It's been only a week since Andrew Scheer declared that bigots are not welcome in his party.
“I find the notion that one’s race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation would make anyone in any way superior or inferior to anyone else absolutely repugnant. And if there’s anyone who disagrees with that, there’s the door. You are not welcome here.”
Only to have one of his MPs Michael Cooper behave like a bigot.
And receive only this gentle slap on the wrist.
Which needless to say the victim of Cooper's bigotry, Faisal Khan Suri, found woefully inadequate.
A Muslim anti-racism activist, who was berated by a Conservative MP last week, says Andrew Scheer’s response is far from adequate and that Michael Cooper should be booted out of caucus if the Tory leader is serious about showing racists the door.
Especially since Cooper not only insulted him, but also helped spread the murderous manifesto of the Christchurch killer.
“That manifesto should not be in the hands of any Canadian whatsoever. That is the most grotesque thing that I could ever see… Why would I even want to have or read a document that somewhat dignifies and justifies the murder of 51 innocent people?”
A document so foul it is banned in New Zealand.
But despite that, Cooper is still listed as belonging to Scheer’s shadow cabinet as deputy justice critic.
Which makes a farce of Scheer's vow to purge his party of bigots.
But what makes all of this even more obscene, is the reason why Cooper was never in any danger of being shown the door.
And that's because he is a member of Scheer's inner circle of anti-abortion warriors.
A member in good standing as certified by the hate mongering anti-choice and anti-gay group Campaign Life in this 2015 report card...
He is one of the young Con MPs favoured by Scheer, like Rachael Harder who Scheer tried to turn into a martyr after MPs from other parties rejected his attempt to make her the chair of the parliamentary committee on the Status of Women.
Who is also a favourite of the religious bigots at Campaign Life.
The Campaign Life Coalition endorsed Harder when she first ran for the Conservatives in 2015 because she filled out a questionnaire saying she believed life begins at conception and would work to introduce and pass laws to ban abortion once elected.
As is Dane Lloyd, the alt-right sympathizer I have written about before, who also gets the green light from Campaign Life.
And like Harder is a special favourite of Andrew Scheer...
Who favoured him over the more moderate candidate Rona Ambrose had chosen to replace her when she retired.
As Scheer slowly and stealthily works to turn the Cons into a party with the numbers to restrict and diminish the rights of women and LGBT Canadians.
For unlike other right-wing politicians who use religion to achieve power, he is more interested in using power to advance the hardline tenets of his religion.
Which makes this message he released again yesterday nothing but a farce...
We are all children of God and there is equal and infinite value in all of us. pic.twitter.com/FTcZDS34ek— Andrew Scheer (@AndrewScheer) June 2, 2019
You know, sometimes I feel that a lot of people in this country are sleepwalking to disaster.
For despite the growing influence of the religious right in the U.S., they still cling to the absurd belief it can't happen here.
When it's already happening, and if Andrew Scheer and his ugly un-Canadian Cons are not defeated.
We will wake up one day in a country we don't recognize....
Oh, but according to the lying press, Justin Trudeau is a fake feminist because he didn't let the mean girl who keeps pulling up the football bully him out of his job. He's a racist because blah-blah-blah Grassy Narrows and that poor victimized truth-teller. Meanwhile let's ignore the racists, incels, and Lebensborn womb-policers of the Handmaids for Hitler Party. See also, Hillary Clinton is a fake feminist because she didn't dump her philandering husband, and she's a racist because something-something hot sauce in her purse. So let's ignore President Pussygrab the son of a Klansman, and Pope Penance the fetus fetishist. The Con-friendly double standard invoked by the M$M absolutely makes me sick.
ReplyDeleteHi Jackie...I know how you feel. The Con friendly MSM is depressing to behold, and they have paved the way for a Scheer victory in October. According to this Abacus poll the under 40s are still with Trudeau of the other progressive parties, but the over 60s have gone Con just like they did during the Harper years, which I find very disappointing. Still, none of us can afford to become despondent, and must fight as hard as we can for the Canada we believe in...
DeleteOh look Jackie! Two comments from the M$M that calls out Scheer for tickling Cooper's wrists.
Deletehttps://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/keith-gerein-scheers-kid-glove-treatment-of-st-albert-mp-sends-all-the-wrong-messages
https://globalnews.ca/news/5345459/andrew-scheer-conservatives-racism/
I guess it's better than nothing but still a sad state for the Con MSM's failure, as a whole, to call out Andy's pandering to his beloved deplorables.
JD
@JD -- Wow, a whopping two op-eds wagging their finger at David Dimples Duke. And, I'm sure, about 5 minutes of "discussion" on the At Issue panel because there's nothing to see here, and the NPCs all agree: Pretty Hair Man Bad. Meanwhile we get 50,000,000 op-eds and three straight months of beating a dead unicorn into glue to portray Justin as an abuser of women, a racist himself, a fraudulent hypocrite, and a crook. Way to go, M$M! No chance whatsoever the KKK will take your Benghazi Emails away!
DeleteIf Andrew Scheer had any integrity or decency at all, or any genuine concern for the well-being of Canadians, particularly Canadians of racial/ethnic minority status and other marginalized identities, the first person he'd have removed from caucus a long time ago is... Andrew Scheer. He'd call a press conference to imitate his hero Trump and announce to the whole country: "I'm fired."
Wow...the tolerance of other viewpoints and non-judgmental acceptance of different lifestyles here just gives me such a warm, fuzzy feeling of belonging. I just don't understand why so many people think "progressives" are so hateful?
ReplyDeleteIf it was up to the left anyone who opposes abortion would be sent to a gulag. They're modern day puritans.
DeleteYou're whining, Fred.
DeleteBothsiderism is the default of the desperate.
Unless you and your fellow Conservatives have an epiphany, and add "tolerance of other viewpoints and non-judgmental acceptance of different lifestyles" to your own principles and practices, you best look to the mote in your own eye.
Everything on the Conservative platform is contradiction to (and denies) "the tolerance of other viewpoints and non-judgmental acceptance of different lifestyles".
Hate STARTS on the Conservative side; progressives RESPOND to it, because we hate hate.
Hi Fred ...what are you on about? The intolerance comes from Cons like Cooper, but you are blaming progressives? Are you reading the story upside down or are you losing your marbles?
DeleteHi anon 8:30 AM....Your comment makes as much sense as Fred's does. Nobody is forcing anyone to have an abortion, it's the right wingers who would send women to jail for having one. People can be anti-abortion, but women should be free to choose whether they want one or not, or become second-class citizens which is where I draw the line....
DeleteSo I guess the U.N. is an intolerant hate group to you, Fred the Neanderthal?
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/jun/04/us-abortion-policy-extremist-hate-torture-un-commissioner-kate-gilmore
The US policy on abortion is a form of extremist hate that amounts to the torture of women, the UN deputy high commissioner for human rights told the Guardian.
The attack on women’s rights was a “crisis”, organised and well-resourced by very extremist groups.
Gilmore, who last week spoke at a Guardian event discussing the pushback on reproductive rights, said opposition groups – the most high profile of which are conservative, Christian organisations – were well organised and well resourced, and were ignoring evidence in their pursuit of ideological goals. “It’s an assault on truth, science and universal values and norms,” she said.
“You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.”
If you were really Christians you wouldn't take such sadistic pleasure in punishing women. Maybe you should take a lesson or two from the floppy-haired feminist teacher from Papineau -- er, Galilee...
Fred! I see you've slithered away from Kinsella's little webshite and graced us with your presence.
DeleteI have been thinking back to how many Conservatives "retired" or are they just waiting in the wings! PM and RA to name two......Hmmmmmmmmmmmm!
ReplyDeleteHi Marmalade....the only Con who is still lurking in the shadows is Stephen Harper. His faithful followers have helped Ford and Kenney, and if they elect Scheer you will see Harper re-emerge and seek revenge on those who defeated him...
DeleteStephen Harper... His faithful followers have helped Ford and Kenney, and if they elect Scheer you will see Harper re-emerge and seek revenge on those who defeated him...
DeleteShould the worst happen, I really do worry about phony charges being brought against Trudeau and phony "inquiries" being brought against the Liberal Party. When you look at how long the GOP and now Trump have spent "investigating" Hillary Clinton and the family foundation, it becomes obvious that they're unhinged and have gone full-fascist and want to jail their opponents over nothing. If not worse -- the alt-right nutcases who follow them have been descending on Chappaqua stalking her and coming dangerously close. Don't think it can't happen here. Presidents and First Ladies have secret service protections for life, but I don't think prime ministers have a lifelong RCMP detail. Otherwise Justin would have had his own since he was a teenager when Pierre retired, and I don't believe that was the case, not unless anyone happens to recall an armored motorcade and cadre of bodyguards escorting the young math teacher to work at West Point Grey Academy. I keep going back to Scheer's bizarre Ceausescu "fascination" and what horrors that could portend for the Trudeau family. Justin could probably afford private security for himself, for Sophie and the kids, and Margaret, maybe even put watchdogs around Sacha's place, but what's to stop the radicalized Cons from weaponizing the official forces and sending in the guards on a 3am raid? Doug has a "buddy" in charge of the OPP, he arrested little old ladies protesting at Queen's Park, and has his thugs intimidating the parents of autistic children... he doesn't seem to have bothered with "lock her up" against Kathy Wynne, but Trudeau is a much higher-profile target, a prize trophy that the thug party at all levels would love to have on their wall!
I don't trust Harper, he's a man on a mission and reports have surfaced here and there that he and his wife are separated, so he's got all the time on his hands and plenty of pent-up anger he could unleash. I wouldn't even put it past him to step into the leadership role and re-crown himself PM if Scheer "decided" to "spend more time with his family," the old cliché. The man is dangerous, he's in league with some brutal totalitarians like Orbán in Hungary (who chased Iggy out of the country and was on the verge of having him arrested as a "Soros foot soldier"), and for all anyone knows, Putin himself. If the worst result happens in October -- and by God I hope it doesn't -- then for his own good, Trudeau shouldn't sit in opposition. He should flee the country. It's too dangerous for him and I never thought I'd say that about Canada. What Harper and his cronies would let loose would make the October Crisis look like a pillow fight. This isn't your father's Conservative Party any more than the Republicans are the party of Eisenhower. To paraphrase Barenaked Ladies and Bruce Cockburn, these are haters in a dangerous time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBysvBtXcrA
Maybe it's because Cooper is a far right bigot just like Andy except with less impulse control.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe it's because the leadership contest was uncomfortably close. Sheer needs to stop the bleeding and keep Bernier's Bigoted Bros in house. His continual dog whistling, his pandering to to the rabid/violence speaking right wing nut jobs and his coddling of this little fascist show the tendencies to racism, sexism and homophobia that form the policy base of Andy's arseholes.
Hi rumleyfips....I think you're right on both counts. Scheer is as bigoted as Cooper, but is more controlled and able to hide behind his smile. And I also think that he is still obsessed with Bernier and is afraid that he might steal some of his ugly base. Unfortunately Bernier is going nowhere, and progressives are the ones in danger of splitting the vote and handing Schee the election on a platter....
DeleteUnfortunately, my province has a bad habit of flushing Conservative turds around the toilet bowl until they wind up in a Conservative caucus somewhere. It incredibly frustrating that a province that was home to the "Famous 5, Canada's first mosque and a "git 'er done" attitude should evolve into our current state. Way Way Up
ReplyDeleteHi Way Way Up....nice hearing from you, I hope that everything is going good. It's easy to blame Alberta, but the Trump influence is now everywhere in Canada. Our Canadian values, and the pride in being different used to protect us, but greed and divisive politics have weakened that shield and I'm afraid the situation could get a lot worse before it gets better...
Delete.. glad to hear you're sailing Simon.. its a blast.. I myself love Albacore & Hobie Cats.. and glad to crew aboard the bigger beasties on the waters, Ontario or Caribbean
ReplyDeleteSuggestion.. expect nothing from Scheer et al.. behind the evangelical posturing is multi millionaire partisan ministrone and pablum.. thriving on our dime. I define that as a political parasite.. its why Harper brought him aboard his plague ship.
At the same time.. be aware that Justin Trudeau is swimming offshore at high tide.. a rip often follows. What is a riptide ? A riptide is Jason Kenney, the UCP and a dazed and confused Alberta. Jason & Justin are 'negotiating' the 'accomodation' of letting tar sands tailings ponds be 'vented' downstream into the Mackenzie River System. You know.. seeing as neither the tar sands corporations or Alberta actually 'regulated' a damn thing regarding such pollution.. or bothered to collect incrementally or via 'deposit' from such obvious polluters.
Meanwhile Justin decided to 'buy us' a 60 year old pipeline & the government granted legal 'rights' & permits to expand it - on our dime.. and thrilling the owners and investors of this former Enron operated tar sands pipeline to a Burnaby BC tank farm.. off to Washington State & California goes the dilbit. Yes.. a small percentage of the pipeline shipments are refined fuels for local BC distribution.
Bottom line, Simon.. Lavalin is involved in this pipeline.. as they are in the Site C Christy Clark Memorial Past The Point Of No Return Dam.. approved by Justin et al.. to provide cheap electricity to tar sands expansion and fracking the daylights out of both BC and Alberta.
98 % of Canada's remaining petroleum reserves are Tar Sands.. The residue of some 350,000 retired or abandoned or active & leaking wells.. will either be remediated or all of it abandoned entirely.. to leak methane and CO2 for decades or generations.. that is the reality.. and the buffalo will not roam
Who cares to estimate the cost to Alberta.. or face up to the grim reality.. that resource extraction companies that WE currently subsidize will 'WALK' .. Alberta would go bankrupt trying to pay for remediation.. Canadians would too.. The total COST is beyond comprehension.. not just remediation.. but the downstream destruction of environment, habitat, species - both terrestrial and marine to extend this extraction and sellout. This is not The Economy of Canadians.. this is the Economy of thieves deceivers and political animals enabling them.
These question are not going away.. do I think Andrew Scheer is a solution ?? Haha.. he an evangel boat anchor who would drown us all.. Trudeau needs to wake up.. get real.. real fast or all in all he's just as dangerous as Scheer
Hope your more die hard partisan commenters enjoy that blast of reality.. but I myself examine the weather & its pretty obvious what's coming over the horizon
Hi salamander...I don't disagree with a lot of what you say. I don't like the idea of more pipelines either, and I think it was a mistake for the government to buy one. But national unity is a problem that prime minister's cannot ignore. And Trudeau was also hoping the pipeline would allow Notley to start greening that province with emission caps and carbon taxes. So all of that also has to be taken into account. When I see Wall the former premier of Saskatchewan threatening separation if Bills C-69 and C-48 are passed, it's clear to me that the situation is more complicated than a lot of people believe. It's hard to fight climate change in a country where so many people aren't willing to make any sacrifices, and blaming it all on Trudeau won't solve the problem...
DeleteA blast of reality indeed Salamander, thank you.
DeleteAlberta rural municipalities and landowners are not being paid taxes or land lease rights by struggling oil and gas companies causing residential property tax payers to make up the shortfall.
The Orphan Well Fund has far too many "orphans" to be "remediated".Indeed a better solution might be to divert all the subsidies, corporate tax breaks, and grants given to the major oil companies to "rehabilitate" (giving work to local oil service companies) these orphan wells. Alberta might get a payback.
As it is, all those aforementioned subsidies etc are coming out of our kids and grandchildrens pockets with
no thought for the morrow.
The Alberta "fracking boom" developed technology now
( stolen?) being used in West Texas.
The world is awash in oil and gas and Alberta seems bound and determined under Mr Kenney and, formerly under Ms. Motley to literally give it away even subsidizing the effort leaving a blighted bankrupt landscape.
Meanwhile,Global Affairs Canada, reformulated under Stephen Harper, leads the charge to "liberate" Venezuela's oil for US oil companies as stated by John Bolton.
The US, particularly the Koch Bros with interests in both Venezuela and Alberta (similar grades of heavy tar/oil) play Canada, regardless of who is in power,like an abused woman who keeps coming back for more.
Our slavish desire to please and appease and be like Americans and uphold their version of the "rule of law" which has raised the ire of China.
What fraud or sanction law against Canada has been committed in the case of Ms.Meng? John McCallum was fired for pondering this question.
Now we have Alberta canola, legume and pork producers targeted with retribution for the detention of Ms Meng who "pays for her own security" for some reason.
I like Justin Trudeau, I even voted liberal and a Liberal MP represents my Alberta constituency, but our foreign sucks!
To see the cavortings at Global Affairs, to witness the pandering to Corporate Canada, to see the environment sacrificed makes it tough to feel proud to be Canadian.
We seem to yearn to be second tier Americans and we all know how much they are loved in the world.
Our slavish desire to please and appease and be like Americans and uphold their version of the "rule of law" which has raised the ire of China.
DeleteWell, you know who's to blame for that absolutist black-or-white thinking on the "rule of law" lacking any regard for nuance or mitigating circumstances, but her name is not worth mentioning. Pretty sure her departing words might have been,
"My way or the Huawei. Nobody puts baby in a corner or you get run over by a tank."
Nicely put JB.But from what I have seen and read that is is mostly American tanks or better, helicopter gunships that are doing the "running over".
DeleteJust ask Julian Assange or better yet the families of those Reuters newsmen shot up in Iraq.
Is a flypast gonna happen this year for the Canadian led "victory" over Libya?
Warmonger con!
Thankfully Canada is not the US and support for anti abortion legislation is slightly less than 20% so all the Scheer Reformacons can do is nip around the edges in hopes of society returning to a godly past at some point in the future. Traditionally the religious reform base has been satisfied with targeting the vulnerable through sneaky legislation such as defunding, conscientious medical objection, free hate speech etc. but with the Mad Max option on the table it might not be enough. Hopefully the liberals will drive the wedge in deep and force the Cons to make a choice between being socially inclusive or retrograde.
ReplyDeletehttp://angusreid.org/faith-in-canada/
RT
If I might play devil's advocate a moment, I have skimmed the manifesto myself and I do think it is instructive insofar as it shines a light into the mind of those radicalized by 4chan and 8chan. The perpetrator literally describes being in France and seeing a Muslim family exiting a grocery store, which filled him with such rage that he had to pull his car over to calm himself down. Now, can we all imagine the modern Tory experiencing such anxiety? Perhaps not to the same extent, but the same discomfort is definitely felt by right-wingers of all stripes: they don't dress like us, they don't talk like us, they don't believe the same God we do etc.
ReplyDeleteIn short, they don't like the same people as these extremists. Muslims, the LGBT, feminists, anti-racists, all routinely scapegoated by the modern conservative. So the actions they take in opposition is just a function of how much they hate those groups.
What this Cooper guy was trying to do was get ahead of the obvious parallels that people are going to draw between modern conservatism, xenophobic and nativist as it is, and the extreme actions of Mosque shooters like this guy or the Quebec City perp. It clearly backfired on him and only shined a light on the commonalities between them.
Hi RT...I don't believe the Cons would ever be able to ban abortion, but they could pass bills that could make it all but impossible for women, especially poorer ones, to access proper abortion services. But of course the main reason the Cons use the abortion issue is to pander to their religious base, so progressives should indeed pressure them into choosing between their base and most Canadians...
ReplyDelete