Dianne Watts' most amazing adventure

This load of crap was a mail-out received by some residents of Surrey, BC. Dianne Watts, former mayor of Surrey claims it was sent out from Ottawa without her knowledge. I'm calling "Bovine Scatology" on two counts: She's running for the Harper Conservatives and clearly knows what a feces-covered operation she's in, and, her friggin' name is on it and she hasn't disavowed it in any way.

Let's attack this astounding piece of crap.

1. The newspaper on the upper left is bogus. Dianne Watts or a person representing her wrote that headline. Everything in it was manufactured by some amateur Harper Conservative operative with the mind of a 9-year old.

2. Dianne Watts was the mayor of Surrey from 2005 to 2014. During her tenure, Surrey became known as The Murder Capital of Canada as an unrestrained gang-war erupted. On 19 October, 2007 the now-famous Surrey-Six murders occurred in which two innocent bystanders were slaughtered. In 2013 the danger on the streets of Surrey reached unprecedented proportions as the gang-war exploded into daily shooting incidents resulting in 25 murders. Dianne Watts sat powerless in her mayor's chair.

Dianne Watts, with no international experience, isn't going to fight anything. You only have to look at her record to prove it. She can't even keep her own home turf safe and people did not feel secure in their bedrooms in Surrey when she was mayor.

Now, on the 18th anniversary of the Surrey-Six murders, which happened on her watch, she wants you to elect her so she can protect you.

There are better choices.

Fantino lashes out at veterans ... once again.

It's hard to believe Julian Fantino's role is to champion Canadian Forces veterans at the Harper cabinet table. You can imagine how he describes those he represents to the national control-freak.

Deveryn Ross finishes him off. Fantino, whose service as a cop has always come with some questions, should be tossed in the gutter.

John Baird is either a liar or stupid ...

And, no, you are not limited to one or the other when trying to decide.

I've said before that Harper and his incompetent thugs are nothing more than hillbillies playing at governing with no coherent plan and no clear concept of the world around them. No one epitomizes the intellectual laziness of the Harper regime than his so-called Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird. This is the guy who's supposed be in touch with the world and understand the nuances of other countries and cultures. The truth is, he is utterly unqualified for the job.

After calling the former Canadian ambassador to Egypt, Ferry de Kerckhove, something close to anti-Semitic, Baird furthered the exposure of his own ignorance by stating an outright falsehood, proclaiming that de Kerckhove was on the payroll of the government of Qatar.

Ferry de Kerckhove squared this away quickly while making it clear what he thinks of John Baird and his penchant for making things up. Read it all.

[I] was never on the payroll of the Government of Qatar. Mr. Baird could have checked the fact rather than try to defame me!

...

Yet I would hope that he might understand the danger my grandmother faced during the German occupation of Belgium as she harbored a Jewish couple in her basement for the better part of 1944. She was visited by the head of the Komandantur of Liege who told her there were rumors she was sheltering Jews. She stared him down and challenged him to check if he did not believe her word that she did not. He backed off. The couple survived. That is real life Mr. Baird and I am deeply proud of my grandmother.

My mother, although born a catholic hailed from a well-known Jewish family of printers for the Vatican. Of course, Mr. Baird, you might not know that Catholics could not become printers for the Vatican a few centuries ago as it was not “kosher” (pardon the pun!) for Catholics to make money from the Vatican.

The people of Ottawa West - Nepean should be ashamed of themselves for sending this national embarrassment and total waste of skin to parliament.

Veterans are outraged. Now they need to do what they once did best. Lead. Part 3.

Unification, led by Paul Helleyer in 1968 and permitted by Lester Pearson, was a wound most veterans still bear. Initially intended as a modernization to bring three separate services under one joint operational roof, it steam-rolled well beyond the original plan to create a single service which was purportecly able to share resources and personnel across the the three combat elements. It was to become a dumb idea championed by a self-aggrandizing fool who today sees aliens in his cereal bowl. But the damage to morale, traditions and the ethos of the services was extensive. So extensive, in fact, that when veterans look back at the past several decades they are unable to connect the last major re-equipping of the armed forces with the prime minister that actually did it: Pierre Trudeau. And they are just as blinded to the fact that Brian Mulroney, despite all the typical conservative rhetoric, sold off critical combat capability during his tenure.

Let's end the history lesson there and get to the point of this whole discussion. Veterans are now the recipients of some of the shabbiest treatment ever at the hands of the federal government and the fault lays, not just with Julian Fantino, but with Harper himself.

Harper, always prepared to pump Canadian military history for the lazy patriotic vote it garners, is a tribalist, self-centered, sociopath. Fantino was his perfect hatchet-man. But make no mistake about it, what is being done to veterans now is very much calculated by Harper and the elitists who surround him.

Of the roughly 1.1 million Canadians and Newfoundlanders who served in the 2nd World War, less than 90,000 are alive today. At an average age of 90, those veterans are dying in the hundreds per month. Korea veterans, a much smaller group, have all but vanished. No veteran of the 1914 - 1918 Great War survives. In short, the corps of veterans from the declared wars and Korea is shrinking rapidly.Veterans from the Cold War era, Gulf War 1, peacekeeping and Afghanistan do not constitute the same numbers as the large group that returned from the world wars and, (get ready for this), the Harperites don't really consider them veterans in the same light anyway. Those veterans do not meet the Conservative fetish of military glory associated with the big total wars. If you don't believe me, replay some of Fatino's interviews where he tries to minimize the standing of today's veterans by elevating the risk and contribution of municipal police, himself included. He's trying, along with Harper, to make national service, with a full combat liability, no more than police work.

And we all know, for a multitude of reasons, it is not, and never will be, the same thing. Julian Fantino never once deployed for the better part of a year to any one of the world's shit-holes. Ever. We did it with all too familiar regularity.

So, here's the thing, (and you need to absorb this one fully). What Harper is doing to veterans is NOT singularly unique. What he is doing to you, he is doing to everyone. He has shattered the Canadian public service. He is destroying labour law in this country. His myopic focus on creating a petro-state (in Alberta) has promoted accelerated rust-out in the Canadian manufacturing sector. Essential middle-income jobs are being destroyed in the most populated areas of the country in favour of corporate wealth generation from wanton resource extraction. You are just another domino to fall in a long line of tiles. Complaining loudly will do one thing: he'll do what he can to silence you faster.

It's not that Harper doesn't care about you. Harper doesn't care about anybody. He consults nobody outside his elitist circle; he accepts no advice; he answers no questions. When cornered, he runs for cover and hides.

Veterans are in a decidedly exceptional position, should they (we) choose to exploit it. We have always been there for Canadians and we have nothing to hide. And Canadians in general appreciate that we have honestly done our duty on behalf of this country in the best interest of our country.

Do what you have always done best. Lead, and accept nothing short of a fully completed mission.

A majority of Canadians sympathize with veterans. They do not accept the mistreatment and the abuse at the hands of a sociopath. They are watching you. They want to see what you are going to do.

There is a strong belief that if your loud protestations garner some kind of pay off, that you'll take it and resume your seat at the camp table. That would leave the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have had their lives and dreams crushed by Harper's policies sorely disappointed. And you will have lost them forever.

Do the right thing. Get out front. If you never want another Fantino, you have to gather your forces, muster your strength, fight off the fear and get rid of the whole force from which the Fatinos originate.

You need to suck it up and realize that you are only one segment of the population which has been kicked in the genitals. You need to organize and slam Harper hard. So hard that he is totally and completely de-stooled.

If you do not do this, Harper will be back, even if he pays you off this time, and he will do untold amounts of damage. Your meager pension will not withstand the financial assault he will carry out on you if he is returned to government. Do you like your health care plan? He'll kill it. Do you expect to get Old Age Security? It will be gone. Don't believe me? Ask a 55 year old when they get to access their Canada Pension Plan? No one figured on that one but Harper ripped it away from them.

It is time that you considered all of those Canadians you never saw when you were in Bosnia, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, the Golan Heights, Cyprus, Haiti, Cambodia, Viet Nam and any number of places where bullets flew until we took the lead and realized that they want you to get out front, look them in the eyes and say, follow me.

You don't have a lot of time. If you think Harper is going to wait until the fall of 2015 to go to the electorate, you're not paying attention. He is under so much pressure that he could trigger an election at any moment. Never mind the "fixed election date". He's already broken that law once before. All the signs are there and if you're not ready, he'll trample you.

You need to look at the door to your front and realize that it could open at any moment and expose you to a hail of hostile fire. So, get organized and lead. Make your issue big and make it a part of the bigger issue. Harper is not and never will be your friend. He lives in a world where hatred and ignorance are political weapons. You can defeat him and deny him his weapons. Quit worrying about who replaces him. We've all been in situations in far flung places where victory meant we got rid of the nasty prick in the chair without knowing what came afterwards.

You've done it before.

Do it now. Lead.

You aren't going to believe this one UPDATED

But it's on YouTube. And YOU are paying for it.

... this latest initiative is more in-depth and appears to be another effort by the Conservative government to bypass the mainstream media and communicate its message directly to Canadians.

Wanna see? Don't bother with the popcorn, but you might want a spew bag handy.



Wow! The same guy who is destroying the Canadian Coast Guard by underfunding it, won't fix the Canada Pension Plan because it's too expensive, has an "enemies" list, has laid-off so many public servants that the government is operating in crippled mode ... all in the name of austerity ... is wasting millions of your tax dollars having a documentary of himself produced.

It's eerily North Korean.

Honestly, propaganda should at least hold your interest. This is just sad. If it wasn't so expensive.

A grade 11 art class could do a better job ... for a whole lot less money. In fact ...



Montreal Simon has more, more, more.

Take note of something else: The comments section in the Harper YouTube are CLOSED. Guess they didn't want, you know, citizens offering their appraisal of the bullshit they've just paid to watch.

You (and Harper) already blew it!!

Harper knob polisher, Michael Den Tandt offers up the results of gazing at the Conservative crystal ball with a set of 2014 predictions on what to expect from (missing in action) Harper. It's actually quite stunning. Den Tandt pines away for the "Charm Offensive" he has oft predicted from Harper but which has never happened. It seems to escape Den Tandt that Harper doesn't have it in him and if it's scripted for him, that fact becomes obvious. More on that in a minute.

... Harper in 2014 will make a visible effort to re-engage – likely through more frequent speeches, perhaps even more frequent press conferences. He will do so not by choice, but by necessity.

Really?! Because, the gods forbid, when he was handed a late 2013 opportunity to "re-engage" he refused to come out of his hole. If, at any point, he had wanted to appear to be a leader in any way, shape or form, all he had to do was actually show up. But that ice-storm was a natural, short-notice event - not something scripted well in advance by the short-pantsers running the PMO. Re-engagement, as Den Tandt is suggesting will happen, requires long, detailed preparation. No rehearsal - no show.

The Wright-Duffy mess, the sheer scale of the venality and dishonesty exposed within his own office, among people he appointed, has shaken his personal standing. The only practical remedy is to shore up his positives, namely his reputation for competence and intelligence. He can only do so by communicating.

Competence and intelligence in a leader would suggest being able to read the character and qualities of individuals appointed to positions of prominence and influence. We haven't seen any of that and Den Tandt says so before he makes the impossible leap in the other direction. I question Harper's intelligence at times but his competence is not up for debate. This is one of the least competent prime ministers Canada has ever endured. Owen has more to offer on that along with this very poignant observation:

For a man who doesn't like people, Harper has chosen a curious profession.

Which is why when hundreds of thousands of Canadians are without heat in the middle sub-zero temperatures at the darkest time of the year the "re-engagement" comes in the form of a solitary 14-word Twitter offering. 

Peter MacKay either lied or is too lazy to read his own bill

MacKay in his usual "Airshow" bluster told the House of Commons that even if internet service providers were voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement by retaining and sharing YOUR personal information that a warrant would still be required.

Just like Vic Toews before him, it appears MacKay has not read and does not understand the clear wording of the proposed legislation he tabled.

Michael Geist has the details.

Mealy-mouthed, scum-sucking, self-absorbed, egotistical ...

“My difficulty with the prime minister at this point, Peter, is that I don’t think he’s been forthcoming and honest on fairly simple questions when there appear to be contradictions," he said. "My instinct is when someone doesn’t answer questions, even simple and fairly innocuous questions in a straightforward manner, there may be something else.”

Stephen Harper 2005

Why Is Peter MacKay's Anti-Cyber-Bullying Bill ... (updated)

... so goddamned big?

Because, it's simply a reworded regurgitation of the repulsive Vic Toews Internet Surveillance Bill. You know, the one that got killed because the public was outraged at the idea of giving the police and government the power to spy on your internet activity. Now they want the meta-data out of your smart-phone too.

Michael Geist breaks it down for you.

You just knew the Harperites wouldn't leave alone the idea of spying on ... just everyone. After all, if you've got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Right? Except that a complaining email to your Conservative MP could land you in jail.

And you're being called to the barricades again.


UPDATE: Just on time, Sir Tim Berners-Lee weighs in with his world-view. And who, (I know you are asking), is Tim Berners-Lee?

Good question.

I can guarantee you the frat-boys from the PMO, as they consume hours of streaming data in the Mayflower in Ottawa, and Peter MacKay wouldn't recognize his name if you created an app for their government issued smart-phones. THIS is Tim Berners-Lee.

Jesse Staniforth brutally rips Rex Murphy a new one ...

And a very well-deserved one it is.

Rex Murphy's opinion piece isn't just ignorant, it's totally vacuous, the product of someone who literally seems to know nothing about the subject he's railing against.

But then, there's the rub. Murphy is educated in the art of the word; not the projection of knowledge. He is the perfect right-wing shill, bereft of information, ignorant of history and mortally afraid of scientific fact. Murphy's way of dealing with the discomfort of science and now, history, is to simply deny it and invent a simplistic, emotional and inaccurate cultural meme to fill the vacuum between the ears of the Harperite base which forms his constituency.

Questions! We have questions.

#elxnfraud #Cdnpoli - 

Here's one:

Why is one of the three CIMS reports downloaded by Andrew Prescott - phone numbers identifying supporters and non-supporters - now missing from CIMS?

A simple explanation, one which would pass muster with any one of the tech geeks who hang around our small group, would be appropriate.

Want more? Alison. Go read Alison. 

Are you awake yet?

Consider the cost of this.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has always vehemently denied bringing cheap foreign labour into Canada. Employers had to pay foreign temporary workers “the prevailing wage,” he pointed out.

That indeed is what the rules said – until Wednesday, when Human Resources Minister Diane Finley quietly changed them. Employers will now be allowed to pay foreign temp workers 15 per cent less than the average wage.

“We are taking action to ensure that the temporary foreign worker program support our economic recovery and effectively responds to local labour market demands,” she said at a manufacturing plant in Nisku, Alta.
Kenney chimed in from Ottawa. “Going forward our government will consider additional measures to strengthen and improve the program,” he promised.

Business leaders, eager to recruit low-cost workers abroad, were delighted. Immigrant support groups, already fighting to protect temporary foreign workers from exploitation, were heartsick. And labour leaders warned that the wage cut would bring down the pay scale for all workers and make it harder for Canadians to compete for jobs in their own country.

And as reprehensible as that is, Lorne brings up the other part of this and it isn't pretty.

Either you start working for less or we'll go outside the country and find someone who will. Once you're laid-off, you won't receive EI benefits unless you take a low wage job, which will end your EI eligibility.

Welcome to Harper's Canada.

Peter MacKay and the revolving money

 #Cdnpoli #F35 -


On Sunday, 15 April, the Department of National Defence sent out a press release which David Pugliese posted.

The Honourable Peter MacKay, Minister of National Defence and Lead Minister for Search and Rescue, is pleased to announce an $8.1M federal investment in search and rescue prevention and response in Canada.

“Our government understands the importance of investing in new initiatives aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of search and rescue in Canada,” said Minister MacKay. “This money will support projects that build search and rescue capacity and strengthens the response of search and rescue.”

In 2012-2013, this new funding will allow for the purchase of life-saving equipment and tools; the development of training standards; collaborative interoperability exercises between the Canadian Forces, the Canadian Coast Guard, Parks Canada, and the over 15,000 specially trained air-ground-marine search and rescue volunteers; the development of outreach prevention and awareness programs to targeted audiences like flight safety for private pilots; the building of search and rescue capacity in the marine environment on the coasts; and the development of virtual trainers for the air and marine search and rescue environments.

All very nice, except for one small problem. This is not new money. This has been around for well over a decade. David Pugliese started to get a raft of emails.

As mentioned, Defence Watch readers took issue with the claim about new funding. They say the funding is awarded each year and has been for more than a decade.

In fact this fund was started back in 1988 and has been allocated annually since then. It also has never really grown from the amount originally set aside. 

Pugliese went to MacKay's office for an explanation and discovered ...

So it isn’t exactly “new” money after all. It’s the same money and each year the list with the $8 million worth of new projects is issued annually.

This is nothing more than MacKay trying to generate some "good" press. Here, however, is the best part.  (Emphasis mine)

That quest is, at times, reaching desperation, sources say. As an example, they point to the March 20^th press release issued by DND, which NDHQ communications specialists are still talking about. That one had Mr. MacKay announcing a contract for $5,943 for a firm to put some barriers up.

This useless boob needs to be taken to lunch. Somebody can clean out his office while he's gone and remove his name from the DND telephone directory before he gets back.

 

Intent, not outcome, is the basis for criminality

Dean del Mastro is getting desperate.

Del Mastro, who has been leading his party's defence in the controversy over live and automated election phone calls, said nobody has come forward to say they didn't vote because they first went to the wrong polling station.

"So where are these people? Where are these people? Where are these people saying that I got the call, I went to the wrong station, and then I didn't vote?" Del Mastro said on CBC's Power & Politics.

"There haven’t been any. No one has stepped forward and said that."

"Some of these things, as I've already indicated, could have well been mistakes. I don't understand why folks jump to these things and run to a conclusion that they have no evidence of."

Mistakes?! Parties were told not to direct voters to polling stations. He's claiming "mistake" as a defence?

You walk into a bank with a toy gun and demand the all the available money (in small bills) but encounter an operation where the customer service associate has no money.

You flee.

The cop outside captures you.

In court your attorney stresses to the judge that you didn't actually get any money. It's not really a robbery and the gun wasn't really a gun, but a toy. It's all one big mistake.

The Criminal Code section 85 (2) says your toy gun is still a gun. Section 343 says you attempted a robbery. Enjoy prison because you get a five year minimum sentence.

We have evidence dripping off the walls, and Del Mastro is very close there to shifting his defence to the right - we did stuff but it didn't prevent anyone from voting.

The illegal act was doing stuff. 

Manning speaks

From the Right-Wing conference on self-stimulation, Preston Manning repeated most of the Harper talking-points on the electoral-fraud scam.

He said the most important issue is to determine how to end unethical vote-suppression tactics, be it by robocalls or any other form. Manning says stricter surveillance by Elections Canada and campaign managers is one option but ethical training of campaign workers is probably more effective.

Manning said it would also be wrong to point the finger solely at the Conservative party, even though the Elections Canada investigation is largely centered on the Tory campaign in Guelph, Ont.

“Fingers are always pointing at everybody. I think the bigger worry is that these technologies are available to all political people and you will have rogues in your organizations that might employ those technologies,” he said.

“I think it should be a concern to everybody and you can find illustrations of people who play close to the edge in every political party.”

Let's see ...

- All parties do it? Check.
- It's not the Conservative party? Check.
- It's rogue operators? Check.
- It's Elections Canada's fault? Check.

Oh yes. This line:

... ethical training of campaign workers is probably more effective.

Gee, ya think?! I don't get a warm fuzzy feeling at the sea of Conservative ethics mentioned here.

Perhaps we'll just have to watch to see who wins this year's Manning Centre Pyramid Award for Political Technology. The last three have been just dripping with ethics.

Del Mastro seizes the moment ...

And chokes on it.

“The Leader of the Liberal Party knows full well, every household that they called, every originating phone number they called them from, and, in fact, when those calls were made,” he said in response to a question from Bob Rae. “When will he make those phone records public? Because I believe when those phone records are made public, the Liberal Party will have fingered itself for each and every one of these calls that they allege had taken place.” 

Ah... the attempt to blame others.

But when asked later by reporters if the Conservatives were prepared to release their own records, Mr. Del Mastro said: “No, because obviously our party is not behind the calls. We know that."

He's already been down that road and got his penis handed to him on a plate.

What we know is that the only party which could have benefited from the voter suppression which has been reported is the Conservatives.

I'd say, nice try ... except that it's feeble and not the slightest bit plausible.

Now, get on over to Creekside where the evidence grows that the Conservatives are stalling for time. Building the "plausible deniability" firewall takes time y'know.

Dean, Dean, Dean! You used a US calling company

Jeez, take away their prepared script and they go straight to the waste treatment plant. Now there is evidence that the Harper Conservatives used US calling companies during the last election campaign.

CBC News has learned that more than a dozen Conservative MPs employed U.S.-based political telemarketing firms during the last federal election campaign, contrary to Stephen Harper’s statement in Parliament this week.

The prime minister and his parliamentary secretary, Peterborough MP Dean Del Mastro, claimed in the Commons that the Liberals were the only party that used American calling firms.

“We’ve done some checking,” the PM said, and “we’ve only found that it was the Liberal Party that did source its phone calls from the United States.”

So, let's go to Ohio. If you're Dean del Mastro's campaign team, who ya gonna call? Why, PJ Wenzel of Front Porch Strategies, Columbus Ohio, of course. And Mr. Wenzel's bio says, in part ...

PJ Wenzel is a Partner at Front Porch Strategies, an international voter contact and constituent outreach firm based in Columbus Ohio.  PJ has been working on political and issue campaigns since 1994 and has done work in 40 U.S. states and territories as well as work for members of the Canadian Parliament, and Canadian Conservative Caucus.

Now, just to be clear, (Not del Mastro clear), Mr. Wenzel and Front Porch Strategies have done nothing which could be contrued as wrong or even the slightest bit illegal.

Del Mastro and Harper, however, have misled us once again.

Is there more?

Indeed there is. Later.

I wield my scimitar through the fields of dragon dung

And Preston Manning, because Latin doesn't seem to be his strong suit, makes up words to go with his gut-gripping fiction.

We Canadians have many virtues, but we also have our faults. One of the most worrisome is our growing tendency to substitute discussion for action on key public issues such as health-care reform, productivity improvement and energy policy. 

We increasingly seem to think that a major issue is being “dealt with” when someone writes a paper, article, report or book about it. Further “progress” is then measured by the extent to which the paper, article, report or book has been peer-reviewed, conferenced, editorialized, blogged and tweeted, with the original discussants linked in and befriended by an ever-growing number of fellow discussants via the Internet.

Which Manning finds objectionable. Better to employ the Conservative modus operandi by not bothering to gather facts, study anything or read statistics before rushing headlong into the ideological abyss.

But who’s going to do something about what’s being discussed or proposed? Where’s the acceptance of responsibility to act on what has been proposed and discussed? Where’s the implementation plan and to-do list that translates interest, concern and discussion into actions that achieve results?

Good point. Clearly we're not getting it out of Harper. He and his herd of hillbillies ignore all of that in search of their conservative utopia.

Take health-care reform.

(If you didn't know this was coming you haven't been keeping much of an eye on the Manning conservative puppy-mill).

The federal government’s willingness to provide “no strings attached” health-care transfers to the provinces ought to open the door to systemic innovation. But, as yet, no province has produced an action plan equivalent to what Saskatchewan developed in the 1960s to lay the foundations of the current system, nor has any coalition of health-care reformers emerged in any province to move public opinion onto health-care reform ground such that the politicians will follow. On health-care reform, it’s still talk, talk, talk and no action.  

Now there's a different way of viewing events. Flaherty, a refugee from the Mike Harris disaster, shows up in Victoria on the pretext of entering negotiations (that would be action by the way) and blindsides provincial premiers with a no-discussion dictum and you wonder why they're still reeling.

I’m amazed when even some of my private-enterprise friends and acquaintances take the Leave It to Beaver approach. We give ringing speeches on the virtues of private enterprise and letting the markets solve problems, free of heavy-handed government intervention. Yet, when a challenge such as improving productivity or devising a Canadian energy strategy arises, far too often the reports we present to governments consist primarily of pleas for the government to do this or that. 

That's because your free-enterprise friends, or more correctly your corporate donors, are little more than welfare queens. But maybe you're right. Clearly cutting their corporate income tax didn't get them off their collective asses.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s a place for discussing the great issues of the day.

You just said there wasn't. But I'm getting an idea.

Canada itself was born out of a conference of colonial politicians held in Charlottetown in 1864. But when it ended, the Fathers of Confederation went out and did something. They drafted a constitution, united the colonial economies, bought Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Co. and built the longest railway in the world. They translated discussion into action on a magnificent scale. 

Wow! Just like that! One day a bunch of politicians just got out of bed, realized there was no snow on the ground and created a country. That would be amazing if it was even the slightest bit true.

Blow away the Manning vacuum and you see that it took the better part of several decades of turmoil and discussion before the Charlottetown conference ever happened. It may be different where you went to school, but I seem to recall from high-school that most of this idea of establishing a Dominion started with the 1837 - 1838 Rebellions. And let's not forget the fact that William Lyon Mackenzie proclaimed a republic in Upper Canada a short time before Robert Nelson did the same thing in Lower Canada. Britain didn't even grant the combined colonies of Canada responsible government until 1848 because a corrupt minority of conservative leaders refused to acquiesce to the will of the people.

In short, Preston, it took a series of evolutionary reforms for Canada to be born. Unlike your chia pet version of national creation the actual road to nationhood took well over 40 years of debate, discussion and insurrection to reach what happened in Charlottetown.

I mentioned that I was getting an idea that could easily be put into action. Let's re-categorize one-sided political boot camps like yours and remove the not-for-profit tax status. Let's see what happens when you've got to pay full freight and your donors don't get a tax receipt.

Excrementum.Verveces tui similes pro ientaculo mihi appositi sunt.

New talking point! It was run amok leprechans playing with phones

The big man speaks.

Conservative Senator Mike Duffy says “third parties” – and not necessarily any of the political parties – could be behind election “robo-call” scandal that’s become a full-blown headache for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. 

Mr. Duffy offered up his theory in the blame game over a spate of May 2 phone-calls misdirecting voters in an interview with morning host Jordi Morgan on Halifax radio station News 95.7 Monday morning.

I first encountered Duffy some decades ago in Ottawa at the Mayflower. He rather rudely interrupted our group of  about a half-dozen senior sailors, in uniform, by asking what we were doing there and stating that he'd never seen us there before.

None of us had enjoyed a particularly good day and to a man we were in an ugly mood. One of our number told Duffy to fuck off. It wasn't me.

Go back to the free food, Duffy. You are absolutely full of shit. 

Another Harper line shot full of holes.

They work so hard trying to peddle lies that they don't recognize the truth.

Callers on behalf of the federal Conservative Party were instructed in the days before last year’s election to read scripts telling voters that Elections Canada had changed their voting locations, say telephone operators who worked for a Thunder Bay-based call centre.

These weren’t “robo-calls,” as automated pre-recorded voice messages as commonly known. They were live real-time calls made into ridings across Canada, the callers say.

 So, that puts the lie to the 23-year old New Jersey-born lone gunman theory. Grassy knolls everywhere.

You must read Impolitical.