I Despair, Part Umpty-Five

I was just working on a blogpost encouraging Liberal and NDP women MPs to coordinate a strategy to shut down Woodwank's Dog and Pony Show, when my Twitterstream belched a bunch of crap about Olivia Chow throwing a hissy fit in today's by-election in Toronto-Danforth.

This seems to be the source of it.

@oliviachow kicked out of polling station in #TorDan after abusing scrutineer privileges & telling voters to "not vote Liberal". #shame

— Michelle Johnston (@JohnstonMich) March 19, 2012

Michelle Johnston's profile:

U of T Student, History and Political Science; President, @uoftliberals; Fighting hard for Ontario; Views are my own

Of course it's not true. Olivia is a class act, not to mention waaaay too smart.

Just a lying smear from a junior good ole gal trying to play in the big leagues.

One would think the respective women's caucuses would be salivating at the chance to take on TheoCon dinosaurs like Woodworth, Vellacott, Del Mastro, Trost et al.

And one would be wrong.

Even the women of the Fucking Useless Opposition® are too busy fighting each other to fight for us.

And pundits wonder why Canadians are turned off politics.

So, it's back to Facebook, Twitter, and the blogs. It's up to us regular Canadians to protect our rights.

Poisonous Partisanship

The despair is wearing off. And the anger is setting in. Shared, it seems, by several.

In the comments to last night's Totally Fucked post, Scotian writes:

The Dippers placed beating the Libs as more important than Harper and got what they were after, and in the process proved they are a party that places their own power and expediency ahead of their self proclaimed principles, in other words they are no better now than the Lib party they decried for this kind of behaviour for decades. However, somehow I doubt most Dippers will be willing/able to acknowledge this fundamental truth, how they can be so delusional as to believe otherwise I do not know but then I've never been a partisan of ANY party or leader despite the claims of many (especially Dippers) to the contrary.

And oh, look, Scotian has been saying it for ages. Dated May 4, 2010:

I have been saying since before Martin was beaten that Harper was the greatest threat to Canadian democracy out there because of his contempt for how we govern ourselves. I said back then that stopping him should be the most important thing for anyone of any progressive bent regardless of where they stood on the spectrum, but was I listened to? Nope, I was called a Liberal shill and flack by both right and left. I said back then that if the NDP really were a principles first party as they always had been prior to Layton's leadership they would have made common cause with the Libs to block Harper's rise to power and sustain Martin, that even a tired corrupt Liberal government under Martin would be less damaging than a Harper led government. Again, time proved me right in spades.

And you're right again, Scotian.

That's why it's over for me and Jack. And that was before I found out what a thorough-going flake he is.

Ruthless, relentless partisanship -- on all sides -- has fucked up this country but good.

Oh, and Jack? The Disaffected Lib has a few words for you.

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.