Is Nigel Wright to Harper what Chuck Colson was to Nixon?

From here:

So it was striking to see Nigel Wright, as a witness at the Mike Duffy trial, cite the Bible as his motivation for writing a $90,000 cheque for Mr. Duffy without telling his boss Stephen Harper. 

As quoted in Bloomberg, Wright said: "I was doing a good deed, and this is sort of Matthew 6. ... You should do these things quietly and not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing." 

Citing the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew reflects Wright's reported devout Christianity, but it was a newsworthy statement in itself to the biblically illiterate reporters covering the trial.

It may also have been a coded warning to Stephen Harper, because Matthew 6 is one of the most explosively anti-Conservative passages in the Gospels, if not in the entire Bible. 

Read all of it: a trenchant piece from the erudite yet humble Crawford Kilian.

Both fern hill and I have been posting for years about this toxic intersection of extreme christian fundamentalist lobby and the US-style right-wing politicking, as staked out by Harper's CPC for the purpose of gaming Canadian democratic institutions to their advantage.

Prayer breakfasts. Special privileges for evangelical lobbyists. Innumerable private members bills to undermine abortion rights, which has emboldened fetushists to erode women's access in the provinces. Purported maternal health funding for international projects defined by anti-choicers. Prohibitionists pushing bills that criminalize and endanger sex workers. Downplaying violence against women and children - it's all gawd's plan. Christian extremists supporting war weapons sales to Israel and Saudis. Fake apologies to First Nations and Aboriginal people, facilitated by rightwing nutjobs. Progressive christian churches are audited by the CRA or their international projects defunded — as directed by Steve. The list goes on and on.

A recent event was savaged on Twitter, then crutinized by the MSM now seemingly capable of discerning between an individual's right to religious belief and the blatant deployment of religiosity for the benefit of a political party, à la *Grande Noirceur*.  It was the curious incident involving Con MP Wai Young and an evangelical church.

The Duffy trial, which one hopes will be the tipping point for the well deserved downfall and destruction of the CPC, has been chockfull of dramatic moments.  Wright's testimony and reams of email evidence bears witness to the byzantine works of PMSHithead's Politburo aka the PMO.

Some random christian dingbat chastised us for doubting the sincerity of Wright's religiosity.

Will the Duffy trial accomplish what the Watergate hearings did in the US? Will Harper be exposed, along with his thuggish team of Lee-Atwater-and-Karl-Rove wannabes aka the PMO?

And what about the cypher that is Nigel Wright: was he Steve's Chuck Colson?  

It's likely Wright was pressed to duty by corporate interests with deep, deep pockets who bankrolled Steve's rise to power. This happenstance clever and useful instrument had one assignment: keep a tight leash on PMSHithead.  

Whether he was contaminated by the toxic brew of paranoia and fury that Harper kept at a boil in the PMO, failed spectacularly at his job or deliberately left behind evidence of Mr Party-of-One's wrongdoing... it remains to be analyzed ad nauseam.

Pity poor Tom Flanagan.

Had his verbal faux-pas occurred at any other conjuncture of the Harper dictatorship, a hastily-assembled crew of communications serfs would have nimbly cleaned up his mess.

But the CPC propaganda machine has been woefully stressed to the cracking point recently, and so Flanagan was unceremoniously jettisoned.

The first sign that his party had dumped him was a tweet from the PMO's Andrew MacDougall.

It was eventually followed by another tweet, this one quite terse, from Stephen Taylor stating that Flanagan had been dropped from the Manning Networking Conference's line-up of speakers at the annual media-savvy shin-dig.

This is not the first time the man described, by the forementioned Manning Institute as "a major intellectual figure in conservative circles", has opined with regard to the depiction of "child p0rn".

From Michael Harris' excellent piece at iPolitics:

In a bizarre exchange with a student caught on video, Flanagan said that he didn’t think people should go to jail for possessing child pornography.[...]

“A lot of people on my side of the spectrum, the conservative side of the spectrum, are on a kind of jihad against child pornography. I certainly have no sympathy for child molesters, but I do have some grave doubts about putting people in jail because of their taste in pictures.[...]

The student who confronted Flanagan also made reference to a quote attributed to Canada’s answer to Karl Rove when the Manitoba government was hurrying through tough new legislation on child pornography. At the time, Flanagan suggested the whole subject was debatable: “What’s wrong with pornography in the sense that it’s just pictures?”

As my co-blogger and virtual roomie fern hill pointed out, Flanagan's fall from the heights of Con cronyism happened as the result of sustained Idle No More vigilance, with respect to issues and concerns important to First Nations, Indigenous, Métis and Innu peoples.

The tweetstorm in response to Flanagan's insouciance has been informative. This article reinforces Harris' point about the criminality and the organized child exploitation required to produce this material.

Will the stench of the Flanagan scandal trail the MNC events next week?  For good measure, we should keep up the pressure and investigate what dodgy, hypocritical, fraudulent and possibly criminal elements the other Con speakers bring to the table.

Update: Apparently Flanagan has become a liability to the University of Calgary, too.

With so many scandals exposed, the CPC is vulnerable, and its propaganda machine's capacities stretched to the limit.  Otherwise, it would have found a way to sweep his comments under the carpet, likely by attacking the First Nations videographer who posted the damning YouTube interview, but instead they hung him out to dry.

Like vultures or hyenas, Harper's conservatives have turned on a pack member who exposed an individual weakness, for fear his action could make the whole group vulnerable to its *natural* enemies.

How CONvenient!

The trial for Harper adviser Bruce Carson was set to resume in late October.  Following the RCMP investigation into Carson's actions while he worked in the PMO,  he was charged with fraud on the government, also known as influence peddling.

Is anybody in the Canadian media shocked to hear that it's been delayed to July 2013?  StunTV?  Anyone?

APTN is certainly not surprised by this delaying tactic.  Their investigative journalists have been on this most news-worthy story like velcro since the first stench of unethical dealings and insider contacts emerged from Carson's dealings. 

One hopes this trial clearly exposes PMSHithead and his Con Politburo's ongoing cosy connections with corporate lobbyists, with crooks and possibly, with organized crime.  

Grand merci to Dred Tory for the update. The picture of Bruce Carson was found here.

Contempt Cronyism

Well, well. That didn't take very long, did it?

Alykhan Velshi's climb up the ranks of the Contempt Party continues.

Alison at Creekside first took note of Velshi here.

Now CBC reports:

Former Jason Kenney staffer Alykhan Velshi is returning to Parliament Hill -- this time as director of planning for the Prime Minister's Office [...].

Velshi was most recently executive director of EthicalOil.org, an organization set up to promote writer Ezra Levant's take on Canada's oilsands.

Funny how the ReformaTory claim that Stephen Harper Conservatives would govern differently never happened.

Plus ça change, more there are Con jobs feeding at the public trough.

Update from The Mark.

Next: Hiring Quotas for HarperCons

Also known as Affirmative Action for RightWingers.

Radio-Canada and other media have raised some interesting questions and uncovered some fascinating information about the recent appointment of Tom Pentefountas to the CRTC. From here:

A Commons committee has voted to bring the newly appointed vice-chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission before them to answer some pointed questions about his qualifications and his vision for the role.

Opposition MPs have accused the government of making a partisan appointment in former Montreal lawyer Tom Pentefountas, hired to the senior-ranking CRTC position earlier this month. Critics have said that Pentefountas, who is the former president of the Action democratique du Quebec, a political party with ties to the Conservatives, does not have the credentials for the job.

At a Commons heritage meeting Wednesday, MPs agreed to call on Pentefountas along with officials from Canadian Heritage, the Privy Council and the Prime Minister's Office to describe the hiring process, from the criteria used in vetting applications to timelines for interviews.

The position involves a number of complex responsibilities, and applicants for the position are in principal, required to demonstrate that they have the knowledge, the experience and the skills needed to accomplish the job.

But never fear! The PMO, aka Stevie's Politburo, was directly involved in the vetting process. Furthermore Michel Arpin, who previously held the position, was hired to "coach" Pentefountas in all the areas in which he is deficient.

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.

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.

"Security" is more sexy than safety.

The 1.75 million dollars increase to the PMO operating budget was defended by

a spokesperson for the Prime Minister [who] said he believed the costs were essential.

There is more pressure in a 24-hour news cycle for ministers, MPs and the government to respond, said Andrew MacDougall, [...] “We’ve made the conscious effort to really step up our efforts and frankly, in contrast with past communications shops, to be out there more and be more helpful,” he said.

When I heard about this in the wee hours of the morning on Radio-Canada, I had a vision of a cellar room in the Langevin Building, filled with flunkies graduates from the Laurentian Leadership Centre spinning away furiously on stationary bikes, with Stevie Grudgiepants shouting at them: "Pedal faster! Our story has to top the next news cycle."


It turns out that no matter what one imagines the next outrageous Con fabrication to be, the actual news manipulation will surpass all expectations.


The airport "security crisis", precipitated by an amateur YouTube purportedly showing two veiled women passing through an Air Canada boarding gate without being forced to show their faces, is now the top story.


Though not the allegation Transport Canada is short-staffed by 98 aviation safety inspectors, which could explain why the ministry shifted the focus by claiming Aéropro disregarded maintenance regulations.


You can bet if a plane full of passengers crashes in Alberta that Harper's PMO will spin the story to blame the Opposition. Or unions. Or veiled muslim women.

Puff spending for PMO and life-endangering cuts to Transport.

À propos of corporate greed in the US, we asked if this was the type of economics Harper believed in.

From the Canadian Press, we learn more about Stevie Spiteful's choices, as to where to spend taxpayers' money.

The cost of running the Prime Minister’s Office will jump by more than $1-million this year, mostly because of communications expenses. [...] The Canadian Press has learned it will hit about $9.89-million, compared to last year’s $8.15-million on spending.

The PMO has hired another 20 people in the last year, including more staff to handle regional and ethnic media, as well as direct government communication, such as the ad blitz on the economic action plan.

Meanwhile, Transport Minister John Baird says he's "deeply disturbed" because airlines may not be following regulations that require boarding agents to check all passengers' faces against their passport photo.

Yet industry concerns about the staffing crisis at Transport Canada - a reported shortage of 98 inspectors - dont appear on Baird's radar. A statement about the dwindling numbers of aviation safety inspectors was made by Yvan-Miville Des Chênes, broadcast in a Radio-Canada interview. Yesterday, as a result of ongoing investigations into recent crashes of Aéropro-operated passenger flights, Transport Canada closed down its operations.

Think about it. Not enough inspectors to ensure that planes are safe to fly. Yet Baird chooses to focus on veiled women because this "poses a serious threat to the security of the air travelling public”.

Perhaps a "fiscal conservative" is someone who hasn't yet enjoyed the skyfall benefits of Stevie Spiteful & his cadre of thugs and trough-feeders' slashing of government inspectors positions.

The Cons are doing exactly what balbulican describes here, in the comments after Dawg' post: "The Harper strain of conservatism believe that governments should not govern. An interim, transitional strategy is to govern really badly."

Crank up the propaganda and fax, fax, fax!

It seems many, many people were shocked, then angry when Jaffer copped a plea and the charges – speeding, driving over the legal blood alcohol limit, and cocaine possession – were dropped.

Such law-abiding people tend to supply the media with solid information for their investigative stories.

In Stevie Spiteful's Office, the furniture has now been righted, arrangements made to repair broken glass and the temps who took shelter under theirs desks have been coaxed into staying for another day.

The PMO spin doctors gather to survey the damage, to produce speaking points to fax to their Attack Parrots and to create a bright shiny diversion.

The ReformaTories - business as usual. That hammering you hear is not another nail in the coffin of Helena Guergis' political career.

Wait, wait, wait ... Family Values©™... yes! The spin doctors pump the air. Jaffer was driving home to be with his wife. And that anti-family bulldyke OPP officer stopped him as he was rushing to his beloved's embrace.

Just another day of prevarication and fabulation in the PMO.

It's straight out of Law and Order, folks.

Canadian Cynic has the last word: Coke and hookers? Works for me!

Afterthought: Toe, one of our frequent commenters (don't forget to get your loyalty card stamped!) wondered just how valuable Jaffer's information about Gillani could possibly be, given the tenuous and opportunistic nature of their "business" relationship. Makes no difference. It gave the higher-ups a pretext. Otherwise, it would be evident the plea bargain was all about political pull - and Jaffer's knowledge of skeletons in other people's closets.

OK, guys, here's your chance

This is growing legs. Some serious legs.

To recap: Antonia Zerbisias first wrote a column, then a blogpost on her fabulous idea to make t-shirts emblazoned with 'Proud to be a member of that "left-wing fringe group" called "women"'. She created a Facebook page with membership at the moment of 972 good people.

That project is for real t-shirts with proceeds going to an equal rights organization yet to be named.

Simultaneously, Alison at Creekside created a virtual t-shirt and added people's names to it. Then we started hearing from the good guys who love and support members of that left-wing fringe group called women.

I suggested at Antonia's place that there also be real a t-shirt for the guys, or, as we called them in the first F-Word Awards 'Support Bro's'. I don't know if the real-t-shirt organizers are going to take that on, but in the meantime, step right up, fellas, and add your name to this virtual t-shirt.

Leave a comment here and when I figure out how to do it -- or when I figure out how to strong-arm some smarter person into doing it, your name will be added.



And of course, sistah and support bro bloggers, feel free to pile on!

UPDATE: Antonia in the comments confirms that there will be a guys' version and that LEAF is taking it on as a fundraiser. Yay, us!

Showing the Pink.

Now, now. Keep those minds out of the gutter.

The women of DAMMIT JANET! are proud members of the constituency Stevie has labeled "left-wing fringe", along with francophones living outside the province of Québec and - of course! - gay and lesbian equal rights-seeking organizations. That's quite a number of citizens the future 'former prime minister' has managed to offend in one go.

Isn't it interesting how progressives get labeled that way, more proof the ReformaTories are no longer even pretending to court our votes. Add up all those so-called "special interests" and "left-wing fringe" groups and you've got a considerable number of Canadian electors riled up at you and your party, Stevie. A majority of them, I'd say.

And though rightwing lunatic fringe groups might whip up the fury and the fear once more on your behalf, Stevie, I'm predicting they won't. In your desperate attempt to re-brand yourself as some sham 'conservative moderate', you didn't deliver the goodies you promised to your fundamentalist religious base.

So fuck you, Stevie. And fuck your blue-boy sweater. Look for me at election time. I'll be one of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of women flaunting a pink T-shirt. I won't be voting for you. I'll be voting for a party that will cure this country of the Con curse and pestilence.

The money raised by T-shirt sales should be channeled towards the organizations whose core funding you slashed when you savaged Status of Women Canada, that bone you threw to R.E.A.L. women.

The photo of a sculpture by Kate Carr is from this website.

Me, Too!

Antonia Zerbisias is a budding entrepreneur. Responding to Stevie's closed-door speech, she wrote

I'm thinking of making T-shirts: "Proud to be a member of that `left-wing fringe group' called `Women.'"

Alison at Creekside did the sewing photoshopping (above). Go there to get your name on the t. And/or join AZ's Facebook group.