Stephen Harper, Rob Ford, and the Hoser Nation

It couldn't have been a more disgusting sight, or a more depressing day for Canadian democracy.

Three Canadian Senators sacrificed, along with due process, on the altar of political expediency.

The Senate flexed its muscle Tuesday and in an unprecedented move tossed three of its members — Senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau — out of the chamber, cutting their salaries and use of office resources.

While the morally depraved leader who appointed them, and ordered their summary executions, denied that the RCMP was investigating his own office. 

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says his office is not under investigation by the RCMP, a day after CBC News reported the Mounties are looking for a chain of emails and documents that support Mike Duffy's allegations the Senate expenses scandal reaches into the Prime Minister's Office.

Only to have his office later admit that they were.

After question period, CBC News contacted the Prime Minister's Office for further clarification on whether police have asked it for documents and whether the PMO provided them. In an email to CBC News, Jason MacDonald, the director of communications for Harper, said "Yes. We have actively assisted them."

While in Toronto another debauched Con who lies all the time, turned a teary confession into a Roman circus.



The curtain has drawn on a dramatic day at Toronto City Hall in which Mayor Rob Ford admitted that he had smoked crack cocaine, though the defiant chief magistrate is making no plans to step down from his job.

Snubbed democracy and decency. Demanded that the police chief step down instead of himself.

And the whole world laughed at our corruption.

Because that's what it is eh?

There is no other word to explain how low we have fallen.

And to try to understand how we got to this bad place, one could do worse than read John Doyle's column today, on the decline of the Hoser Nation.

Ford has all the traits of the original McKenzie brothers hoser – the boorish, beer-drinking guys whose most ardent intellectual engagement is in dreaming up schemes to scam the beer store into giving them free beer. But he’s a souped-up version. While Bob and Doug were lovable, the Ford incarnation is mean-spirited and angry.

It’s no coincidence that Don Cherry, king of the contemporary hosers, introduced and unveiled Rob Ford as Mayor of Toronto. He even put the chain of office on Ford’s neck. Brother hosers. He used the occasion to ridicule the Toronto media and “left-wing pinkos.”



For where did people think a man who was blessed by a crass redneck like Don Cherry would take us?

Where did they think a vicious ideologue, who poses as a man of the people, by among other things writing books about hockey, would lead Canada if not into a nightmare?

And what did they think the cult of boorishness, taken to its ugly extreme, would make of this country?

Canada is a different place now. “Canadian liberal values” are dead. The suburban mentality/hoser type guides us and the new hoser type is who we admire and who leads us. The authenticity might be nominal, but it is accepted. It is Canadian-ness now.

But a place where fakers and demagogues hold court...



Who would appeal to the worst angels of our national character, and replace reason with the howl of the mob, to advance their right-wing agendas.

And who if they are not stopped will reduce our cities to jungles, and tear this country apart.

And the good news? They will be stopped. Stephen Harper will not escape the Senate scandal.

Harper may have shut down one avenue of trouble, but plenty more loom.Duffy, in particular, is expert in surreptitiously making documents available. He may not yet be done because after two weeks of successfully picking at Harper’s credibility he will likely look for a proper place and time for his next salvo

There are continuing RCMP investigations, a Senate audit, the potential for Wright to step forward to defend his reputation and holes in the story of a prime minister who maintains he was in the dark as a deal was cut to pay the disgraced senator’s expenses, a fake narrative was crafted and his legal fees were paid by the party. It’s going to take more than three Senate ejector seats to get past that.

And Rob Ford will not escape his demons...



Theo Moudakis/Toronto Star

Because we may not fully understand what is happening to this Hoser Nation, but we do know that if we have any self respect left, we cannot allow those grotesque Cons to debase us further.

We know that a fish rots from the head down.

We know the source of all political corruption.

We shall attack it harder than ever before.

And we shall remove it as soon as we can...



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