A Most Opportune Death

well, it wasn't for Flaherty but it most certainly is for Harper.

We will all die.  Every one of us.

But let us consider Flaherty's CONvenient demise and how Harper will play it out.

All in all, Flaherty's sudden death after dumping Harper and his party, is awfully CONvenient for PMSHithead - if he needs to strike fear in his partisans.

Paul Wells, a most rigorous and understated political reporter, gives us an insight into the internal gears of Harper's CPC that are grinding Canadians down as well as a portrait of a corporate conservative, here.

Flaherty's death offers Harper's Politburo glorious, flashy opportunities to display him in a *good* light which is a tactic that PMSHithead badly needs to deploy right now.

So, let's watch how Harper plays the Canadian and international media in order to exploit Flaherty's death for his own purpose.  It can be his new sweater-and-kittens schtick!

Will Harper insist that Flaherty receive a state funeral, with all the pomp and protocol, and the attendant bells and whistles? I bet he does exactly that. PMSHithead's government needs a MASSIVE sparkly diversions from all the attention the lies, the fraud and the corruption that Harper has facilitated.

As tweeter @dexterdyne asked: The Harper government has cut programs and funding for our veterans, scientists, health care, unemployed, the CBC, the public service.  So what exactly are they spending it on? 

In order to evade such probing questions, Harper's Politburo in currently in full War Room mode.  Right now its richly-paid communication flunkies are spinning tactics to best exploit Flaherty's death for maximum benefit: to make PMSHithead look *good* to voters and to the media.

They are probably looking to North Korea, as they did when they wrote the *Fair* Elections Act, for inspiration on how to shine up Harper's image.

Perhaps Harper's Politburo will claim C23 was Flaherty's brainchild; thus any critic of any word of the Elections Reform Act could be smeared (or worse?) for "disrespecting" his memory.

I suggest instead of listening and watching a week of disgusting and crass CPC Con glurge, Canadians might view _Angel Heart_ or any film that explores what happens when someone sells their soul to the devil.

Once you start thinking of Harper in THAT light... 

Let the Arguing Begin

Today is the March of the Feti!

Every year, the fetus fetishists make wild claims about attendance.

Last year they said there were 15,000 people on the Hill. By chance, I ran across a screen shot from the Parliament Hill Cam that was taken right around what observers said was the peak, before the marching began.

Here it is:



According to the schedule for today's bunfest: gather at noon, listen to a bunch of glurge, start marching at 1:30.

Today's screenshots.

Just about 1:15, someone tweeted that the marching had begun.

Peak looks to me to be at the 1:00 mark.

And doesn't the crowd look smaller than last year?

Which would be weird, given all the hoohaw going on with Woodworth's Wank.

What do you think?

We'll have to wait for the spin.

There's a lot riding on it this year. JJ, dBO, and I are making bets on what the wild claim will be. I've got 20K, JJ has 22K and dBO has 25K.

You got $10 and a guess?


ADDED: Here how Buckets did the math last year.

UPDATE: First number, from LifeShite: 19,500!

UPDATE from deBeauxOs who was not there but read a tweet from CBC reporter Brigitte Bureau, the Ottawa cops said 2,000. Heh. Who knew they were prochoice?

MORE UPDATE: CTV agrees that the numbers seemed lower than last year.

UPDATE: En français: Brigitte Bureau from Radio-Canada says more than 10,000.

UPDATE: Via CBC, RCMP estimate 10,000. Why, that would make LifeShite's claim just about DOUBLE. That's some chutzpah.

UPDATE: Via JJ a MASSIVE slap in the face from the Ottawa Sun (!!!!!!11!)

A much smaller crowd than expected slowed traffic during the March for Life on downtown Ottawa streets Thursday.

Organizers claimed they were expecting more than 15,000 pro-life supporters to converge on Parliament Hill. However, today's crowd on a cool, blustery spring afternoon is estimated at perhaps 4,000 people.

AAAAND: Johnny 'Tubesock Holocaust' Paycheck is REVVED.

RUH-ROH: Looking better for JJ. 680 News says more than 20,000. Let the inflation begin!

UPDATE FRIDAY: Somebody got to the Ottawa Sun.

Is Chen Guangcheng 'Pro-Life'?

When DJ! wrote about Chen Guangcheng, he was largely unknown beyond fetus fetishists and China-watchers.

Now he's the subject of some delicate negotiations between the US and China.

But is he really 'pro-life' as we in the blighted New Republic of Gilead understand it?

According to Lindsay Beyerstein, nope.

Anti-abortion news and opinion websites have taken to calling Chen a “pro-life dissident,” which is fundamentally misleading. Chen is not opposed to abortion, per se, he is opposed to forced abortion. Though he’s been described as an opponent of the One Child policy, he hasn’t campaigned to overturn the law. In fact, unlike most Chinese dissidents, Chen’s target is not the central government; he wants to enlist Beijing’s help to enforce the law of the land and to check the power of local government officials who have terrorized him and the women of his community for years.

“I think it's important to note that he's not anti-abortion per se,” wrote Jin Zhao, a freelance journalist who blogs at Things You Don’t Know About China. “He is critical of the local authorities' forced abortions which he believes to have violated women's rights.”

That seems straightforward enough, doesn't it?

Nope. The lying liars are continuing to bleat about 'pro-abort' Clinton and Obama not helping the heroic baby-saver with the complicity of the 'liberal press' in what Beyerstein calls 'the pro-life spin cycle' and 'the perfect dog whistle'.

Where, oh where are the feminists?????

Right here.

The anti-abortion movement isn’t alone in its admiration for Chen. In a post on Feministing, one of the most influential feminist blogs on the web, Lori Adelman argued for a more precise label: “More apt than the whitewashed ‘human rights activist’ label he’s been given in the news is ‘reproductive rights activist’ and perhaps even ‘feminist.’”

Spin, Timmie, Spin

Let the attack ads begin!

Specifically, attacking unions, 'union bosses' who get 'fat raises' and 'lavish benefits' all paid for by us poor tax-payers who get nothing -- like education, health, safety etc -- in return. McGuinty is 'beholden' to those unions.

Then there this totally lame and really annoying effort from Hudak's astroturf group, fronted by a Dominionist nutbar.

This is what he says about his communications *cough* company:

Brazen Communication is all about offering clients a bold way to express their complex ideas, services and mission

If that vid is any indication of quality, I think Tristan should stick to god-bothering.

Speaking of complex ideas, Lloyd Brown-John writes in the Windsor Star about 'catchphrase politics'.

Election campaigns often demand of electorates a level of credulity that tends to border on wishful thinking.

For example, a promise by Ontario's Conservative Leader Tim Hudak to reduce regulation by 30 per cent.

. . .
Reducing regulation by 30 per cent raises a multitude of questions, one of which is simply, how did Hudak and his policy team arrive at 30 per cent? Precisely, 30 per cent of what?

Indeed. Good questions.

30% of water safety regulations?

30% of abortion regulations?

30% of food inspection regulations?

30% of building regulations?

30% of mining regulations?

Sure, a lot of people would suffer from poisoned food and water, unsafe healthcare, collapsing buildings, and dangerous workplaces, but at least around 30% of them would be evil fat-cat union members.

Hmm. 30 per cent again. Maybe Hudak just wants to eliminate 30 per cent of Ontarians.

Bonus! Today's Con stunt event is literally all spin.

We must be winning. . . .They're acting like bigger idiots than ever

The various ReformaTory spins being put on yesterday's Pro-Democracy rallies are instructive (and fun!).

Over at Free Dominion, at first some refreshing honesty from my Facebook friend Connie Fournier.

There were thousands of people on Parliament Hill. I would guess about 5000.

We went there half expecting it it to be a crowd of freaks wearing terrorist garb and masks like the group that was in Ottawa protesting Bush that time, but we were surprised by the people who were there.

They were a bunch of normal looking Canadians.

That said, we did leave early because the speakers were crap. One thing that we learned when we were organizing rallies is that you have to get your speakers to stick to the message. We left because we were sick of hearing about "climage change". A guy behind us was saying he left because he didn't want to listen to someone talking about some problem with Nortel.

Anyway, I agree with Narrow Back. Harper is in trouble.

After some more typical FD drivel, Connie wades back in again:

Is the CPC telling people to say that it is better to not have Parliament than to have it? It seems to be quite the theme here lately, and I find it quite disturbing coming from people with populist Reform roots.

I'll put this as plainly as I can. Any country that is being run by one person is a dictatorship.

I know that none of you would be dismissing this if a Liberal had sent everyone home to run things himself. You'd really be better off to just say that you don't care than try to justify it.

A very few of her minions, l like the above-mentioned Narrow Back agree with her. The rest put their hands over their ears, chanting 'IdontcareI dontcareIdontcare.' Like this poster, EdS, who can't handle the quote function and has a 'I miss Ronald Reagan' poster for an avatar:

{quote="Connie Fournier"]I know that none of you would be dismissing this if a Liberal had sent everyone home to run things himself. You'd really be better off to just say that you don't care than try to justify it.[/quote]
That is my position, precisely. If the Liberals had done this, I would be ranting on street corners. That Harpoolah has done it...
Ho-hum... you're right... I don't care. I don't care what Harpoleon does. He could declare Martial Law... don't care. Don't care what happens so long as no bastard liberal is in power. Those vile curs, those socialistic progressive bastards are scum. I hate them with a passion that cannot be described.

Another novel ReformaTory approach is to deny that there were any rallies atall atall. CC in a post tellingly titled 'Let the dumbass, retarded wankitude begin' demolishes one Blogging Tory called The Iceman.

Pause to savour what happened here. Iceman wants to go to the CAPP rally to mock people who actually value the idea of a real democracy. He does not bother to actually check any of the countless online sources of information to find out where that rally is marching to. Instead, he takes a wild guess ... and guesses wrong. He therefore concludes there was no rally, and goes home.

If a four-year-old did something like that, I would consider them retarded.

Go to CC's to read the whole thing and get the link to Iceman's hilarious photo essay on Where the Woozle Wasn't.

Meanwhile, one of the discussions at the CAPP group focuses on collecting examples of such spin and considers ways of confronting them. Drop by with examples or advice.

Oh. And membership is still growing. It hit 215,000 early this evening.

ADDED: I think I might be getting a girl-crush.

When Headlines Become the Story.

Observe how different information gathering media set the spin on a story with words selected to communicate the essence of that news item - from their own particular perspective.

Here's a scrum of headlines about the findings of a scientific research project.

'Traders' testosterone' fuels female financial flutters

Testosterone May Guide Women's Careers

Testosterone-Charged Women Take More Financial and Career Risks

Ruthless women have extra testosterone, scientists show

Risky women are 'hungry for sex'

Male hormone draws women to finance

When women are bad, it's a male thing

Men less risk averse, pick riskier careers

Interestingly enough, a short opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal blogs did not focus on gender implications but rather on the effect high levels testosterone bring.

Was the Financial Crisis Caused by Hormones?

Forget whether fat bonuses or the lack of regulation encouraged undue risk taking during the credit-fueled boom. It seems risk may run in Wall Street’s blood.

The evidence? A recent study from researchers at business schools at Northwestern and the University of Chicago concludes that testosterone levels play a big role in a person’s proclivity to take financial risks.

The study, being published today in the academic journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that biology– not just society or culture drives individuals to pursue financially riskier careers and make riskier decisions. In the study, researchers analyzed the saliva of 500 MBA students at U-Chicago’s Booth School of Business and put the students through certain games. They determinted that men, who typically have higher levels of testoterone, were willing to take greater risks than women. ...

Interestingly, the researchers found that female students with higher testosterone levels also were willing to take more risks.

“We are saying that testosterone, which is a biological marker, rather then gender, makes them take more risks,’’ one of the study’s co-authors Paola Sapienza, Associate Professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management tells Deal Journal.

Slightly tweaking the words of The Byrds' song "There Is A Season":

For everything - spin, spin, spin
There is a reason - spin, spin, spin
And a time for every purpose under heaven.