Conservatives push Rights and Democracy over the side

The Conservatives have decided to scrap Rights and Democracy. That would be the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, though I have no doubt they plan to continue to attack the abstract concepts, too.
The linked story contains what has to be the understatement of the week, even if it is only Tuesday:

The federally appointed body, which promotes human rights and democracy around the world, has suffered from internal dissension since the Conservative government appointed new board members who disagree with old members about issues in the Middle East. 

That would be this institution, the one where the new appointees hounded the then president to an early grave to cover their own mismanagement.
Dawg has an embarrassment of riches on the subject, having been all over the file from day one like lobbyists on a cabinet minister. 


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Muppetry

I know this story is kind of old news by now, but I can 't help wondering whether Dick Cheney - who sees this in the mirror:

ever actually had any intention at all of coming to Toronto. His last public appearance in Canada saw him get "trapped" in his hotel by protestors for seven hours. And by trapped I mean "decided not to leave the hotel because the crowd outside threatened to hurt his feelings" by calling him a war criminal to his face, something that doubtless would have been captured on camera and replayed endlessly in campaign commercials. The notion that Cheney's various assembled bodyguard and the sizeable police presence couldn't have protected him from the crowd outside is as ridiculous as the notion that Ann Coulter's speech was shut down due to actual threats rather than as a publicity stunt. 

Notice that none of the stories about the supposed cancellation of the speech actually quote Cheney or his Princess of Darkeness in training daughter Liz, who was also supposedly booked to speak. Notice too, that there is no mention of tickets having been sold, or refunds being offered. There is also some evidence to suggest that he was never actually booked to begin with.

Spectre Live's Ryan Ruppert, president of the company promoting Cheney's appearance, has apparently claimed the Cheneys, through their agent, said they felt the chance of violent demonstrations was too high in Toronto. There are also suggestions that death threats were received and that Cheney feared arrest by the ICC for war crimes.

This is all bullshit. If the Toronto Police can arrest 1,000 people and beat up hundreds more for little or no reason during the G20, I think they can manage to keep "anarchists" from burning down the city if Cheney comes to speak.  As far as death threats are concerned, I would think that Cheney probably gets death threats whenever he leaves his lair and he is probably at more risk visiting New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or even Dallas than he would be in Toronto. And given the way our present government venerates him, I hardly think he needs to worry about the mounties clapping him in irons.

No, I suspect what really happened is that there just weren't enough rich assholes willing to pay $60 to $250 a seat to see the oil industry's meat puppet dance around the fact that he is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and the United States embracing torture. Without lots of advance ticket sales, the very new promotion company would never have the money to pay Cheney's sizeable speaking fee, and you know Dick doesn't do any of this out of the goodness of his cyborg central blood pump. So what to do?

What do conservatives ever do? Play the martyr! "Big mean commie protesters have prevented Dick Cheney from speaking! Won't you please help fight the dirty hippies and defend freedom of speech by buying a ticket to see our brave free speech warriors speak?"

No, not Ezra Levant, he was busy. No, those dumb enough to get fleeced by this bait-and-switch will be getting the SUN-TV B team.

Now that Cheney has cancelled his speech in Toronto due to "safety concerns" he has been replaced by former theatre critic and current drama queen Mark Steyn and SUN-TV's resident overage racist skinhead Michael Coren.

In other words, instead of seeing this:

Blogging tories and other idiots will be forking over their money to see this:

Bonus added awfulness: Steyn deigns to speak to the socialist rabble at CBC Radio about how the mean, mean marxist thugs are violating Dick Cheney's right to brag about torturing and killing children.

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At long last sir, have you left no sense of decency?

Senator Fatass steps waaaaay over the line.

Harper-appointee Percy Mockler told the Senate it had to stop the interference of foreign foundations who were "muddling" in the business of our country. "I believe they do abuse the laws of Revenue Canada," he said. Not all foundations, of course, were "evil," Mockler said. "Just some of them." The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did good work, as did The Rockefeller Foundation and the Canadian Tire Foundation for Families. But others were "qualified bad, not to mention ugly, foundations," Mockler said, listing: The David Suzuki Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Greenpeace International Foundation, the Sierra Club Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Ecojustice Canada Bullitt Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Tides Canada and the MADD foundation. "They are all anti-Canadian," said Senator Mike Duffy, a former television personality and another Harper-appointed Tory.

Keep in mind that conservative shills such as the National Citizens Coalition, the Manning Centre for Teaching Conservatives How to Get and Keep Power Democracy and the Fraser Institute are all non-profit tax-exempt foundations.

It may well be that the Tory members of the chamber of sober second thought are throwing this bit of agit-prop in an attempt to deflect the attention of the media and their political opponents away from the ongoing scandal over Conservative voter-suppression efforts in the last election. We bloggers and media types have notoriously short attention spans and love us some shiny objects. And who among us doesn't love to hate Mike Puffy, especially when he purposely says outrageous and offensive things like this? 

The truth, though, is that we can be mad about more than one thing at a time and will not be distracted from the so-called "RoboCon" scandal over illegal voter suppression and electoral fraud by the Conservatives until some people - and I use the term loosely - from the upper ranks of the CPC get the jail time they so richly deserve.

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Loyal retainer is loyal

So Michael Sona has done what he was hired for and fallen on his sword to deflect blame from his masters. If you honestly believe a 23-year-old communications assistant for a failed CPC candidate managed to organize, fund, co-ordinate and execute the entire "robocall" affair, please write to me. I am in contact with the widow of a former oil minister in Nigeria who needs some help getting  millions of dollars out of the country. All I will need is your bank account number and a signed power of attorney and she is willing to cut us in for millions of dollars. Just send me the information and I will take care of all the rest.
For the rest of you, shall we start a pool on how long it is before Sona is hired by the Manning Centre or the Fraser Institute or some other non-think tank -- or is he more likely to be hired as special assistant to the director of sitting around on our asses drawing paycheques to do nothing? My guess is he becomes special assistant associate director of the Blogging Tories.


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Word of the day

'Backpfeifengesicht' (Back-fie-fen-ge- zischt.)


1. German, literally "a face that cries out for a fist in it'

Example:

Of course, no mention of Tucker Carlson should be made without including this clip of the day Jon Stewart effectively ended his career as a pundit:




Update!

Required Canadian Content example:

 This is Matt Meier, president and CEO of Racknine, who has no idea how all those bogus illegal election calls got made to Liberal supporters telling them their polling stations had been changed

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the chamber of mature, sober second thought

Meet Conservative Senator Irving Gerstein:



It's speculation, but I think it is highly likely that Conservative Senator Irving Gerstein's report cards from primary school must have included the notations "Has problems sharing" and "Does not play well with others"

The so-called house of sober second thought witnessed the kind of contest normally associated with first-grade birthday parties, as a showdown erupted over seating arrangements this week.
The newly elected chair of the Senate banking committee, Conservative Irving Gerstein, didn't want the vice-chair, Liberal Celine Hervieux-Payette, sitting next to him.
When he asked her to step away from the head table, she refused.
So Gerstein, elected this week as chair, called a vote to kick Payette out of her chair.
With a Conservative majority on the committee, the motion passed Wednesday and the game of partisan musical chairs ended with Payette being forced to grab a seat farther away.

Click to read the whole thing to get a proper picture of  the kind of petty dickishness that prevails in Canada's ruling party.
Given the level of maturity demonstrated, I'm guessing Gerstein was worried he'd get Liberal/French/girl cooties if he sat next to Hervieux-Payette.
But the Conservatives have a majority, so I suppose we must respect their authority

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What we talk about when we talk about conservatives

Never mind all the guff about Ronald Reagan. Reagan was an amiable-seeming father figure who did what his wife and her astrologer and Exxon told him to do. He regularly fell asleep in Cabinet meetings and by the end of his term didn't know where he was half the time.
Richard Nixon, Lee Atwater and Newt Gingrich pretty much invented the modern conservative movement by harnessing the power of Barry Goldwater's Birchers and bigots, funded by corporations eager to buy the kind of legislation (or lack of it) that would allow them free rein to empty America's pockets without having to give any of  it back.
You can learn all about this from just about any mainstream political history text, but I would recommend Rick Perlstein's Nixonland to anyone who really wants to learn how American politics got to be the witchbag of corruption, sleaze and demagoguery it is these days.
Also, the film Boogieman, which chronicles Lee Atwater's work appealing to Southern racists to make the GOP the party of the Confederate States of America.


And if this had been written about anyone else, it would leave welts on their back, but it will simply roll off of Newt's carapace while he tells his half-bright supporters about the big bad liberal New York Times and how they are out to stop him from saving America.


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Canada's little ray of SUNshine

Canada's ethical snake-oil salesman and Glenn Beck wannabe Ezra Levant continues to keep it classy.  As far as I can tell, Ezra's objection isn't that Chiquita Banana keep paying right-wing death squads to murder labour activists in South America, but that they are denying that they are boycotting tarsand products as a PR dodge. How dare they obey free market principles, eh Ezra? I don't know how the mother of the Chiquita Banana exec feels about you suggesting her son should have carnal knowledge of her, but your mother must be so very proud of you.

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This will not stand!

"You won't recognize Canada when I get through with it"
-Stephen Harper

Not content with running roughshod over the wishes of the majority of Canadians and eliminating the long-gun registry, ignoring the majority of wheat farmers and cutting the throat of the Canadian Wheat Board, the Harper conservatives are now starting to tinker with national symbols.

Dam the beaver — use the polar bear as official emblem, Tory saysOTTAWA—A Conservative senator says it’s time Canada was symbolized by something more majestic than a buck-toothed rodent.
Senator Nicole Eaton wants the polar bear to replace the beaver as an official emblem of Canada.
She says the polar bear is Canada’s “most majestic and splendid mammal,” and a powerful symbol in the lives of native peoples in the North.
She believes the furry, white carnivore’s “strength, courage, resourcefulness and dignity” is an appropriate symbol for modern-day Canada.
By contrast, she derides the lowly beaver as a “19th century has-been,” a “dentally defective rat,” a “toothy tyrant” and a nuisance that wreaks havoc on its environment.

I suppose next they will want to change the flag to a circle of 10 white maple leaves on a blue field in the top left corner over a field of red and white stripes, or maybe just bring back the Red Ensign, since they seem to want to burn down anything that has happened since Diefenbaker was prime minister. Tweet

SUN gives Jack a happy ending

Much is being made by the usual suspects of this clumsy smear job on Layton by the Toronto Sun.
Give that story a very careful, very close reading and realize it is built entirely on a single unnamed source, contains no evidence of anything and is built largely on innuendo.
Layton was never charged or even arrested and there is not even any direct accusation in the story that he did anything he should not have done. He openly admits that he went to get a massage at the apparently fully-licenced massage establishment. Something lots of people do every day. There is nothing sleazy about getting a massage. The only suggestion of anything untoward in the story is the unidentified, retired Toronto cop claiming that the establishment in question was thought to be a bawdy house by the Toronto police (who, of course, have never been wrong about anything or abused their powers for political ends, ever, especially back then).
And with the incident having occurred 16 years ago, it seems awfully convenient that the SUN would, wholly by coincidence, choose to run with the story two days before the election. Given what we know about the overlap in CPC strategists and SUN employees, what are the odds the Conservative Party of Canada will somehow be found to have been involved in the release of this information if someone wants to pursue it hard enough?
How's that for innuendo?
You know what the difference is?
What the SUN would like you to believe happened - that Proletarian Jack had his means of production seized -  is a bit skeevy, but if his wife doesn't care, then why should we? It is ancient history and has no bearing on how he would govern.
What I have speculated about is recent, sinister, unethical, unprincipled, corrupt, possibly even criminal and certainly indicative of the kind of sleazy politics of character assassination the CPC has been engaging in for years. And it is more likely to be true.
I don't say any of this as any particular fan of Jack Layton. I'm fairly agnostic about the NDP in the general scheme of things. I like them better than the Conservatives, but I don't think they are going to singlehandedly usher in some kind of golden age where we all gather round singing The Internationale, nor do I think they will start nationalizing the banks and sending anyone who isn't a union member to re-education camps or anything like that.
But this kind of malicious smear campaign based on smirking innuendo should piss off anyone who values the truth, and I think that includes most Canadians. I apologize for the puns, but this kind of thing rubs Canadians the wrong way and the backlash might just be enough to turn a few close seats and give the NDP the hand it needs to give the country a happy ending.

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Pride - and a loud mouth - goeth before a fall

Like many posts, this started as a comment and metastasized. For the post to which I was reacting, go here.   It's a shortish post by Jeff "BCer in Toronto" Jedras about how the Rob Ford campaign brain trust are now openly bragging about the various dirty tricks they pulled during the election, something Jeff predicts will come back to bite them on the ass. And it will.

Like all asshole conservatives ( Note: I don't think all conservatives are assholes, I just think it is a legitimate subset, like fiscal conservatives or social conservatives) these proudly ignorant bully-boy frat types can't do anything that is remotely successful without a lot of hooting, high-fiving, belly-bumping and chugging Jaegermeister shots.
 People tire very, very quickly of smug, smirking bullies. Especially ones who endless slap each other on the back and boast about how they "fixed those damn hippies/socialists/homo/(insert offensive characterization of marginalized social, economic or ethnic group here) and good, blarharharharhar!"
We've all seen it. From the barely literate fag-bashing jocks who peaked in high school to the failed-jock hockey dads who scream obscenities at minor hockey referees and urge their kids to play dirty to the salesmen who idolize Alec Baldwin's character in Glengarry Glennross to the person on every reality show who at some point declares "I'm not here to make friends, I'm here to win!"
An undercurrent of it seems to run through conservatism like a  vein of fools' gold, occasionally becoming an El Dorado  of self-congratulating wankerism like FOX NEWS or the Blogging Tories. Rush Limbaugh has made a career of it.
It's the same mentality that led to the outing of Valerie Plame, the outrages of Abu Ghraib and the smearing of Sean Bruyea. It's the attitude that "the rules are for other people," that only winning matters, that silver medals are for losers, that "third prize is you're fired." 
It is an attitude of entitlement - nevermind that most of them were born on second base and think they hit a triple - they think that because they have some level of success, they must have earned it and that they deserve it - and that those who haven't achieved what they consider success (and usually that means money or power of some kind) don't deserve it and are somehow morally weak/lazy/evil/gay/drug addicts/eggheads/commies/beatniks/etc etc, "losers" who deserve only scorn.
As long as they have someone to look down on, they consider themselves successful.

To such people empathy is a sign of weakness. Showing sympathy is for losers.
They are terrified of being one of "those people" and the easiest way to make sure that no one will ever think they are, is to attack "those people."
That fear of being branded one of the Loser class will make them do almost anything to achieve whatever they consider success. It is that need for validation that makes them incapable of doing anything without breaking an arm patting themselves on the back that will eventually sink them. They can't resist the temptation to dance in the end zone, to rub someone's nose in their defeat, to shit downhill just because they can.
That is what eventually does such people in. Other people - sane people - get tired of the bragging and chest pounding. You can only pour shit downhill for so long before you find yourself standing on a pile of shit. And people who like to brag about how dirty they played and how low they stooped will eventually find that the only people impressed are other shitheels and grifters - and ambitious prosecutors who are waiting for an admission of something legally actionable.
Time and Karma will not be kind to Rob Ford and his campaign team and hubris will eventually prove their undoing. Nobody likes a sore loser, but most of us hate a bad winner just as much.




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