Tuesday 19 April 2011

It's Over, Jack

For sleazeball politicians, women's rights are always negotiable. Or at least, a political football.

But I never thought the Fucking NDP® would sink to this.

Here's the full text of the press release:
Reality check: Ignatieff record doesn’t match words on women’s right to choose

April 17, 2011

Michael Ignatieff today professed his personal support for abortion access.

What he didn’t tell the crowd gathered at his town hall in Vancouver? In December, ten Liberal MPs stood up in favour of a Conservative Private Member’s Bill that risked criminalizing abortion providers and promoted an anti-choice agenda.

Those Liberals are:
Kevin Lamoureux
Ruby Dhalla
John McKay
Dan McTeague
Paul Szabo
Alan Tonks
Jim Karygiannis
Gurbax Malhi
Albina Guarnieri
Lawrence MacAulay

In fact, when the Liberal caucus introduced a motion to guarantee a “full range” of family planning options in Canada’s G8 commitments to Child and Maternal Health last March, their own members caused the motion to fail. Mr Ignatieff left this fact out today when he spoke about the G8 initiative.

Some of that is true. Those ten Fucking Harper Liberals® did vote in favour of Rod Bruinooge's lying POS bill, C-510, supposedly to penalize 'coerced' abortions.

And, yes, the Fucking Liberals® did screw up the no-brainer vote against the Cons' hypocritical 'maternal health without family planning' initiative.

But as the CBC's own Reality Check points out, Iggy was there for the second and voted against it.
But [Iggy] did specify what his position is on abortion and indicated that not everyone in his caucus shares his view.

He's OK with that because, as he explained it, abortion is an issue of conscience.

"I want you to know what my position, the position of most of my party is," he said Sunday.

"I say most for a reason. We're talking about abortion, these are issues of conscience. A democratic society that truly respects freedom of belief, and freedom of opinion, cannot compel in matters of abortion," he said.

Ignatieff's position by the way is that he believes in defending a woman's right to choose and that there should be public funding support for "the full gamut" of women's reproductive health services, both at home and overseas, he said Sunday.

I do NOT agree with Iggy's position that choice is a conscience issue. It is a human rights issue.

But these are Fucking Liberals® we're talking about here. They are the poster children for 'Opportunistic Politicians R Us'.

I expected better of the Fucking NDP®.

With the continuing attacks on the Liberals, rather than joining forces with them to defeat a common enemy, the Fucking NDP® was fast losing my respect.

Now, with this totally sleazy move, they've lost my vote.

That's it. It's over between us, Jack.

Until the Fucking NDP® finds its conscience again and loses Jumping Jack Flash as leader, I'm outta there.

Luckily, in my riding, the Con has less chance than a snowball in hell. So I'm holding my nose and voting Fucking Liberal®.

You can all pick yourselves off the floor now.

24 comments:

TM said...

This post simply reeks of phony Liberal outrage. You had no intention of voting anything but Liberal anyway. "Some of that is true. Those ten Fucking Harper Liberals® did vote in favour of Rod Bruinooge's lying POS bill, C-510, supposedly to penalize 'coerced' abortions.And, yes, the Fucking Liberals® did screw up the no-brainer vote against the Cons' hypocritical 'maternal health without family planning' initiative."

Faux outrage if I ever heard it.

Robert McClelland said...

So if I understand this right, you're going to vote for the Liberal party that has members who will help the Conservatives strip away reproductive rights simply because the NDP pointed this out.

Dr.Dawg said...

Ridiculous.

Iggy leads a party replete with anti-choicers. That was Jack's point. He was right.

Meanwhile, the Libs just outed an NDPer in Quebec and named her partner.

Enjoy your new bedfellow. But you'll need flea powder.

JeninCanada said...

I hate to say it, but so what? The NDP isn't saying anything that isnt' true, they're just leaving out something that isnt' politically expedient to mention. That's how the game is played. The NDP are still better supporters of women's rights than any other party.

fern hill said...

First, @tami. Welcome to DJ! You've obviously never read anything here, let alone click on the handy links in that post.

fern hill said...

Robert, Dawg and Jen: Was I not clear? I was already pissed at the NDP for crapping on the Liberals instead of focussing on the common enemy.

The NDP used to be a party of principles. Now they are as sleazy as the next guys, who happen to be the Fucking Liberals® who at least never made a pretense of having principles. Which is why the Libs would never actually do anything about abortion.

For the NDP to use my human rights as a political football is beneath the party I used to respect and support.

And, FWIW, I would hold my nose and vote for the Fucking NDP® if there was a chance the Con here would win.

susansmith said...

Fern, do hope you do a blog post where you show just as much outrage at the Liberals for crapping on the NDP instead of focussing on the common enemy.

fern hill said...

Jan: the hyper-partisans are taking care of that nicely, I think.

Beijing York said...

And this is why Harper has a perpetual smirk on his face. The NDP has a great chance at taking votes away from Conservatives in western and rural ridings. The LPC have a chance at appealing to more traditional, non-rabid right wingers who are appalled at what the conservative party has become.

And if Jack Layton is so concerned about women's rights, why is he spending so much time trying to become the second choice party in Quebec when the Bloc has proven itself more consistent in representing women's rights (including the long gun registry).

We will be the losers if Harper does wrangle a majority. Just look at the US to see how far right the goal posts have moved in their political landscape.

susansmith said...

I agree Beijing, so hopefully the libs can quit campaigning in NDP held ridings, in ones they have no hope of winning and they are NDP/con races, and outing a progressive Lesbian NDP candidate. Hopefully you will all agree that being "fair" goes both ways.

But then I have to try to wrap around my head why electing regressive libs who do the walk to the cons is somehow progressive when they stick a red rose in their lapels.

Lord Andrew Barham said...

I read an enourmous amount of ranting and raving against Jack Layton, but nowhere is there anything on here which tells mw what he has done or not done to provoke such outrage. Instead, the liberals, including Iggy, are guilty of the very thing this person is screaming and ranting about. This is pure bullshit from some liberal dickhead who is determined to make sure that when the possibility of a liberal – NDP – Bloc Coalition is mooted, will have so pissed off every New Democrat that they won't be willing to from such a coalition with such a bunch of arseholes. Who is going ensure that the enemies of Canada get re-elected and the head fascist himself one again becomes Prime Minister? Not the NDP – it's going to be the liberals, because everything I have seen posted in this group by the liberals has filled me with disgust at the sleaziness of their tactics.

Anonymous said...

I recall Layton's outrage during the debates when Ignatieff suggested he didn't support gun control. How dare Ignatieff suggest such a thing, *Layton* voted for the gun registry . . . just kindly ignore the members of his caucus who didn't.

So, apparently, for NDP supporters it's beyond the pale to stick the party's anti-gun-control tendencies on Layton . . . but then Layton is free to do the same with Ignatieff.

If I may paraphrase Dr. Dawg above . . .

"Layton leads a party replete with anti-gun-controllers. That was Ignatieff's point. He was right."

fern hill said...

Lord Andrew Barham: Are you talking to me?

The blogpost states quite clearly what Jack did to piss me off. It also states that it makes no difference in my riding. The Con has no hope.

'In this group' -- you mean the comments here? There are both Liberal and Dipper supporters among them. I know most of these people. They are Progressive Bloggers or FB friends.

And even the Dippers here who are now pissed at me would deny that I am a 'Liberal dickhead'.

Dr.Dawg said...

Jack pissed you off for stating the obvious: the Liberal caucus is full of anti-choice bigots.

Hey, good reason to vote Liberal!

(Pass the bong, please.)

Anonymous said...

Your pissed because the NDP have joined the 'fray', the 'politics' of being a legitimate party? Please. Jack is furious about the Liberal outing of the NDP candidate in quebec and rightly so. So blame the Liberal who did that. Jack is fighting back.

'Personal choice' for a human rights scholar? Fiddle dee dee.

This is the dirtiest campaign I've seen in my lifetime, so yeah take off the gloves Jack, it looks good for a change. There are no principles in gutter politics period.

fern hill said...

My. I seem to have pissed off the Dippers by stating the obvious: Dippers are as prepared to be sleazy as the Fucking Liberals®.

(Here's your bong back, Dr Dawg.)

Dr.Dawg said...

(Here's your bong back, Dr Dawg.)

Seems to be empty. Like the Liberal Kool-aid jug.

Mandos said...

Hmm. Methinks we see a mismatch of priorities here. Is the goal of the NDP to unseat Harper, or is the goal of the NDP to increase the NDP vote? If the latter, then Jack Layton's actions make sense. If the former, not.

fern hill said...

Yay! I don't have to vote Fucking Liberal®. See new post.

Eager Beaver said...

If Layton cared about women, he would not have conspired with Steve to keep Liz out of the debates in 2008 -- even threatening to boycott -- because he was afraid she'd eat the wool off his back on the subject of the environment.

When push came to shove, he betrayed his alleged democratic principles, hiked up his skirt, negotiated price, and got into bed with Steve.

Then this time around, Jack brags about all the confidence votes he supporter when he and Gilles colluded to embarrass Ignatieff at every turn burn saying "NO!" to pretty much everything, thus leaving the Liberals, fresh with a new leader in the position of provoking or not an election.

But once the Liberals clearly stated they were taking the Conservatives down, what did Jack do?

When push came to shove and a confidence vote that was going to count, when it was time for Jack to put his money and convictions where his mouth is... What did Jack do?

Once again, he hiked up his skirt, started negotiating price, and asked Steve if he could get in bed with him.

Up to one week before the vote, while saying through one side of his mouth that "Harper can't be trusted", with the other he was saying "Hey Steve, let's make a deal".

We always knew Harper was a sleaze. The sweater vest and kitten were just his piss-poor way of trying to hide his real self. But Jack? Jack has built his entire political career on being earnest and principled

Turns out that when push comes to shove? Meh... not so much!

That makes Jack worse and undeserving of progressive votes.

croghan27 said...

@Mandos .....methinks that the NDP plans to unseat Harper .... but not to replace him with Harper lite. The last Leader of the Opposition was more into agreeing with the Conservatives than opposition to the them - you want Jack to support that?

Mandos said...

*shrug* Harper lite doesn't sound as bad as Harper heavy. The NDP cannot seriously expect to unseat Harper, in the sense that there actually aren't that many people to the left of Iggy in Canada, and no groundwork has been laid to change this.

However, I've come to believe that Harper Heavy is inevitable at some point, if not this one. A Harper majority is the natural progression from the Reform movement and represents a pent-up animus that has grown in the land, and Canada will have to face that animus sooner or later.

Purple Library Guy said...

Fern Hill, I respect you but this is weird.
I hope you don't end up solidifying this position just because people are being pissy at you about it. Because really, I don't understand the rationale here.
Sure, there's a case to be made for, as it were, tactical campaigning by the Libs and NDP such that they direct their fire at least mostly against the Cons. But clearly neither party is actually doing that, or has been since before the campaign began. If you want to go and point fingers to the closest thing to an origin that might still be relevant to the current election cycle, it would be the Liberals' hasty backstabbing of Dion and installation of Ignatieff to avert the prospect of Dion forming a Lib-NDP coalition. Ignatieff quickly repudiated the coalition agreement he had signed, and has been campaigning against the NDP ever since. In this election, that would have started with his pointed emphasis at the very beginning on the idea that there are only two choices in this election, blue or red. Since then, the NDP and Libs have repeatedly both at the official campaign and partisan blogger level taken shots at each other. This particular one is a rather mild example, really.
So I could see getting seriously annoyed with both parties because they are systematically going after each other instead of focussing on the common foe. But this seems rather a small point of noise on which to base blaming it all on one of them. I suppose it's related to issues you care about--but what's bothering you here isn't about the issue, it's the act of issuing a press release uncharitable to the other party.
This straw may have broken your back, but if you look at it there's plenty of straw from both parties there, and indeed a strong argument to be made that more of it is Liberal.

fern hill said...

Purple Library Guy: I am seriously annoyed with both parties. I think I was born seriously annoyed with the Liberals. There was a major dust-up here when I called them Fucking Liberals for screwing up the abortion (yes, meaningless) gotcha.

I don't care that more straw may have come from the Liberal side. I don't have any expectations of Liberals.

I did have expectations of the NDP.

Maybe you have to be female and my age to understand how deeply repellant it is when women's rights come up again and again and repeatedly get used cavalierly by whichever side thinks it's got an edge.

Did you not watch the Obamacare debate in the US? Are you not watching what the Tea Baggers are doing right now?

It is always women's rights that are always negotiable in the boys' playground

Well, DAMMIT, they are not. And when the NDP casually kicked that football across the field, it was the last straw.

People saying 'Well the NDP are better on women's issues than the others' doesn't cut it. NOBODY is good enough on women's issues.

Look at Egypt. After all they've been through, women there are being told 'Wait, be patient, your time will come'. Well, fuck it.

I will not STFU any more because other issues are at stake. NOT.

Post a Comment