the world means squat.)

Press Progress published a totally predictable list of 86 CON anti-choice candidates.

All the usual suspects are there with a couple of wee twists.

Blogger Robert Jago has been digging into the online lives of CON candidates and found some interesting stuff. We reported on one of his finds, religious nutbar, antichoice homophobe Toyin Dada.

He also found Saskatchewan's Michael Kram in a literal cover-up of his extremist views, which the CBC ran with.

No MSM was interested in Toyin, though.

Another minor bozo eruption occurred when old comments by Manitoba candidate "Professor Popsicle", Gordon Geisbrecht, made the news. Supposedly a scientist, he equated the number of abortions to "a 9/11 every day."

None of this is surprising, really.

What's new this time, is the explicit statement by Justin Trudeau that the "Liberal" party would no longer tolerate antichoice voting by its old white farts. This caused a stir among the fetus freaks who responded with gore and hyperbole in its No 2 Trudeau mission.

What was more interesting to us was the double-plus good rating given by Campaign Lie to London-Fanshawe Liberal Khalil Ramal from his time as an Ontario MPP.

He apparently promised never to act on his misogynist and homophobic beliefs and that made it A-OK with the "Liberals."

Another poser, though, came from the chest-beatingly prochoice NDP who are also running a anti-abortion, anti-same-sex-marriage candidate, K.M. Shanthikumar.

He too said: "Hahahahaha. Only blowing dog whistles for my peeps" and that made it peachy-keen with the NDP brain trust.

Among the grassroots, in addition to the gore-fest of No 2 Trudeau, the underground gas line marker gang got on their bus for what they styled Life Tour.

These efforts resulted in a couple of local news stories in antediluvian Saskatchewan, here and here.

But overall, abortion has not played much of a role in this election.

WHICH IS AS IT SHOULD BE in a country with a long-established and proud record of upholding women's rights to bodily autonomy.

And while we're pleased that an organization with a bit more reach than the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada or bloggers like us found some time to publish a list of avowed misogynists, we're rather concerned that both PROCHOICE parties, the NDP and the Liberals, are allowing antichoice homophobes to run.

Both candidates, we note, are from visible minority groups and presumably are expected to have some extra clout in those communities.

So, the take-away: the prochoice parties are saying quietly: we don't really expect (targetted) minority groups to assimilate to the law of the land when it comes to women's rights.

Because, as everyfuckingbody on the planet knows -- women's rights are always negotiable.

Or, as we said before, Canada may be "no country for old(stock) white men," but it seems it's fine for New Stock Men.

Bait and Hate

On March 8 2015, International Women's Day, the Harper government's Minister for Defence and Multiculturalism tweeted this:

Journalist Glen McGregor caught the mendacious tweet and investigated whether the misleading images were duplicitously used.

An article in La Presse has an interview with a scholar based at l'UQUAM, regarding the authenticity and provenance of images used in Jason Kenney's tweet. He deplored the lack of rigour shown by this tweet as well as the misrepresentation of what the images actually portray: the dramatization of a religious historical event (much like Catholic Good Friday re-enactment) and the public recitation of Coranic verses.

The press secretary to Minister Kenney, who is also responsible for Multiculturalism in the Harper government, declined to respond directly to requests for clarification regarding the choice of photos.

"This type of question obscures the real issue: [Daesh/IS] is a threat to women and minorities; it is a genocidal terrorist organization, a threat to national and international security," wrote Lauren Armstrong in an email sent to The Canadian Press.

That photo in the upper right hand corner is a still shot from a short video that Karren Brown found:

Kenney's tweet implied that the tearful girl is a terrified child bride of a Wahhadi Daesh fighter.  She isn't.

Watch the video. The girl is competing in a contest of memorization of religious text.  Her head is not covered.  Her audience is composed of supportive community members who encourage her.

Though there are other religions who do justify potential endangerment and harm to children because ... their ideology rules. Three years ago we wrote about the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board and how it facilitated such activities.

Yes, it's April and those three boys are exposed to the elements.  The board has now removed the photos from its Brampton school's website (child pornography?) but Andrea Houston got a screen cap which she kindly provided.

Kenney is a fundamentalist Catholic. My co-blogger is very fond of this video of a young and rabidly zealous Jason.  He didn't complete his undergraduate program.  We suspect that the Jesuits were far too liberal for his proclivities.

Need we remind our readers, as well as befuddled Harper Cons, that the Catholic Church facilitated, tolerated and enabled mental, physical and sexual violence exerted against thousands and thousands of children for centuries.  In countries like Ireland, the Philippines and El Salvador, women are still struggling to cast off the oppressive control of the Vatican's misogynist ideology.  They have uncovered great injustices and loudly demanded accountability from the Church.

Nonetheless, Harper Cons are putting all their communication eggs into one basket: systematically deploying fear mongering tactics to incite hatred and fear of Muslims as they ramp up to a fall election campaign. Also: fundraising!!!

On Monday evening, the leader of the Liberal Party

[..]accused Harper's Conservative Party government of blurring the line "between a real security threat and simple prejudice." In particular, he criticized the decision of a judge in Quebec to refuse the case of a Muslim woman who wore a hijab to court, arguing that it was a "troubling trend that Mr. Harper seems keen to accelerate and exploit" and linking it to the Conservative government's proposed ban on the wearing of Islamic face veils during the oath of citizenship. 

Trudeau told his audience. "So we should all shudder to hear the same rhetoric that led to a 'none is too many' immigration policy toward Jews in the 30s and 40s, being used to raise fears against Muslims today."

On Tuesday Harper's dog-and-pony show continued in Parliament, as his Minister for Public Safety obliquely referenced Islam during his presentation on Bill C-51 in committee.  Blaney justified this, claiming that "hate speech" sows the seeds that culminate in horrific events like the Holocaust. He rambled on, even alluding to the mass slaughter of Tutsi by Hutu.

The minister compared jihadist declarations to Nazi propaganda, saying "the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers, it began with words." 

"Violence starts with words," the minister repeated. "Hate begins with words. I can talk to you about the genocide in Rwanda that began on the radio."

He was taken to task by NDP MP Randall Garrison who suggested Blaney was trivializing the Shoah. Later, the minister's office denied that he had paraphrased verses from the Qur'an. 

Since we're on the topic of hate speech, biblical text are still used to justify violence against women. The actions demanded in Deutoronomy 22:21 that Gary Pearson partly cited above may no longer prevail in law, but they persist in the stigma attached to sex work and in the shaming of women who refuse to let their sexuality be controlled by religious ideology.

"then they are to take her out to the entrance of her father's house, where the men of her city are to stone her to death. She has done a shameful thing among our people by having intercourse before she was married, while she was still living in her father's house. In this way you will get rid of this evil."

None of this is happenstance. Ordinary secular political parties are not seized by urgent, totalitarian needs to foment ethnic fear and religious hatred against muslims in order to stay in power.  But a party that is in thrall to Evangelical christian religious fundamentalism and bankrolled by foreign interests, as Harper's CPC is, certainly would be. 

The last words belong to Jed Bartlet, _The West Wing_ fictional president inspired by Jimmy Carter with some daubs of JFK.

Deploying religious text to expose the ugliness of religious fundamentalism.

Of interest to those with no particular religious adherence: the word TERROR entered the political vocabulary during the French revolution as these events unfolded. A demonstration that any ideology, even anti-religious, can be used to justify violent government repression.  

UPDATE: The hoax photos that Kenney deployed misrepresent their original use. Taken from an anti-Muslim hate-inciting site. Thoroughly deconstructed here.

"New" New Democrats: Ambition over Principles

You gotta wonder: WTF is up with the NDP?

There's this recent genius move from Niki Ashton, a motion for the House to "formally affirm" a woman's right to choose abortion.

Unlike the Woodworth gambit — which was ultimately defeated despite garnering the support of just over half the government caucus, including a half-dozen senior cabinet ministers — Ashton's motion could easily be interpreted as a criticism of current government policy, which would make even the most stridently pro-choice Conservative MP pause before giving a thumbs-up.

Such an outcome would almost certainly provide a major boost to the morale of the anti-abortion movement, which, despite taking centre stage briefly during the Woodworth and Warawa debates, has had little to no success in forcing the issue back onto the floor of the House of Commons.

That flagging political relevancy was apparent during last week's March for Life. According to police estimates, the annual Hill rally attracted just over 8,000 activists in 2014, which would put it at as little as half the RCMP estimate for the previous year, when Warawa's gender selection motion was still in play. Even the 23,000 claimed by march organizers was lower than their 2013 estimate of 25,000.

After formally affirming for years that abortion is a settled matter not open for debate, the NDP decides to take a swipe at the Liberals, kinda overlooking what ammo such a move serves up to fetus fetishists.

Well, we shouldn't be surprised. This isn't the first time the NDP has seen an opportunity to poke the Liberals by turning women's rights into a political football.

A couple of days later, the NDP brain-trust got a grip and decided to nix opening the abortion debate in favour of whinging about CBC funding cuts.

OK, then.

But here's Chantal Hébert's take (bold mine).

On the heels of Trudeau’s announcement that future Liberal candidates will have to toe the party’s pro-choice line on abortion, the NDP is seizing the House with a motion to force MPs to pronounce on abortion rights.

Since Trudeau is actually shoring up the pro-choice line in Parliament and not threatening to drive a tank through it, the only rationale for the NDP move is to sow embarrassment and division in the Liberal caucus.

A handful of its existing members are anything but pro-choice.

Not since Gilles Duceppe ended up having to take yes for an answer to his challenge to the House of Commons to recognize Quebec as a nation has an opposition party come up with as bad of a good idea.

The NDP has argued for years that the debate over abortion rights was closed, maintaining with admirable consistency that Parliament should not interfere in the reproductive choices of Canadian women.

On that basis, the party has mercilessly attacked the prime minister for not preventing his backbenchers from putting forward motions dealing directly or indirectly with abortion.

Its critics have repeatedly accused Stephen Harper of having the hidden agenda to restrict the reproductive choice of women.

But it is hard to square the notion that Conservative MPs should not be allowed to put their long-held convictions on abortion to the test in the House while New Democrats would be free to do so to score points on the issue.

The fate of the NDP motion — the text of which includes language pertaining to the government’s existing policy on maternal health in developing countries that could make it hard for pro-choice government MPs to support — is uncertain.

The vote might yet deliver anti-abortion advocates a rare victory on Harper’s watch in the House of Commons.

But whatever the result, it speaks volume about the current mindset of the NDP.

Dealing first with substance, the party’s eagerness to score easy points in an empty goal stands in sharp contrast with its gingerly-approach to more current social policy debates such as the one involving assisted suicide and euthanasia.

And here's her conclusion.

At this juncture, all is apparently fair in the NDP/Liberal war — including turning the issue of women’s reproductive choices into ammunition in the House of Commons.

This might be as good a time as any to remind both parties — but in particular the NDP — that if supremacy in the Caviar Left strongholds of downtown Toronto won elections, Harper would not be prime minister.

And here's where I bitch again about the fucking uselessness of the Fucking Useless Opposition®. They're arguing over the keys to Stornaway while the country goes up in flames.

Sowing embarrassment, scoring points, potting empty-netters. This is NOT why I -- and, I submit, millions of others -- voted NDP.

We voted for your principles, NOT your ambition.

And for this former NDP-voter, both federally and provincially, the party's rank and rancid ambition now outweighs any sentimental attachment I might have to principled social-justice warriors (ahem) like Dan Heap.

I'm done with the NDP.

THEM

It's the title of an early Joyce Carol Oates novel, possibly her best and deserving a place in the US literary canon.

_THEM_ depicts the chaotic lives of a family living in poverty in the Detroit slums, from the 1930s to the 1967 riots.  Oates draws a vivid portrait of a matriarch, from self-awakening as a naive young mother nagged by regrets at the age of sixteen, to a mature woman whose aspirations and struggles encompass the destinies of her children battling to survive in a perilous world fraught with violence. Poor white trash folks, before that epithet became a thing.

US against THEM is also a binary construct that imposes constraints and limits possibilities.

This imperative to separate people into opposite camps, assigned to one side or the other of an arbitrarily determined divide, is a facile reflex.  Though some sociobiologists would claim that every human brain is instinctually wired to respond in this manner because: survival strategy! I find their arguments oozing with smarminess and confirmation bias.

This polarizing framework is certainly omnipresent throughout history, across varied and numerous ideological and cultural settings.



Demonize, other-wize, isolate, target. 

Blue dot.

And thus, with regard to this ill-advised model that the Liberal Party of Canada is heavily promoting, today's JT speech announces what awaits Canadians in the 2015 election campaign, if THE MIDDLE-CLASS becomes its strategic meme (though it could morph into a much abused trope).

As someone who grew up in a rough-and-tumble mostly francophone area with many immigrants, working class (and working poor) in a town that's now part of Ottawa, I find this ploy repellent.

Though I may seem to be a member of this elusive and more likely, illusive demographic that the Liberal brain-trust is desperately trying to seduce into its camp, it does NOT speak to me. 

When I hear the expression "upward mobility" deployed in JT's speech as though it were an exalted entitlement, I retch.  Meaningful work, a decent salary, a social safety net: those are important elements that should not be available only to those who buy into the "upward mobility" scam, or more accurately, a form of fancy-schmancy Ponzi economic scheme beatified by the likes of Larry Summers and his sycophants.

I think of my daughter, who by virtue of her hard work and personal sacrifices, is now an accomplished physician who gives back to the communities she has pledged to serve and respect.  I really don't think this marketing gimmick will speak to her.

As I do, she may find it repugnant and exclusionary.

THEM is the group that I historically and emotionally identify with, that demographically disregarded and invalidated class that JT and his team discount when the focus becomes exclusively *THE MIDDLE-CLASS*.

THEM includes many many many people, and not only those who have fallen on hard times. We may not be the potential rich donors the PLC is wooing, but we can smell a deliberate shun.  And when we are angered, we vote.

You can't take that to the bank but you can count on it.

As an aside, is the NDP's best shot at challenging the credibility of JT's speech really this? 

Mulcair's communications flaks would do much better to query how much Summers charged the LPC for his tired dog-and-pony show at the convention.  Was the party billed his preferential Wall Street rate - for "friends"?

About those CON-veeenient leaks...

Imagine it said in Preston Manning's voice.  CON-veeenient!

It's the only way to observe the onslaught of leaks and planted items that glutted the mainstream media this week.  If one were cynical, one might think that some were deliberately engineered to divert attention away from the MASSIVE Harper CPC attack on democracy — disingenuously called *Fair Reform Act* — by neutralizing and weakening the work Elections Canada does.  Some have called it the Conservative Amnesty Act since it will retroactively exculpate any election fraud engineered by the CPC.

Observe the 'who', the 'what', the 'how' and the 'when' of the following:

Exhibit A: It was predictable that the PMO would accommodate Harper's loathing for the LPC by devising a strategy to disrupt the Montreal convention with a range of smears and media-attention-grabbing tactics.

Exhibit B: Just one big, happy Regressive Conservative slash Reformatory family party! Well, except for Arthur Hamilton who is now living in the dog-house.

Exhibit C: Clearly, transparently and blatantly even, Harper Cons are exploiting publicly-funded Parliamentary resources to support their re-election bid. No accountability.

Exhibit D: As our blogging colleague Luna suggests, a critical backlash against the use of Laureen might be re-framed by the PMO, who would claim that she is being attacked, and then launch their own previously-crafted strategies to smear Catherine or Sophie, respectively Mulcair and Trudeau spouses.

Here is seasoned political journalist Susan Delacourt's take on the above leaks.

Exhibit E: This one may be gratuitous or part of an internal effort by Harper sycophants to discredit Jason Kenney who may be gunning for their leader's job.

Exhibit F: Glen McGregor presents the facts he has obtained, and raises questions about how and why this information has surfaced now.

Make of it what you will, but it seems to me that under Harper's direction, the PMO and the communications flunkies who crank out their Politburo propaganda are out to win. No prisoners taken. No mercy.  Just a craven need to crush their enemies, which includes Canadians who aren't onside with them.

UPDATE, February 17: It seems the Lt-Gen Leslie (retired) snowball packed around a sharp rock has become something of an avalanche. 

According to this news item, Con Minister Nicholson claims information about Leslie's $72,000 move costs was obtained through the Access to Information Act but CTV won't confirm that is correct.  Who's the more credible? 

CONtempt™: it's the Harper CONservative party brand.

Another day, another cpc Senator in the news.

This particularly repulsive Con — Jean-Guy Dagenais — has also been a useful idiot for the Harper regime. As a former cop and past president of the police officers' association of Québec, Dagenais was a keen supporter of the federal long-gun registry.  Once tactically appointed to the Senate by PMSHithead, he CONveniently started spewing the anti-registry propaganda and speaking points supplied by the PMO.

Il a changé son fusil d'épaule.  And now, this:

In a letter sent to all parliamentarians, Dagenais referred to Charmaine Borg’s flyer as “a rag” and suggested she’s a whiny, ignorant, powerless Quebec MP who was elected by fluke and stands little chance of being re-elected.

NDP House leader Nathan Cullen said sending such a “offensive” missive to a 23-year-old female rookie MP is “paternalistic, childish, condescending and frankly misogynistic.” He served notice that he will ask the Speaker of the House of Commons next week to condemn Dagenais.

“The letter in question attacks the very legitimacy of a sitting member of Parliament,” Cullen told the Commons.

Stephen Taylor, the weathervane director of some astroturf Reformatory organization, and a self-selected arbiter on misogyny, equivocated and perorated about Cullen's observations.

What's Dagenais' next volley against the NDP elected member of Parliament?  To demand that Borg's home address and phone number be publicized, the better to incite his fellow bullies who share his views to hunt her down and sexually assault her, and finish the job that his impotent, CONvoluted p0rn-infused fantasies would want to see executed?

The collective recoil expressed by the female MPs in the NDP caucus should be noted, and respected.  Each of them knows how violence against women manifests itself in numerous and insidious ways; it is present in the truculent bellowing and lip-smacking self-indulgence of reactionary old white men who suffer from delusional entitlement syndrome.

Jean-Guy Dagenais is a prime specimen of the Reformatory plutocrats who are degrading Parliament.

Afterword: A point I raised, with regard to Dagenais' accusation that riding residents allegedly complained to him that Borg could do nothing for them: how can an individual MP redress or fix all the services and programs destroyed by the Harper governement: Employment Insurance, Veterans Affairs, Health, Environment, etc. etc.?

Update: More media pundits, all male so far, pooh-pooh the characterization of Dagenais' attack upon Borg as misogynistic.  It means women-hating, not the same as sexist.  I wonder who will be the first to label the reaction of female MPs as "hysterical".  Might be one of the anti-feminists: Wente, Lakritz or Kay-mère, perhaps Blatchford?

More update: I went looking for a useful and helpful perspective on systemic misogyny that included the vile tactics that the Harper dirty tricks handbook promote, when directed at women and launched by an Attack Parrot™ like Dagenais.

Misogyny is also – because of the very nature of its deep-seated, psychological hatred – a linking factor among the various [...] hate groups and militias. That means that people who hate women may also exhibit authoritarian, violent and bigoted behavior towards minorities.

From here.

Thoughts from an Unhappy Post-Partisan

A few thoughts on the NDP leadership.

First, Aaron Wherry offers us an opportunity to compare and contrast.

From Bob Rae:

“I want to offer my warm congratulations to Thomas Mulcair on winning the leadership contest in the New Democratic Party.  I know Mr. Mulcair well and look forward to working with him to ensure Parliament acts on behalf of all Canadians.

“I also want to congratulate the NDP for a successful leadership convention, particularly in opening up the selection process to Canadians across the country.

“I also want to salute Mme Nycole Turmel for the integrity she showed as Interim Leader of the NDP. Her grace was apparent as she courageously carried out her duties admirably in the wake of the tragic passing of Jack Layton.”

From the Contempt Party:

Today in Toronto, the NDP have chosen Thomas Mulcair to push their agenda of high taxes, high spending and less economic growth. Thomas Mulcair is an opportunist whose high tax agenda, blind ambition, and divisive personality would put Canadian families and their jobs at risk. Mulcair has said he would bring back a risky, job-killing carbon tax which would raise the price of everything – even though Canadians overwhelmingly rejected carbon taxes. Canadians can’t afford Mulcair’s dangerous economic experiments.

Also, Thomas Mulcair has vowed to bring back the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry, and his soft on crime positions would take Canada back to policies that put the rights of criminals ahead of those of victims. 

Canadians gave our government a strong mandate to create jobs and economic growth. For hard-working Canadian families looking for a government that will put them first, it is clear that the only choice is Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.

I am not a Dipper, but of all the contenders, I have to say Mulcair was my last choice.

Consider his position on marijuana.

Earlier in the campaign:

I also support the party’s existing policy on further decriminalising the possession of marijuana for any use with the goal to eliminate the influence of organised crime on the production and distribution of marijuana.

Later, asked again about decriminalization:

No. I think that that would be a mistake because the information we have right now is that the marijuana that’s on the market is extremely potent and can actually cause mental illness.

Mental illness? Seriously?

On the environment.

[Dewar] would also ban bulk water exports and took Thomas Mulcair to task on the issue for comments he made in support of such exports in 2004 as a Quebec Liberal environment minister.

OK, he may have changed his mind about that, but I'd like to hear him say so.

Now a really troublesome matter. Israel.

Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) has launched a video to challenge Thomas Mulcair's positions on Israel and Palestine. According to IJV, Mr. Mulcair's leadership campaign represents an electoral coalition with Canada's Israel Lobby.

Lorne Nystrom, the national co-chair of Mr. Mulcair's leadership campaign and a former long-time NDP MP, is likely familiar to many who follow federal politics. However, many NDP members may not be aware that Nystrom currently sits on the board of this country's major pro-Israel lobby group, which actively campaigns in support of the Israeli government's inhumane and repressive policies towards Palestinian and other non-Jewish citizens.

Finally, on cooperating with other parties to beat the fucking CONs:

One thing Mulcair is clear on is that he’ll go after Liberal supporters, but won’t work with the rival party.

“N.O.,” he told HuffPost. The NDP tried to form a coalition with the Liberals in 2008 and then the Grits “lifted their noses up on it,” Mulcair said.

The coalition experience taught Mulcair everything he needs to know about the Liberals. They’re untrustworthy and he said he’ll never work with them again, whether in a formal or informal coalition.

“The no is categorical, absolute, irrefutable and non-negotiable. It’s no. End of story. Full stop,” he said.

End of story? CON majorities for the foreseeable future.

As I say, I am not a Dipper. So that's it from me. For now.

*Cashmere Tony* - Trick or Treat?

Gawd knows we try to stay on top of Cashmere Tony's various dodges and Con jobs.

It seems the NDP has just uncovered another discrepancy in his Ministry, a possible misappropriation of funds.

Official Opposition critic for the Treasury Board, Alexandre Boulerice (Rosemont--La Petite-Patrie), wrote today to the President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement to ask him to explain the latest example of flawed accounting practices in his department and the possible misappropriation of funds.

New Democrats are asking Clement to explain the error involving the apparent mismanagement of hundreds of millions of dollars by Industry Canada and to take steps to review the estimates for other problems as well as implement a review of internal accounting procedures.

Just business as usual for PMSHithead's Contempt government; whatever happened to transparence and accountability?

It should be entertaining to uncover which of the ReformaTory pigs at the trough were the beneficiaries of Tony's prestidigitational largesse.

Image from this DJ! post.

Seriously, Andrea?

I just saw a bunch of posters in my nabe featuring this image:



I think we got that, Andrea. You're a chick. ^NOT a suit.

But really, in the 21st century, we're going to promote female politicians with fuck-me shoes?

Image source

#MulcairsEgo

One day while Thomas Mulcair is walking around Outremont and signing up new NDP members, a large chunk of crumbling Montreal infrastructure falls on him. Fatally.

When Mulcair arrives at St Peter's Gate, he's informed that a component of the admission process requires a meet-and-greet with Heavenly residents.

Mulcair thinks: "Great! I'm a gifted and successful campaigner and schmoozer. Getting into Heaven will be a snap."

As he looks across a cloud, he notices Marilyn Monroe is floating in his direction. Mulcair calls out to her: "Join me in a martini?"

Marilyn shimmies gracefully and murmurs: "Really, Mr Mulcair? Is there room in that tiny glass for the three of us?"

Adieu, Jack.

« Si le rire sacrilège et blasphématoire que les bigots de toutes les chapelles taxent de vulgarité et de mauvais goût, si ce rire-là peut parfois désacraliser la bêtise, exorciser les chagrins véritables et fustiger les angoisses mortelles, alors oui on peut rire de tout, on doit rire de tout : de la guerre, de la misère et de la mort!

Au reste, est-ce qu'elle se gêne la mort, elle, pour se rire de nous ? Est-ce qu'elle ne pratique pas l'humour noir, elle, la mort ? Regardons s'agiter ces malheureux dans les usines, regardons gigoter ces hommes puissants, boursoufflés de leur importance qui vivent à 100 à l'heure. Alors ils se battent, ils courent, ils caracolent derrière leur vie, et tout d'un coup, cela s'arrête, sans plus de raisons que ça n'avait commencé...

Alors le militant de base, le pompeux PDG, la princesse d'opérette, l'enfant qui joue à la marelle dans les caniveaux de Beyrouth, toi aussi à qui je pense et qui a cru en Dieu jusqu'au bout de ton cancer... Tous nous sommes fauchés un jour par le croche-pied rigolard de la mort imbécile, et les droits de l'homme s'effacent devant les droits de l'asticot. »

Pierre Desproges, dans Le Tribunal des flagrants délires réquisitoire contre Jean-Marie Le Pen (28 septembre 1982)

"If the sacrilegious and blasphemous laughter that bigots of all religious dogma claim to be vulgar and in bad taste, if that laughter might desecrate stupidity, exorcise genuine grief and castigate mortal anguish, then yes: one can, one should laugh at everything: war, misery and death!

After all, does Death hesitate to laugh at us? Is Death not a practitioner of black humour? Look at those unfortunate people stirring in the factories, look at men of power swollen with their importance who scramble to live at full throttle. So they fight, they run, they prance behind their lives, and all of a sudden, it stops, with no more reason than it had started ...

So it is for the activist, the pompous CEO, the princess of operetta, the child playing hopscotch in the gutters of Beirut, and you too who believed in God until the end of your cancer ... All are mowed down eventually by death's imbecility, and the rights of men give way to the rights of the maggot."

Someone on Radio-Canada observed that Jack Layton was a ferocious negociator. Who knows what deals people make when they learn that insidious, merciless cancer is raging within them? When my sister fought ovarian cancer, she confided in me that she *asked* for two years. And she lived, in the time left, to the fullest.

From Joan Baez:

"You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now."

Michele Bachmann and Praying Away the Gay

Woohoo! The MSM has picked up the story of Michele Bachmann's hub Marcus's Pray Away the Gay biz, with undercover footage proving that the Bachmanns are telling porky pies.

And. Also. She's a great big whiney titty-baby. Call the cops! Her house was egged! Twice!

And that Marriage Vow she signed with the paragraph on how Jim (Crow) Dandy Great slavery was for black families? Well, apparently she did ^NOT read that bit.

Which is now beside the point as the wingnuts who issued it have removed the offending bit.

Mother Jones is staying on it, though. They're compiling The Michele Bachmann Guide to Slavery.

But, hey, not to worry. There's no fucking way she can be elected, right? Bill Maher is ^NOT complacent.

In related Canadian news, the New Democratic Party has heeded the campaign started by our pal Mark at Slap Upside The Head to remove charitable status from bogus Pray Away the Gay groups.

Good on ya, Mark, and all the others who got involved in the Slap into Action campaign!

ADDED: MoJo still on it.

Image source

Fewer Wrinkles, Less Bullshit

I must be weak today. I've watched this two or three times and it cracks me up every time.

Mainly, I wanna know: How did they DO that?

By the 'national treasure', Operation Maple.

ADDED: They are 'brand name for bottled water babies'. Can you spell naive backwards? Bunch of vids.

Operation Maple waaay funnier. Of course, they don't have a profit to make.

6,201 voters for Contempt Party

in 14 ridings allowed the Cons to secure the majority regime Harper demanded.

Read Alison at Creekside: Canada Votes 2011 - Margin of Victory and weep.

Complete results here.

An update indicates that a simple recount has found the NDP candidate ahead by 5 votes in the Montmagny-L'islet-Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup riding in the province of Quebec. A judicial recount will determine the final winner.

Fortress West

So I won't sugar-coat it. The great Trojan Horse has finally made it past the gate, it has lumbered in and been celebrated and garlanded, and it is ready to unload its malicious oily cargo as its own cheerleaders retire for the night sated and inebriated. It's a credit to Canada that it took so many years of effort to roll it up that hill, despite all of the wealth and power propelling it.

But roll in it did.

Unfortunately, this moment was rather difficult to avoid. Stephen Harper and Co. had a near total lock on a huge block of seats the western parts of Canada. With that huge and consistent starting advantage, all they needed to do was keep trying to pick the lock of Canadian democracy; it was inevitable that with enough tries, the tumblers would all fall into place to give them a majority.

And there's the rub, the elephant in the room: the lock that the Cons/Reform has held on the West for what is now quite a long time, thwarted only by vote-splitting and an Ontario voting pattern that no longer exists. That was the problem with the strategic voting approach, leaving aside the issue of the unreliability of the Liberal Party leadership: for every voting strategy to keep them out of 155 ridings, there was always a feasible Reformatory counter-strategy to gain the MUCH smaller number of seats required for a majority government. Put that way, it's a miracle that it has taken so long. Canada as a whole has said DO NOT WANT repeatedly for a long time...until now.

So the real, lasting solution to the problem is obviously to break the lock that Reform has had on a large number of Western seats. But (obviously) that's easier said that done, because of the way that the underlying Great Animus that supports the Reform lock has been constructed. It was built from the remnant of a legitimate historical set of grievances against a certain elite in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal axis. Now in this world of interconnected finances, this elite is now entirely and intimately connected with the resource-extracting class of the West, and with that connection has been able to co-opt the grudge and turn this Great Animus against a strange holographic image of an "elite" that the hapless Liberal party has been all too eager to supply in recent times.

This was wonderful for the oil-and-finance elite that has been lately riding this Animus: every time the Reform/Cons movement was prevented from reaching maximum victory, it was easy to turn it into a rejection by the hologram-"elite" of the West Itself. This has fed back again and again into the Animus and the rest is history.

I just promised optimism, so here it is: with a Conservative majority government, progressives and the left-wing of Canada have an opportunity to deflate and redirect this Great Animus if they have any organization or wit to seize it. "Western Alienation" was manufactured from a substrate of real and justified feeling; it has manifested itself in a different way, but it has the same character and root as sovereigntist feeling in Quebec. And if the NDP can make progressive inroads into Quebec when it became clear that the BQ was no longer serving the regional interest it claimed to serve, so it should be if anything easier to seize the moment when it becomes clear that the Trojan Horse of Stephen Harper really doesn't solve the problems of the ordinary people of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and so on. That control over the energy-extraction wealth is illusory and is not going to make better lives for the public in those provinces.

That the full-throated majority rule of the warmed-over Reform movement is not at all what it was cracked up to be.

In the end, this will require not snooty counter-regionalism and not a polite wish for "reasoned debate", but for an unbridled and blunt populist truth-telling that the NDP can provide far more credibly than the recent Liberal Party can, or perhaps ever could. Now is the time to shove every victim of the Enormous Pit of Toxic Waste and every misappropriated dollar in the face of a public who might think that this is being done for their own good: it isn't. Now is the time to start saying, sarcastically, "Tell me: is this what you really wanted? Do you understand what is happening now?"

Because if the answer is "yes", well, then, at least we'll know the answer.

Dipper Dippiness

Back here I threw the ProgBlogosphere into a tizz by saying I was going to vote Liberal. Then I took it back and said I was voting fringe.

But today when I went to the poll, I voted, as usual, for the Dipper, Oliva Chow in this riding.

Had I seen this first, I'd have returned to the fringe plan.



Really. Jack and Olivia are BOTH Trekkies.

(Now, I'll have pissed off the Dippers again and the Trekkies. A good day for a humble blogger.)

Smells like a Contempt rat to me.

Or it might be a BQ dirty trick, since the incumbent could lose his seat to NDP Boivin - who once held the riding of Gatineau for the Libs. These allegations against Boivin have been raised in the past and she has clearly stated that they are unfounded.

Montreal newspaper Le Devoir reported Tuesday that Boivin did not actually leave the [Liberal] party for ideological reasons as she has previously stated, but because she hired a woman to work in her office the Liberals say was her same-sex partner and then refused to acknowledge she had broken the rules. [...]

Boivin flatly denied the allegations, saying that she knows all the rules and she never broke them. “These anonymous sources should come out of the shadows and have the courage to defend these allegations,” Boivin said in a statement on Tuesday, where she also announced her intention to defend her integrity and give legal notice to Le Devoir and the journalist who wrote the story. [...]

NDP officials say that was always their understanding of why she joined their party, noting she had voted with them – and against the Liberals – on votes like the missile defense system and legislation concerning the right to strike. [...]

Boivin told a news conference in Gatineau on Tuesday that she has been consistent in saying no every time she has been asked whether she had hired a same-sex partner to work in her office, a question that came from both the Liberals and the NDP. Boivin noted that she gave the same answer to [Toronto] Star reporter Richard J. Brennan when he asked her about the rumour in the past.

Brennan has written previously about the BQ and his language suggests that he is not sympathetic to that party - nor to the NDP.

Le Devoir has been relentlessly investigating Contempt Party candidates for their affiliations to extreme rightwing and fundamentalist religious groups during this federal election. This may have led to pressure on the editorial board to "balance" this reporting by publishing something dodgy about an Opposition party's candidate, particularly one who might be endangering a BQ incumbent's prospects for re-election.

Canadian politics have shifted; hateful political tactics increasingly replicate the polarized ambiance in the US. We can thank the Contempt Party and its leader, Emperor Stevie Spiteful for importing these toxic substances.

At this point, I'm thinking that someone close to the BQ or the Cons is the source for this contemptible product of trash journalism. BTW, the ADQ, which has formed an alliance of convenience with the CPC and Alberta's Wild Rose Party is not known for supporting gay and lesbian human rights.

And also: Count on Norm Spector to get it right ... NOT!

Too: The NDP's knee-jerk response to the attack on their candidate is short-sighted and not very politically astute, imho.

Stop It! All of You!

Can we progressives agree on one thing? Stephen Harper has evil plans for Canada. And under a majority, he'll finish the job he's already started so effectively.

Ergo, progressives should work to scupper the majority.

OK? We good with that?

So, for fuck's sake, knock it off with the sniping at each other!

I'm looking at you, Jack. Two of the three videos here take aim at Iggy. (The only other one is positive and points out, rightfully, that it is the NDP who can defeat ReformaTories in several ridings.)

I haven't seen any Liberal ads or videos swiping at the NDP, but I sure read a lot of crap from Liberals on blogs and tweets.

Remember, people, we're in a war here. And in war, 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'.

And what Jymn said.

Only I'm not giving up. I'm going to use my little voice to exhort people to behave rationally and vote strategically.

Canadian democracy first. Back to politics as usual later.

Ottawa-Centre: Stay classy, Scott

So far, the campaign focus at DAMMIT JANET! has been on Contempt party candidates and their Con jobs. Now it appears other party candidates believe Rovian tactics can work for them too.

Two campaigns, two approaches. Incumbent Paul Dewar, a capable NDP MP, launches a policy-based campaign, heavy on substance, and covering the entire range of issues before us, including a comprehensive plan to protect the integrity of the public service.

But Liberal hopeful Scott Bradley, who has no record to run on,

goes on the attack right away. In his front-page video clip, “Day Six,” he claims (@2:30) that Dewar has shown no interest in the public service since he was first elected five years ago. (This would be news to the largest federal public service union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, which has endorsed Paul Dewar in the past and is expected to do so once again.) That’s still within bounds as political campaign discourse, and the public employees who live in Ottawa-Centre will make up their own minds.

But the clip begins with what sounds like: "Paul was saying, see, the PS is a good place to make cuts and save money..." That’s where the line is crossed. The actual quote, before Breitbarting, is:"Across the country many voters, despite what Paul was saying, see the PS as a good place to make cuts and save money..." Only the first week of the campaign, and one candidate is already aiming low.

“Paul Dewar does not have the monopoly on being a nice guy,”

said Scott Bradley as he launched his bid.

Oh - Scott? This kinds of tactic suggests you're straying down the path of *fear and loathing* that has become the trademark of the Contempt party. Do your *nice* Liberal buddies know what you're up to?

3 points about this putative Lib/NDP merger.

1. It's an awfully messy and convoluted way for the Libs to dump Iggy, doncha think? I thought their backroom boys kept a stash of well-sharpened knives for any and all occasions.

2. Math deficiency meets magical thinking. What strategist in his or her right mind would assume that the outcome of a Lib/NDP mashup would equal the sum of their polling numbers? NDP's 17.4 + Lib's 26.2 = 43.6 .... who's been smoking crystal meth?

3. "Secret" talks are usually kept in the backrooms. There's a whole lot of yapping going on; loose lips sink ships. The usual suspects may be deliberately trying to scuttle Iggy's leadership but the potential for this bad science project to blow up whatever is left of the LPC should be an urgent concern for any rational thinker who hasn't deserted. As for the NDP - does anyone there with two brain cells to rub together think this will enhance their credibility with voters? Are they simply so thrilled they're being courted by The Big Boys that they've taken MASSIVE leave of any good sense they may have once had?