Fairytale Theatre

Item: Harper confident Quebec’s $2-billion HST deal won’t hinder deficit battle . And since he won't show anyone the books, we will just have to take his word for it.

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Liars, Rogues And Thugs

Don Martin wrote:

Watching the Conservatives wrap themselves in a freedom-of-expression argument, insisting their 144 MPs were all voting their constituent’s orders, was a hilarious misrepresentation of reality.

Nobody believes the Greater Toronto Area ridings held by Conservatives are uniformly against the registry just as we know not all Liberal or New Democrat ridings support its preservation.

The government whipped MPs into unanimity of opinion by letting it be known there was an obituary waiting to be written for any who dared vote to back the registry.

Mr. Martin is publicly calling this "private member's bill" a fraud ( and Mr. Martin, it isn't "hilarious"). Are we, as a nation, going to allow our government to pervert our democracy so cavalierly? Are we so inured to this gang of thugs that they can literally lie in our faces and we will just sit back and take it? My answer is no! All of us together, must say in a loud voice, NO!

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Progress Of A Kind

Watching Power and Politics yesterday, I was struck by the exchange between Vic Toews and Evan Solomon, over the issue of terrorists on the recently seized Tamil ship. Given the way this government likes to make claims, based on what the world looks like through beer goggles, it is always prudent to ask for evidence when dealing with one of its members. To his credit, Mr. Solomon repeatedly did ask for evidence of terrorist infiltration of the ship. Clearly taken aback, Mr. Toews retreated into a "Well, I had an intelligence briefing, so there just have to be terrorists involved', stance. It was clear, that Vic Toews has no evidence. None. The fact that he had to essentially admit that he was making unsubstantiated claims, in public, is at least progress. It won't stop the Conservatives from spouting bullshit, but calling them on it, is no longer considered rude by the MSM.

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The Question Is

How can anyone trust the Harper Government again? They are now fully exposed as liars. Who, except their most dimwitted, tin-foil-hat-wearing "base" would even consider voting for them? Bring on an election. We have to cleanse the stench in Ottawa, once again.

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War Is Peace

Neil Reynolds in the Globe today, is mouthing the latest talking points from Dimitri Soudas' shop of horrors:

People should, as a matter of principle, prefer a voluntary census to a mandatory census. But the reason to scrap the census has nothing much to do with coercion (which is, in fact, minimal) or with cost (which is, in fact, minimal, too). The reason to scrap the mandatory census is that it, along with a great deal of other government fact-finding, is simply not necessary. Indeed, the government should have made this argument. After all, if the most statist countries of Old Europe are abandoning the coercive census, why shouldn’t we get rid of it, too? From this perspective, the government could have defended its decision as, well, liberal and progressive rather than as, well, conservative and reactionary.

The European consensus is that the census simply isn’t necessary.

It is fascinating when right wing loons embrace "the European consensus", but don't be fooled. As usual, people like Reynolds are just peddling bullshit dressed as chocolate mousse.

It is true that some European countries are moving away from the census as a statistical tool, but that is not because they have become libertarian utopias in the von Hayek sense. The Nordic countries, for example, are moving away from the census by substituting national administrative statistics, based on long established legislative infrastructures (as in not, not, not voluntary), to collect their data. Mr. Reynolds and the rest of Maggie Thatcher's Canadian Auxiliary, would like you to think that libertarianism is sweeping the old world. It is not.

Also, the followers of St. Maggie are not suggesting that we adopt the old world's administrative statistical infrastructure either. Since they are not suggesting a move toward a European administrative based statistics model, I have to conclude that they are simply trying to fool people into dumping the census for ideological reasons. Nice try folks, but go peddle your "chocolate-like" nonsense elsewhere

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