Irony Of The Day

With the vote on the long gun registry, a prime minister who has dedicated his political life to the dismantling of the Liberal Party, may instead become the midwife of an agrarian NDP rump, dividing the rural vote and leaving the cities to the Liberals.

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I'm Not Worried Either Jack

But there will be consequences if the long gun registry goes down with your party's help and denunciations -- lots of denunciations.

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Sinister's Law

Never get involved in another family's argument. I just watched Warren Kinssella and David Herle on the National. My advice to the NDP for what it is worth is, stay away from this. You will become collateral damage in a war not of your making and this is the longest running civil war in Canadian political history. It is the War of the Rose, between the Trudeauists and the Wintersites. You may have a favored side in the dispute, but make no mistake, if you side with it you will be drawn into that madness. I know I am on the outs with you at the moment and we may never reconcile, but I still have some sentimental attachment to the NDP and I would hate to see it die on a foreign battlefield. Merger with the Liberals is suicidal. That's all there is to it.

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C-391

NDP take note, whining that "Those bad old Liberals are making us do bad things!" only moves me to laugh and or retch. The party could use this opportunity as a springboard to making the changes to the registry it says it wants. It could even use it as leverage in any talks about coalition. Instead, it is using the extremely small fig leaf of Liberal intransigence over the current bill, to cover moral cowardice on the part of the leadership of the NDP. Such acts of cowardice will not win the NDP the gun lover vote, but it will absolutely guarantee that people like me park their vote somewhere else, until the party regains its bearings.

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Ready, Aye Ready

I am reading more and more stuff like this:

NDP defence critic Jack Harris said a post-2011 role for Canada is in the works, but suggested a military presence was not the only option on the table.

“All Canadians do not want to see the sacrifice that has been made be for naught and we do have obviously a considerable amount of humanitarian concerns and institution-building concerns about Afghanistan,” Mr. Harris said.

“Whether that involves military or not is another question indeed. There are lots of other ways that we can help build institutions.”

It is becoming increasingly obvious that as the NDP jettisons one principle after another, that it is getting ready to govern. A coalition with the Liberals? Hell they will be the Liberals in another year, so what's the point?

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What Caplan Said

NDP WTF:

Besides, there are culture wars within culture wars, some of which actually unite conservatives and their mortal enemies. For example, our politicians in Ottawa seem to live in an impermeable bubble of their own. The quite extraordinary spectacle of almost all members of Parliament indignantly refusing to make public their expenses speaks volumes about the distance between the political world and the real one.

The fact that the NDP has been the most intransigent in its righteous determination to keep the public's nose out of its accounts has bewildered the faithful across the land. What are they thinking? What are they hiding? Have they learned nothing from the Labour Party's humiliation caught charging the state for personal expenses? Has the culture of "The Hill" corrupted (with a few honorable exceptions) the entire caucus?

It's hard not to see the NDP position on this issue as a betrayal of what the party stands for. Add to this that about a third of the caucus may for the second time vote against the long-gun registry. This would, of course, confuse the culture warriors because the NDP would then be standing with the Harper government and its supporters – Canada's own equivalent of the National Rifle Association. These positions will surely test the loyalty of the 14 per cent to 18 per cent of Canadians who faithfully vote NDP, knowing it will not form a government.

On both counts, frantic efforts are being made to make this rogue NDP caucus come to its collective senses. But the fact such efforts are necessary at all tells its own dismal story.

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Does Anyone Understand The NDP Long Gun Policy?

Including the NDP? They are probably going to vote with the government to scrap the long gun registry (on the limp excuse that the bill is not a government bill, so they are powerless to whip it)but then say things like this:

On the committee side of things, Comartin says the NDP has several ideas on how to amend the bill when hearings start in early May. Comartin says New Democrats would also like to streamline and decriminalize some aspects of the registry. Although, unlike the Liberals, the NDP would not allow a blanket pardon on all first-time offenses and Comartin says the fees should stay,

"Much as we pay to register our dog and register our car, we should be paying to register our guns. Not as a profit-making for the government but simply to compensate the government for the cost of the system."

To which I have to ask, what is the sense of saying you want to charge for registering firearms when you are helping to scrap the entire system? That's like you are in favor of installing smoke detectors as you are in the process of burning down the building.

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Why I Am A Ronin Lefty, Reason 623

Gutless responses to challenges from the Conservatives, on the most basic tenets of what the party used to stand for. For example, in today's Globe, Douglas Bell relates a story about the Conservatives' tough-on-crime mania and how no one is calling bullshit on them:

Even the Dippers (who used to count the Quakers as allies when it came to prison reform) want in on the act. At lunch with a senior Commie some weeks ago I raised an article in The Economist which read in part:

“Fighting crime has been a priority for Mr. Harper's minority government ever since the Conservatives defeated the Liberals in 2006. A third of the 63 bills introduced in the House of Commons in the past year have dealt with some aspect of criminal justice, and more are on their way. Despite complaints that a similar, purely punitive approach has not worked in the United States, and that piecemeal change will clog up the justice system and leave taxpayers with a larger bill, the government has not deviated.”

My man mumbled something about Jane Creba and that if I were to raise that sort of mumbo jumbo in a forum concerned with soliciting votes from real people I’d get laughed out of the room.

Well, sure, I responded, but, ah, crime stats are down across the board and doesn’t supporting tough-on-crime legislation make you guys what the late Paul Tsongas used to call “pander bears?”

At which point my socialist interlocutor changed the channel on the conversation like I was a rerun of The New Beachcombers.

The folks who are running the NDP at the moment, would rather support something popular but stupid, than advocate for doing what is productive, but might cause them to be ridiculed by the braying donkeys on the government benches. Such non-stands are why the NDP used to make fun of the Liberals. The question is, who is laughing now?

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Dear NDP

Why bother with Ujjal Dosanjh and Mike Harcourt's message of "pragmatism" as the cardinal virtue of politics? Why go with half measures? If you really want to observe the glories of "getting with it" in action, just turn your eyes to the south and behold the splendor that is the modern Democratic party. Better still, if you insist that "getting with it" is the new watchword in Canadian socialist politics, why not just follow Ujjal and move yourselves into the Liberal caucus? There is no party in the world better than the Liberals when it comes to "getting with it".

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The Headline Says It All

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)

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It's Official

Urban Canada means nothing to our politicians. We are vassals to our rural masters and mere wallets to be plucked for the benefit of the hinterlands. No more pretense. No more lying to ourselves. We live in an upside down state where the minority rules the majority. No federalist party is willing to challenge the crazy system that allows the rural parts of our country to have a disproportionate power in our politics. Canada is finished. The loons have won. As for the NDP, they can go fuck themselves.

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Word Games. Courtesy Of Jack Layton

Tonda MacCharles reports today in the Star:

After a heavy lobbying effort, including a Tory-backed radio ad campaign targeting vulnerable opposition ridings, the bill's sponsor, MP Candice Hoeppner (Portage-Lisgar), says she is confident at least eight NDP and Liberal MPs will vote to get rid of the law that requires rifles and shotguns to be registered. That's because Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff and NDP Leader Jack Layton, who personally pledged to vote against the bill, will allow their MPs to vote freely on the issue, citing their respective parties' "tradition" of free votes on private members' business (emphasis mine).

It's too bad for Bev Desjarlais that the same sex marriage free vote was on a government bill, rather than on a private member's bill, isn't it? Playing word games doesn't make this betrayal of urban voters any less odious, Jack. I call bullshit on you.

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A Column About Nothing

Chantal Hebert lays out why the corporate press is so disappointed by the NDP convention:

For a few fleeting days, it almost sounded like the NDP was about to turn itself from the self-appointed conscience of the federal Liberal party into a Liberal franchise in its own right.

That didn't happen (thank God) and our betters are bitter. Yes they are.

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When You Are A Hammer (Or Even A Sack Of Them)

The whole world looks like a nail. That's why tools offer us only limited solutions. Speaking of tools, for Liberals, the solution to any problem, is to become a member of the Liberal Party of Canada.

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NDP Deathwatch

Year 48, Part 2. Today it is Chantal Hebert's turn. All of these Liberal-leaning media expressing only the best for the NDP, are just touching. Really.

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