They Call Me "Mr. Sinister"

Early Morning Reading

2009-11-22T07:43:00.003-05:00

When I read this headline: Diplomat's accusation prisoners tortured dismissed as 'hearsay' I read 'hearsay' as 'heresy'. That is how this government really works. It is a faith-based government. Anyone who disputes the doctrines of the faith (Harper is infallible, for example) is a heretic and must be destroyed.

The Headline Says It All

2009-11-21T08:50:00.002-05:00

Layton Betrays The Faithful. The NDP is up in the polls right now and all they had to do is become a party like all the rest. Helping to gut gun control means I can never trust Layton, nor his party again. Layton and his followers might be taking comfort from the polls but in the back of their minds, I hope the words of Jesus keep them awake at night.

³⁶For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Mark 8:36, King James Version)

Um, That Is Rather Hard To Believe

2009-11-20T06:49:00.002-05:00

The Conservatives are using the old "functionaries at a low level" defense in the torture scandal. Gordon O'Connor said yesterday:

“Reports like this may have occurred and gone through the system and people at lower levels may have decided there’s no credibility to different reports,”

That does not even sound remotely credible to me. If an official from your own embassy is telling you that you are handing over prisoners to be tortured, human nature being what it is, you would pass it up the line, if only to cover your own ass. No way would a low level functionary bury this, because it is a career buster if it is discovered that you did so. Human beings cover their own asses. Twas always thus. The more the Conservatives talk about this, the less believable they are.

We Are Fucked Citizens

2009-11-19T10:53:00.003-05:00

It is now officially anti-Semitic to question the methods of war, used by the government of Israel. However, you can still talk about hockey, if you wish, as long as you conclude every paragraph with the sentence "Only conservatives love hockey." That is all.

Why Should Anyone Be Surprised

2009-11-19T06:44:00.004-05:00

That, in a country in which only last fall,a large proportion of its population was convinced that a coup was in progress and that they had directly elected a prime minister, is now seized with the idea that gun control for farmers should be scrapped? Given enough money, propaganda and appeals to tribal loyalty, I am convinced that large groups of people can be convinced of pretty much anything.

Stephen Harper

2009-11-17T12:39:00.001-05:00

Still not a leader.

Why Conservatives Are Bad Governors

2009-11-16T06:51:00.003-05:00

Exhibit A: The 407. Conservatives exist to shift public goods into private hands. It wasn't always this way, but since they turned off their brains and learned to love Thatcherism, it is their only function and goal.

Stephen Harper

2009-11-14T16:53:00.000-05:00

Not a leader.

Shorter New York TImes

2009-11-14T10:05:00.002-05:00

If we try, really, really, hard, and minimize the role military tribunals are going to play in meting out "justice" in the near future, we can say that Obama is just awesome compared to stinky pants Bush!

Shorter Norman Spector

2009-11-13T13:30:00.003-05:00

Because Barack Obama says that a military tribunal is a kind of like a fair trial, the Supreme Court should fold its tent, bow and say, "Thanks, Mr. President".

Cherry Picking "Justice"

2009-11-13T12:45:00.003-05:00

Fair trials for some, kangaroo courts for others, including Omar Khadr. The only criteria seems to be "Where can we get convictions?" I can hardly wait to read American "progressives" defending this pile of shit.

Leave It To Dalton

2009-11-13T06:46:00.004-05:00

To take what is actually a good idea (raising money for military families in need) and turning it into a PR fiasco of near e-health proportions. The man is turning into our own reverse Midas.

Update: One good thing, it did point me in the direction of the Canadian Forces Assistance Fund. That such a fund is necessary is kind of a shock and a national disgrace, but at least it is something.

Federal Elections Back In The Hands Of The PM

2009-11-12T15:36:00.007-05:00

I just flipped to the new citizen's handbook, Discover Canada. I found this little gem under "Federal Elections":

Under legislation passed by Parliament, federal elections must be held on the third Monday in October every four years following the most recent general election. The Prime Minister may ask the Governor General to call an earlier election.(emphasis mine)

The original intent of the electoral law was to take the power of calling snap elections out of the hands of the PM. Stephen Harper said so himself in 2006:

"Fixed dates stop leaders from trying to manipulate the calendar. They level the playing field for all parties,"....

"Hopefully, in the next election, we can run on our record and we won't need the manipulation of the electoral calendar."(Toronto Star, September 4 2008 A16)

Last fall, Harper used "parliamentary disfunction" as his excuse to break the spirit of his fixed-election date law. Now, the government is telling new citizens that even that pretense is unnecessary. Stephen Harper, it seems, can call an election any time he wants one. We have come full circle.

Update: I like Robert's take on the document as a whole.

Something I Am Pondering

2009-11-12T11:13:00.003-05:00

How much of the support for scrapping the long gun registry, while maintaining the handgun registry, is based on the idea that long guns are "our guns" (good,white, Anglo Saxon, Christians); while handguns are "their guns" (name your racial and/or religious minority)? I ask this because I keep reading this same phrase, in some iteration or another in every article:

In particular, he said, they've likely been influenced by vocal critics who contend the registry is a billion-dollar waste that targets law-abiding hunters and farmers rather than gun-toting criminals.

The question is has "law-abiding hunters and farmers" become short hand for "old stock white folks", while "gun-toting criminals" has come to mean "those other scary folks from foreign places"? I am getting the vibe that it has. Am I wrong?

Remembrance Day 2009

2009-11-11T06:44:00.003-05:00

This is a truly beautiful poem, so beautiful it is quite easy to forget that its author did not survive the war. Today is a day for remembering that while there is beauty in all things, war is ultimately about death and loss.

My Take On The By-Elections

2009-11-10T06:47:00.002-05:00

Harper won two more rural seats and so two more votes against the long gun registry and for money transfers from the cities to the country (Yippee). The Tories are still going nowhere fast in the cities, but who gives a shit about them? They are milch cows, nothing more. The big story, as far as I am concerned is voter turnout. It was low, historically low. We are headed to an era of governments elected with double minorities -- of participation and share. Unless something good happens and soon, we will be lying to ourselves if we call Canada a democracy.

Shooting Yourself In The Head

2009-11-07T12:58:00.008-05:00

To fix a broken arm. Thomas Walkom's column is a depressing read today. In it, he outlines how governments are going to use deficits as hammers to break their unions and cut their workers' pay and benefits. In other words, they are fighting the recession and its loss of economic demand from the private sector, by intentionally depressing the spending power of their own workers. If the economy is a drowning man, the governments are throwing it an anvil. Do you suppose a public sector worker, upon hearing his wages are going to be cut, is going to go out and buy a new car? Not on your life, he is going to hunker down and save. This will further depress the demand for cars and other goods and services and create a death spiral of more cuts in the private sector followed by calls for more cuts in the public sector.

I can see how pitting private and public sector workers at each other's throats makes good politics. Driving a wedge between the private and public sector working class keeps the focus off of the poor performance of the government and the ruling class (and has a side benefit of keeping people from thinking too much about bankers' bonuses and just how we got into this mess in the first place). But, gutting public sector wages, as an economic policy, during an economic downturn, it makes no sense at all.

If Pogge Can Do It

2009-11-06T20:42:00.000-05:00

So, can I. Son House singing Death Letter Blues.

So Much For Policy

2009-11-06T20:12:00.008-05:00

Let's get back to the real business of Ottawa: Celebrity gossip and funny stories about clowns. They keep us distracted and laughing because if they don't, the screaming will start. And it will never stop.

A Set Up For A Joke I Must Resist

2009-11-06T16:41:00.007-05:00

Ladies and gentlemen, Candice Hoeppner:

MP Candice Hoeppner, the Conservative MP who sponsored a private members' bill calling for a repeal of the gun registry, said in an interview that the registry should be scrapped because it is does not ensure officer safety and is "not reliable."

"Do you know the long gun registry has actually been breached over 300 times, by computer hackers," Hoeppner said.

Asked to verify the claim, RCMP Sgt. Greg Cox responded in an earlier email that Hoeppner's number is wrong.

"The RCMP Canadian Firearms Program's national registry database has never been breached by hackers. The RCMP does not know where this information has come from."

I won't add anything more, but you all may feel free to speculate from which bodily orifice, Ms. Hoeppner pulled "this information".

As a side note. With intellectual firepower like Ms. Hoeppner's pulling for the gutting of the long gun registry, is it any wonder the NDP and Liberals are quaking with fear?

Peter Van Loan, Dissembler

2009-11-06T14:16:00.003-05:00

Peter Van Loan on the gun registry report:

"What you're going to see (Friday) in this report produced by the national firearms centre ... is that the statistics I just gave you were not included. Whoever put it together didn't put in there the information that only 2.4 per cent of those 3.5 million queries (to the registry) were actually related to information about a long-gun registration number or about a serial number of a gun. (emphasis mine)

Got that? Only 2.4 percent. Or as it is expressed in a way that is not designed to make it sound insignificant, 84,000 inquiries were about long gun matters. If only one inquiry out of 1000 of that number, saved a cop's life, that means there are 84 cops walking around today because of the registry. That sounds like a good deal to me. Someone should ask Mr. Van Loan about whether or not he agrees. Not that he will answer, of course.

Today's Must Read

2009-11-06T08:30:00.002-05:00

John Ibbitson. He speaks the truth, friends. Our political system is totally skewed toward rural Canada. We live in a potemkin democracy, ruled over by a rural rump. Is there no politician in Canada with enough guts to overthrow the status quo and give us a fair electoral system? I wish I could say yes, but the evidence is most definitely pointed in the opposite direction.

Inquiring Minds Want To Know

2009-11-06T08:10:00.003-05:00

How many of these urban/suburban Conservative members do you suppose asked their constituents' opinions about the long gun registry? If you live in their riding, did they ever contact you over the issue? I live in Peter Braid's riding and he did not hold any meetings that I am aware of, to canvas support for killing the registry in Kitchener/Waterloo.

Anders, Rob
Baird, John
Braid, Peter
Brown, Lois
Bruinooge, Rod
Chong, Michael D.
Dechert, Bob
Goodyear, Gary
Hawn, Laurie
Holder, Ed
Obhrai, Deepak
Saxton, Andrew
Wallace, Mike
Wong, Alice
Woodworth, Stephen
Young, Terence H.

On This Issue I'm From Missouri

2009-11-05T10:49:00.002-05:00

Believing that the Liberals and NDP will find the backbone to halt the death of the long gun registry in committee, after publicly endorsing the bill in the full House, seems to me to be building castles in the air. I will believe it when I see it. Also, I would suggest trying to snatch some dignity from that craven display last night, is somewhat pathetic and will be portrayed as such by your political opponents.

As Night Follows Day

2009-11-05T10:31:00.003-05:00

The Bloc is going after the NDP on the gun vote. I don't blame them one bit.