I thought this Maclean's story about Stephen Harper was a real good read. But it didn't tell really tell me what I didn't already know.
Because I've studied Harper like a bug for years. I can never forget how he was willing to risk the unity of this country to save his own skin. And how well it worked for him.
The attempted coalition was gone. But not forgotten. Conservatives marvelled at the spike in support for their party at the height of the crisis, with well over 40 per cent saying they would vote for the besieged party. Thousands backed that sentiment with cash. “We’d never raised so much money,” the senior campaign official said. “It was a banner month for fundraising.”
I can never forget how a wave of anti-Quebec feeling swept across English Canada. How the comment columns and the airwaves were full of the most disgusting garbage I have ever seen. A frenzy of hatred aimed not just at the Bloc, but at ALL Quebecers.
And how if an election had been held then, it would have given Harper a crushing majority. Which is of course, why he is planning to do the same thing again.
That's why he goes on and on about a coalition. Why he launched those attack ads where, if you look at them closely, Gilles Duceppe is made to look like a terrorist.
Or Dracula...
It's just an attempt to recreate that toxic atmosphere, so he can campaign against Quebec again, and get his precious majority.
Stephen Harper is risking a great Canadian success by soothing one of the country’s rawest irritants. Ending public subsidies for political parties – Conservative code for, among other things, getting separatist Bloc Quebecois fingers out of the federal purse – is a feel-good exercise rippling with bad omens for national unity.
Successful in saving his government, Harper’s tactics were odd and dangerous. Odd because they conveniently forgot his earlier attempt to form a similar coalition to bring down Liberals and dangerous because it effectively disenfranchised the roughly 40 per cent of Quebec voters who support the Bloc.
I don't doubt that if Harper is able to harness that anti-Quebec feeling again, he will win his precious majority. Because those demons that inhabit English Canada are far too easily aroused.
When the Globe recently ran a story on the Bloc's conditions for supporting the budget. They got more than 1,500 comments and many of them were like this one:
This frog really has REAL CANADIANS shaking in their boots. The sooner we cut these asssssholessss off the dole the better. Only the Conservatives are prepared to stand up for Canada. Canadians have had enough of these bloodsuckers.
You know, I realize many Canadians would rather live in denial. But here is the inconvenient truth eh.
The Parti Québécois will most likely win the next election in Quebec. Gilles Duceppe could be its next leader. If Harper wins a majority by campaigning against the province, and starts turning Canada into a right-wing country most Quebecers can't live in, he could provide a popular separatist leader with a very powerful hand.
I don't believe there is anything inevitable about Quebec separating from Canada. But if the Québécois are made to feel they are The Enemy, sooner or later they WILL.
Which wouldn't bother Harper of course, because if Quebec leaves, Canada will be a right-wing country FOREVER. Just like the rest of Britain would be if Scotland ever seceded.
All of this doesn't completely explain why Harper was allowed to get away with it the first time. Why there was no moral reprimand for fucking with the fabric of Canada. Or why so many progressives went along with him. Or why our leaders have been so cowed.
The opposition parties deny they are plotting to form a coalition to replace him. And you know what? They are not plotting to form a coalition. But neither are they performing the day-to-day consultation and collaboration opposition parties always do to clip a government’s wings, because they are too afraid of looking like the coalition he warns against. They have had him outnumbered for five years. For a week in 2008 they acted like it. Now he will not stop using that week as a stick to beat them with.
But it does explain some of it. And it does explain why a person like me, who loves Canada AND Quebec, tries to end as many posts as possible this way:
Organize, unite, defeat this criminally irresponsible maniac.
A few weeks ago the BBC angered a lot of gay people by asking the Christianist fanatic Stephen Green to comment on the birth of Elton John's son. Even though he is a vicious homophobe.
Green has gone on record championing the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which would sentence LGBT people to death or life imprisonment. When rugby star Gareth Thomas came out of the closet, Green called him a threat to children, and said that LGBT people should be publicly hanged in order to keep children safe. And he once said that gay people are akin to Jeffrey Dahmer.
And then refused to apologize.
Now his wife has filed for divorce, claiming he treated her like a slave, and savagely beat her and the children.
‘He told me he’d make a piece of wood into a sort of witch’s broom and hit me with it, which he did,’ she recalls, her voice tentative and quiet. ‘He hit me until I bled. I was terrified. I can still remember the pain.
‘My eldest son was hit with a broomstick and kicked on the back of his legs. He still has scars on his shins. On one occasion Stephen beat him so hard with a piece of wood that we thought he might have broken his arm. When we took him to hospital, my son pretended he’d fallen because he didn’t want to incur his father’s anger.’
Oh boy. When I read about filthy bullies like Green, their cowardly violence still shocks me. Even though I've been fighting them most of my life.
But as PZ Myers points out why should anybody be surprised?
Christianists are evil people, and religion is the greatest fomenter of blind hatred the world has ever known.
The Harper government is crawling with these kind of fanatics, who would take women and gays back to the Middle Ages.
"They are on our side," the cry went up from the crowds. Somehow, I didn't think so. And those tanks, new to the square, 14 in all that arrived with no slogans painted on them, their soldiers sullen and apprehensive, had not come – as the protesters fondly believed – to protect them.
And wonders whose side the Americans are really on.
I noticed the lead tank's hull bore markings beginning "MFR" – at this point a soldier with a rifle and bayonet fixed was ordered to arrest me so I ran into the crowd and he retreated – but could "MFR" stand for the US Mobile Force Reserve, which keeps its tanks in Egypt? Was this tank column on loan from the Americans?
An eight-year-old Saudi girl has a message for Mubarak.
In Uganda, the homophobia the crazy Christianists ignited, claims the life of a gentle gay hero.
“David’s death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S. evangelicals in 2009,” Val Kalende, the chairwoman of one of Uganda’s gay rights groups, said in a statement. “The Ugandan government and the so-called U.S. evangelicals must take responsibility for David’s blood.”
The pastor presiding over the funeral of murdered gay rights activist David Kato went on an anti-homosexual rant Friday, adding insult to injury for the circle of activists hoping to honour and bury their friend.
Villagers then refused to bury the coffin, so Kato's friends carried it to the grave and buried him themselves.
In Afghanistan, the brutish Taliban Islamists stone a young couple to death, for the crime of being in love.
The stoning lasts two minutes. Hundreds of rocks - some larger than a man's fist - are thrown at her head and body. She tries to crawl out of the hole, but is beaten back by the stones. A boulder is then thrown at her head, her burka is soaked in blood, and she collapses inside the hole.
Then her lover, Khayyam, is brought to the crowd...The attack on him is even more ferocious. His body, lying face down, jerks as the rocks meet their target. He is heard to be crying, but is soon silent.
And in South Carolina, a woman kills a puppy for eating her Bible.
Miriam Fowler Smith, 65, told cops on Monday that she hung and burned her nephew's pit bull after the animal took a bite out of her bible.
She claimed God urged her to kill Diamond, a 1-year-old female dog, because the animal was a "devil dog" and would hurt neighborhood children
Maybe it's a false alarm. Maybe Stephen Harper doesn't really want an election, as all the pundits claim.
But I don't believe that for a moment. I believe that crazed ideologue wants a majority so bad they have to put a stick in his mouth at night, so he doesn't bite off his balls.
And if he is going to go for it, sooner is probably better than later. Because that economist act is wearing thin.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and scores of economists all trumpeted the rapid jobs recovery as evidence that Canada beat the world in getting back on its feet after the worst global slump in more than a generation. Unfortunately, it’s not true.
Higher interest rates could make matters worse. The high dollar could kill even more jobs in places he needs to win, like Ontario. In hard times giving big corporations juicy tax breaks is even harder to defend.
According to the nation’s official number crunchers, if you want policy to encourage job creation, cutting corporate taxes is the weakest option (20 cents growth from every dollar of tax cut).
There are many things that drive business investment practices, and while taxes are a consideration they are not the primary factor in investment decisions. The historic evidence shows a commitment to this strategy is a costly faith-based proposition.
And all Harper has going for him is the absurd belief that he is a good money manager. When that goes it's OVER. Which might explain why he is sodesperate.
And so SHAMELESS.
Can this political thug find a way to trigger an early election? I have no idea. And in a more decent time, with a saner Prime Minister, I'd say it wouldn't happen.
But these are Con times.
Stephen Harper isn't an economist. Or a nice nun. There will be an early election.
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah !!! The Con Attack Machine has surrendered. And flushed its filthy Republican-style ads down its gaping orifice.
The ads, featuring an out-of-context video clip of Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, prompted a torrent of criticism — even from some conservative commentators.
Among other things, the ads were slammed as dishonest, unethical, "a clumsy hatchet job," and the work of "drunken frat boys."
First they pulled the really expensive ad. The one that made the sinister nerd Harper look like the Phantom of Parliament Hill.
With a halo the size of a bagel hovering over his head.
As he worked on his long list of enemies.
And sipped caca cocoa out of a Beatles' mug.
Now they're pulling the ones that looked like they slithered out of the asshole of Karl Rove or Sarah Palin. Or the mouth of their monstrous love child.
So how are those Republican Cons trying to explain away this debacle?
Various senior Conservatives seem to be maintaining, albeit under cloak of anonymity, that there was never a media ad buy planned, and are even suggesting it was always meant to be a one-day wonder, although really, how can they possibly prove that?
OMG. The shame. The HUMILIATION. I bet those drunken frat boys are down on their knees, licking their garish attack machine clean, with their blistered tongues.
These new ads have the media chattering again, only it’s all negative and it’s all directed at the Conservatives. In this case the Conservatives have managed to make themselves the villains, instead of the Liberals they were targeting...This new set of ads wasn’t necessary and they weren’t helpful.
Muahahahaha. Now can we FLUSH them?
And what a great victory for our side.
We showed them that two can play that game...
And that for every attack ad they produce, we can and will produce a THOUSAND.
In fact I'm working on one right now eh? Where the Phantom of Parliament Hill creeps into a dark hospital ward, and slowly strangles medicare.
But of course now I can take a break.
Fire up the beer cannon.
And play this video instead...
WE won. The Cons LOST. They look like liars and dangerous IDIOTS.
THERE IS ANOTHER QUESTION; A DEEPER QUESTION: ARE WE READY TO SERVE THE PEOPLE WHO PUT US HERE? ARE WE READY TO FIGHT FOR THE CANADA WE LOVE? ARE WE READY TO FIGHT FOR THE CANADIAN FAMILY? WHAT'S THE ANSWER TO THAT?
YES, YES YES...OUI.
Gawd. How low will this foul political thug go to get a majority, so he can diddle,screw, rape Canada beyond recognition?
The answer? Very very low. My reaction? Two can play this game.
We live in a country with the greatest percentage of YouTube users in the WORLD. Isn't it time we used videos against him? Imagine how much fun we could have asking the questions the MSM won't ask?
Hey Great Goebbels Leader...why DO you want to murder medicare? Why do you want to kill Canadians like dogs?
Why are you so...um....WEIRD? And so American?
What's your problem with strong women? Did you really say that old people don't deserve pensions because they're just a ponzi scheme?
Why did you tell a theocon that once you got a majority it would be easier for a man to have a baby, than for a woman to have an abortion?
And is this what your majority might look like?
Oh no. I thought I saw the mutilated remains of the Supreme Court lying there next to the CBC and Via Rail. But then they were gone.
The good news? Stephen Harper may be crawling on all fours through the gutter, snorting like a hog, lying like Goebbels, smearing his opponents like a Tea Bagger.
But for every attack ad they produce, we can produce a THOUSAND.
I think it's time Stephen Harper got a taste of his own medicine.
And I'm ready eh? I went to a farm show in the fall and recorded the best pig sounds EVER.
Because this is what I believe. When our country is in danger.
“A slushie drink is one thing — it stains your clothes and hurts your pride — but when it escalates to chunks of ice, that’s dangerous,” he said.
The “slushie facial” is a popular form of bullying on the musical TV series Glee. Winsor is relieved the frozen Coke beverages missed his face, but his red Canada goose coat was soaked. Winsor ran into a friend a few minutes after the slushie attack who’d been targeted with ice and been called ‘faggot.’
Would you:
(1) Lick the slushie off your clothes and face, and thank your attackers for making you feel famous?
(2) Apologize for ruining a perfectly good slushie, and offer to buy them another?
(3) Or kick them in the head, until they choke in their own sweetness?
"[He] beat him to where he had bruises and cuts over most of his body," said Hill. "The male begged for mercy as he was being beaten, but it didn't really seem to help and eventually Terry left the male laying in the snow just in his swim shorts, essentially unconscious."
The offal in question is what was bobbing in the cauldron. It's organ meat – lamb kidneys, liver, hearts and lungs. Once they were darkly red, glistening specimens of varying texture: firm hearts; resilient, elastic kidneys; puffy, yielding lungs; glutinous liver. Soon, they would be simmered down and ground up.
Because parading something like that about, and then eating it, is so Old Scotland, and more than I can stomach.
But of course, because I come from the rebel highlands.
I'm proud of my Scottish heritage, and the Scottish in everyone.
I'm proud that a nation of warriors has one of the world's strongest peace movements.
I'm proud of a country where social programs are considered a good thing, and university education is free.
Verse Five is a prayer that Sense and Worth shall eventually agree with all mankind. Burns imagines a future world in which all people will live as brothers, in mutual trust and respect. "It's coming yet, for a' that".
It helps me believe that we will beat the bullies and the bigots, and defeat the Cons and their masters in Big Business who would grind us down to dust. Or turn us into slaves.
And when Paolo Nutini, the pride of Paisley, and New Scotland, sings the auld poem.
I must say I greatly enjoyed the sight today of an angry Michael Ignatieff.
Ignatieff mocked the latest round of Conservative ads, including a spot featuring Harper working late in his office.
The ads, Ignatieff said, offer a contrast between "leadership that listens and leadership that wants to impose an ideology Canadians just aren't comfortable with."
Because it's about time. Progressives in this country are angry, over the way the Cons are stealing our country.
The new conservative way is seen in the manner in which politics is now played in Canada. The permanent campaign mode, the politics of aggression and intimidation employed by Mr. Harper, a Prime Minister who doesn’t know what the high road looks like, has been a staple of the hard right of the Republican Party. We had seen elements of this in Canada, but not to the degree employed by today’s Conservatives. So far, the PM has gotten away with his anti-democratic impulses, the emphasis being on “so far.”
Angry at the way they are perverting our values, and corrupting our youth.
Angry at the way they are turning so many Canadians into greedy beasts, who can be bribed by a $100 cheque every month, into killing a national daycare program.
In cancelling the child-care program upon taking office and replacing it with a $100-a-month payment to parents of young children, Harper was throwing a tasty bone to conservatives who believe a woman’s place is in the home.
Angry at the way our progressive leaders can't seem to reflect that anger, and keep rolling over.
The real story of the past five years isn’t Harper’s success — his poll numbers have hovered below 40 per cent — but the timidity of the opposition in mounting a spirited case for progressive policies that would have sparked wide public support, particularly after the 2008 financial crash exposed the fallacies of neo-conservative tax-cutting and deregulation.
Harper should be getting pummeled for his pro-corporate, anti-people agenda. Instead, he’s strutting about arrogantly accusing his opponents of being disrespectful, even as he heads a government that is the most disrespectful —to the vast majority of Canadians — in our history.
Or fighting each other, while our country BURNS.
Oh boy. It can't be said enough. The next election will be the most important election in Canadian history.
The poll finds that 47 per cent of young respondents in Canada feel that it is more important for society to reward individual performance than to share prosperity more equitably. That compares with 39 per cent of their elders.
Indeed, 54 per cent of young people in Canada (about the same as in the U.S.) say they want to "earn a lot of money" -only in China and India is the eagerness for wealth greater.
As well, 62 per cent of young Canadians say an ideal society should be characterized by the lowest possible taxes rather than by the optimal social benefits (exceeded only by the Americans, at 72 per cent). And 44 per cent of the Canadians say they are not ready to pay for retirees' social benefits.
Great eh? Watch out granny, watch out world, here come our little greedsters.
I must say I have trouble believing this poll. I haven't the slightest interest in being piggy rich. Neither do most of my friends. And although some of them are really struggling to pay the bills, none of us would even THINK of not supporting seniors.
But then I suppose nobody should be surprised if some young Canadians are really that greedy.They are bathed in a culture where money means success. And live in a country where Stephen Harper's Cons promote the cult of the individual. Where taxes are bad, and community is communism.
But I'm sure they'll soon learn the hard way that most of them are NEVER going to be rich. The Cons are just the useful idiots of Big Business who want to turn Canada into a jungle. Without a sense of community we will never save this country. Or the planet.
And of course that money isn't everything.
But then I could be wrong and in that case we're in big trouble eh?
So what will it be I wonder?
Young and old TOGETHER? Community makes us stronger and better, and greed is a Con disease?
Or one, two, three, four, pick up the cell phone and fire off the beer cannon?
And party until they JAIL us?
Or four, three, two, one, where did the future go?
Well it wasn't exactly a Nuremberg rally. Just a bunch of sweaty Cons packed into an Ottawa hotel, squealing for their leader.
Harper, Harper, Harper.
But if you had been at Nuremberg, there probably would have been some familiar moments.
Like when Great Strong Leader ranted and raved about law and order, or how the Versailles Treatythe Weimar Republic the Liberals had weakened and humiliated our military. Because you know they're TRAITORS, stabbing Canada in the back.
Or when he squinted through his Himmler glasses, and delivered these priceless lines:
Referring to legislation still before Parliament, he promised to do more because Canadians shouldn’t have to worry “when they turn off the lights at night,” or “look over their shoulders as they walk down the street.”
When that kind of crazy talk is the staple of every fascist dictator from Mussolini to Mugabe. And he is the one who is paralyzing Canadians with FEAR.
But for me the most memorable Nuremberg moment came when he bragged about including Remembrance Day in the Canadian Citizenship Guide. Because you know the Liberals didn't do that because they aren't Canadians.
They're foreigners, Russians, or UNTERMENSCH.
But forgot to mention that Jason Kenney had personally deleted any mention of gay rights from the Conada Guide.
Erased them. Disappeared them. Wiped them out. Even though doing that could KILL gay people.
And this on a day when the brutish homophobia of the Cons was exposed. Again.
You know I try to measure my words as carefully as I can. But when you discriminate against more than a million Canadians just because of who they are, you deserve to be called a bigot, a fascist, or WORSE.
And can you imagine what this deranged right-wing extremist might do if he ever gets a majority? First they came for the Juden faggots, and then they came for the liberated women, the scientists, the secular teachers, the criminal coddling judges and all the others.
Oh boy. When I look at progressives in this country, paralyzed by weakness and division, I despair. For unless we unite we shall not defeat this EVIL.
Of course, gay people will resist. Even if we have to fight them alone. We have no choice.
I wonder whether at least one of Stephen Harper's multiple personalities is regretting his crazed decision to bombard the country's airwaves, with some of the most disgusting attack ads Canada has ever seen.
I doubt it, because denying that he could EVER be wrong is another symptom of his deranged condition.
But he should be sorry, because Michael Ignatieff is right about this one.
"That will be Harper's legacy when we vote him out...People will look back and ask: What did he do for the country? [The answer] will be those ads."
All we will remember is the darkness, and the STENCH.
Even some of his true blue supporters think he went too far.
Clearly pandering to anti-American bigotry, these ads should offend all but the most zealous Tory partisan. To be blunt, they are nothing but mean-spirited, personal attacks that go way beyond the pale.
And how could any decent Canadian not feel the same way or not recoil in DISGUST ?
William Johnson, who wrote a biography of Harper, tries to defend him.
But biographers are notoriously kind with their subjects. And if his argument is that Harper may be Mr Hyde at times, but that's OK because he's also Dr Jekyll, I'm not buying it eh?
I'm buying Christian Nadeau's book Against Harper. Because I agree with him:
His Harper is a totalitarian revolutionary ideologue imposing a society that is "incompatible with our values, that opposes democracy, pluralism, freedom of thought and of expression."
"The election of the Conservatives in 2006 can be compared to a primary tumour. We must act before metastases develop that will obstruct any hope of remission for our society."
And by any standards of human decency, a man who would do what he has done to Canada, our parliamentary democracy, and our precious Canadian values, is unfit to remain in office.
The good news? The cancer may still be spreading, but so is the REVULSION.
I think Stephen Harper made a huge mistake by unleashing those foul attack ads. He set out to destroy the opposition, but he just may have destroyed HIMSELF.
Now we can use those ads against him, and really work this narrative.
From guns, to privatizing medicare, from screwing the poor, to blowing Big Oil. From the death penalty, to those teabagger ads of personal destruction. Stephen Harper and his Cons want to turn us into ugly Amerika.
But we prefer beautiful Canada eh ? And we will DEFEAT them.
Because when you need a narrative, nothing could be as simple and as powerful as that one.
Or if you prefer, because it's Saturday night. And because Stephen Harper can't control himself, neither can I. This one's good too.
OMG. I just read about Ezra Levant's scary experience at the Ottawa Airport. How they wanted to touch his junk.
But he wouldn't let them.
“Secondary screening is invasive, and I don’t believe it should be done without a reason,” Levant said in a series of emails. “I objected and asked to see a manager.”
Because he's got strong feelings about that eh?
“Right now, North America’s civil libertarians are too busy campaigning for the rights of terrorists to care about the fact millions of Americans — and Canadian tourists — are being sexually assaulted.” But those nasty goons did him anyway. After he quietly submitted. Levant said after initially refusing secondary screening, he opted for the scanner but was also patted-down because he had a lip balm in his pocket. Lip balm? Lip balm???? A copy of the Koran, or a copy of Ethical Oil I understand. But that's OUTRAGEOUS !!!!
Oh well. I'm glad to see that Ezra is OK, that they gave him a drink and hopefully a cigarette after it was over. And that he now thinks this sexual assaultviolation minor incident was "boring."
And I suppose it really could have been WORSE.
They could have demanded an anal search, in which case Levant would have been writing about his asshole for the next three years. And isn't that a scary thought? Or even more shocking. Instead of a close encounter with a scandalous scanner.
In the dangerous world we live in, it could have been an even MORE humiliating close encounter.
With a horny vacuum cleaner...
(NSFW)
Oh well. Sometimes you have to learn a lesson the painful way eh? Poor Ezra. Those nasty goons. I wish I could be more sympathetic.
Who says he's just a Beatle's guy, but would KILL for a majority.
The freak who has been spraying smelly Republican-style hate ads out of his asshole like a machinegun. And since the Liberals didn't reply in kind, now looks like an IDIOT. Or a crazy man. Which is EXCELLENT.
But I've got to be honest eh? Right now I'm having trouble getting excited about any kind of political attack ads. When Spring and an election seem so far away.
When even by the standards of The Great White North, it's so damn cold out there...
When this little tugboat ice breaker is the only thing that's keeping the island ferry going.
When the rink on the canal will finally be frozen. But since it's going to feel like minus 30 degrees, it'll be too cold to play this weekend.
When right now I hate WINTER, almost as much as I hate the Cons.
