Last April Andrew Scheer had a secret meeting in a secluded lodge in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, to discuss how best to defeat Justin Trudeau's Liberals. The day-long strategy session, held April 11 at the Azuridge Estate Hotel in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, brought together some of Calgary’s most prominent business leaders and high-profile Conservatives and their operatives at the invitation of a little-known pro-oil advocacy group called the Modern Miracle Network. And one of the reasons it was so secret was the presence of a Republican operative with a very unsavoury reputation.
Well there was Donald Trump in Arizona yesterday, whipping up the racist rabble who want him to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. While his supporters kicked and punched a protester. Another Donald Trump event erupted in violence in Tucson, Arizona on Saturday night: a rally attendee was arrested after he punched and repeatedly kicked a protester as he was being escorted out of the rally by security. And Republican leaders scrambled to come up with a strategy to try to derail his campaign.
I hope you're enjoying the spectacle of Donald Trump destroying the Republican Party, because I sure am. It's better than the pictures from Pluto eh? Every day it just gets more spectacular. Every day that Con clown circus just spins more out of control.
As you may know Pope Francis' encyclical on climate change has been leaked to the media before its scheduled release on Thursday. Pope Francis will this week call for changes in lifestyles and energy consumption to avert the “unprecedented destruction of the ecosystem” before the end of this century, according to a leaked draft of a papal encyclical. In a document released by an Italian magazine on Monday, the pontiff will warn that failure to act would have “grave consequences for all of us”. And not only is it a clear attempt to steal his thunder. Even more ominously, it shows that there are wolves in the Vatican who may be out to destroy him.
At first sight it couldn't be a more depressing sight, or more of a nightmare. Team Mitch McConnell and his ghastly Republican tea baggers, seizing control of Congress, and promising to bring change to America. Which has some progressives in that country wondering whether it's the end of irony. Or the beginning of fascism.
It was one of the first things Stephen Harper did when he came to power. Declare war children. By destroying plans for a national childcare program. Parents have been paying for that decision ever since, with a lack of daycare spaces, and exorbitant fees. And children have been paying for it with their lives. But still the Harperite cult is unrepentant.
He has always been more of an American style politician than a Canadian one. The closest thing to Richard Nixon and his dirty trick Republicans this country has ever seen. He brought their disgusting attack ads to Canada. And his foul Unfair Elections Act is right out of the Republican playbook.
He's the most Republican looking MP I've ever seen. A ghastly little fanatic who could just have easily have been suckled by Karl Rove as he was suckled by Stephen Harper. And of course his foul voter suppression bill is straight out of the Republican play book, or the anus of Amerika. But what Pierre Poilievre doesn't seem to have considered is that the bill could blow up in his face. Or that the Cons could win the battle but lose the war.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Obama and Mitt Romney had a debate but only Romney showed up.
Mitt Romney pressed the reset button last night on his campaign. He presented himself as a compassionate centrist, deeply concerned about the fate of the unemployed and low-income households struggling to climb the economic ladder in a stagnant economy. Posing as a man who cares about the poor, when that callous millionaire has spent his whole life screwing them. Spewing one Big Lie after the other. While Obama just stood looking there looking like a wimp, and let him get away with murder.
Don't worry. You can watch it all here in 45 seconds...
The irony?
By the standards of today's Teabagger Party, Ronald Reagan was a tax and spend communist.
When he was governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state” until that point in an effort to balance the budget (How would that sound to todays’ GOP candidates, all of whom indicated they would not raise taxes by a single dollar even if it were offset with $10 in spending cuts). Once president, Reagan raised taxes seven out of eight of his years in office—including four times in just two years.
The tragedy?
There are no greater teabaggers than Dumbo Harper and Jimbo Flaherty...
Because apart from their plans to kill government, come hell or high water, they're "flexible."
Sort of.
We showed we could respond effectively to a global downturn. Of course now debts and deficits are the problem. So that’s why our plan is right, to reduce the deficit, to reduce our debts because we don’t want to see the kind of problems we are seeing in Europe and elsewhere here.”
Nevertheless, with instability now in Europe, and difficulties in the U.S., Canada’s economy, he said, “could get sideswiped here and the government has to be ready for that.”
Or put it another way, they don't know what they're doing.
The horror?
Expect what's happening in Michigan to soon happen here.
Gov. Rick Snyder on Tuesday signed into law a stricter, four-year lifetime limit on cash welfare benefits, prompting advocates for the poor to warn that tens of thousands of residents will find themselves without cash assistance on Oct. 1.
Because can you imagine what The Great White North Detroit is going to look like after Dumbo and Jimbo have finished with it? So much for the economic miracle.
Not that I blame the government for hoodwinking Canadians. That’s politics.
The fault lies with the media. Even a quick look at basic numbers would have revealed that the Conservatives were telling a whopper. But far too many journalists didn’t bother to look at the numbers.
They were too busy applauding.
Good one Jimbo. Thanks IDIOTS.
Oh boy. It's a teabagger world people.
How could those incompetent, ideological, brutish Cons be running our economy in a time of Global Depression?
Well I see the ghastly game is finally over, and many progressives are accusing Obama of caving in to the fanatical teabaggers. Settling for a Satan Sandwich.
Now I love Orwell. And after reading Krugman's column I'm seriously considering stocking up on food, water, and video games to prepare for the darkness ahead.
I understand their disappointment. It's not easy to see The Great Black Hope Captain America looking so diminished...
But here's the thing eh? Obama had no choice but to give in to the teabaggers on the question of spending cuts and taxing the rich. He couldn't play Russian roulette with the global economy. But he hasn't lost yet.
When the time comes to decide what to cut, and more Americans realize that the pound of flesh they were screaming for is being carved out of their buttocks, Obama can make his case for raising taxes by asking the American people to decide between Mary in her wheelchair, or her hospital bed, and Bernie in his corporate jet.
Politics is the art of the possible. Timing is everything. And the teabaggers just made his job easier by sticking it to the Republican hawks.
So I wouldn't be too hard on Obama eh? Because those progressives who call him a Republican are underestimating him. And those who would abandon him are living in a fantasy world.
I am not blind to Obama's shortcomings, or to the group of Democratic Senators beholden to corporate America...
But those people are not our problem right now. The real issue is simple: you can not negotiate with sociopaths. All you can do is minimize the damage before you vote them out of office.
Angry at Obama? Fine. Glowing with the white hot hatred of a thousand suns at what the GOP is doing to our country?
No?
Then you're part of the problem.
The good news? This was only one battle, and the only thing that counts is who wins The War.
The teabaggers have shown their ugly face, and are sure to further divide their party
Boehner got boned. Obama lives to fight again.
It may be a Satan Sandwich, with a sideorder of "Satan Fries" as la Pelosi said. But in the end the RepubliCons will EAT IT.
And best of all, Stephen Harper's Cons and Rob Ford's gang will now more easily be seen by even the dumbest Canadians as Canada's very own teabaggers.
The Canadian chapter of the tax cut fairies...
And hopefully one day be driven swatted from power, by the power of almighty reason.
Republican Senator David Vitter is probably best known for being a good client of the so-called D.C. Madam's high-class hooker service. Getting caught. And getting away with it. He promised The Great Mamoona and his poor wife he was very very sorry....and he'd NEVER pay for it again. But he's always been a whore for Big Business. So now he's wanking furiously trying to screw Canada.
Vitter was asked at a town hall meeting about the fact that he opposes government health care, but supports re-importing prescription drugs from, as a constituent said, "countries that have socialized medicine." Vitter has campaigned in the past on re-importing drugs from Canada.
"My ultimate goal," Vitter explained, "is to use that (re-importation) to cause that (pricing) system to collapse." Lordy. How did a high-class hooker end up with a sleazy slug like Vitter?
Meanwhile.... right out of the darkness of RepubliCon Amerika..... another horror story.
She had been in a car accident. She said she needed me to pick her up take her to the hospital. She was too afraid to take the ambulance that was already there. She was terrified that it would bankrupt her.
Here was a woman who in her first car accident had broken her back, yet what was nearly bringing her to tears this time was the fear that she would once again be losing years to fighting for her financial life.
Can you imagine being in a car accident and being too afraid to call an ambulance?
And these crazy animal Cons have the nerve to attack OUR beautiful human system? So what is Stephen Harper waiting for to defend it? Oh right.
You know..... the National Health System in Britain has also come under attack from these RepubliCons. And the Brits have been fighting back because they understand that this is not just an attack on their health system. It's also an attack on their country and its VALUES.
So I thought this cartoon by Martin Rowson of The Guardian summed it all up nicely....
(click pic to enlarge) The EVIL loose in Amerika. The horror and the FEAR
And of course the MADNESS of it all.
So all the great Steve Bell had to add was the GREED.
Will that be cash...... or EYEBALL? Oh medicare. Oh Canada.
As you probably know right-wingers in the U.S. and their backers in Big Insurance have been waging war on Obama's healthcare plan.
By trying to cloud and confuse the issue, and sending out mobs to shoutdown Democrats trying to sell the plan.
"The Republicans and their allied groups desperate after losing two consecutive elections and every major policy fight on Capitol Hill ... are inciting angry mobs of a small number of rabid right wing extremists funded by K Street Lobbyists to disrupt thoughtful discussions about the future of health care in America taking place in Congressional Districts across the country,"
Now progressives in the U.S. are finally fighting back. By targeting the mobs...
And the big insurance companies.
And all I can say is....WOOHOO!!!!! It's about time.
We progressives are fighting for a better world. The Cons are just trying to keep things the way they are, or take us back to a darker age.
In the U.S. as in Canada the message should be the same. Don't try to reason with these corrupt, racist, homophobic, women hating reactionaries.
Hit them, hit them, hit them as hard as we can. Until the Cons are on their knees.
Since Stephen Harper refuses to defend our medicare system from the all-out attack by right-wingers in the United States. Which is also an attack on our Canadian values. The values he doesn't believe in.
And by so doing is not only insulting Canadians but also confusing Americans who need all the help they can get. I thought I'd write a short note to try to clear up things, and help them make the right choice:
Dear Neighbours
Since I live right next to you I couldn't help but notice there's been a lot of shouting and banging on the wall, about Obama's healthcare plan. And that the Republicans and the big greedy insurance companies are trying to make idiots out of you. By dumping on OUR medicare system.
Which is ridiculous eh? Because compared to yours our system is the BEST.
You see...in our country when you get sick all you have to worry about is getting well. Because we believe all sick people have a right to be treated equally....in the pursuit of good health and happiness. Sound familiar?
While in your country it's all about squeezing the sick for profits.
For Potter it was a dreadful realisation that healthcare in America had failed millions of poor, sick people and that he, and the industry he worked for, did not care about the human cost of their relentless search for profits. "It was over-powering. It was just more than I could possibly have imagined could be happening in America,"
"I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick: all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors."
So in our country when you arrive at a hospital the first person who sees you is a doctor or a nurse. While in your country it's usually a clerk demanding to know how you are going to pay for your treatment. With cash, or a credit card, your house, or EVERYTHING you own?
Which can make you even SICKER eh?
And if you can't pay it's off to the Zimbabwe welfare hospital....or the cattle barn.
So when you see those ridiculous TV ads just remember those greedy grubbers are just trying to fool you so they can keep making money out of your MISERY.
Don't listen to that Canadian woman,Shona Holmes, who says in one of those ads she was going to die because she couldn't get an operation. When in fact she wasn't. Just remember who is funding her challenge. And who is paying for those crazy ads.
Rick Scott, a former hospital company chief executive, leads a group called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. He was forced to resign as C.E.O. after his company defrauded the government through overbilling and is now spending his time trying to block meaningful health care reform by terrifying us with commercials of “real-life stories of the victims of government-run health care.”
Remember too....because this is REALLY important...that thanks to our "socialist" medicare system we live longer on average than you do. And when it comes to those famous waiting times...well....why don't I let some other hosers tell you about them...
Yup. Those are real hosers. Always complaining about something.
Oh....and one more thing. And this is why I find your ugly squabble so RIDICULOUS.
Even if Obama does manage to improve your healthcare system, it STILL won't be as good as ours.
Sorry. Only in Canada eh?
Good luck. Your proud to be a Canadian friend.
Simon -------------------------------------------------------------- P.S. If our RepubliCon Prime Minister Stephen Harper makes a commercial attacking medicare. Because he spent FIFTEEN years trying to destroy it, and he hates it sooooooooo much. Don't listen to him either....
Golly. It looks as if the redneck, racist Republicons have failed to ignite a nation-wide revolt against Black Hitler and his Communist plans to steal their guns....and read their minds. But at least it was a good K... K... Klown show. The day of "tea parties" pushed by Republican operatives and partisan advocacy groups such as FreedomWorks, that sought to protest the Obama government's tax and stimulus policies by encouraging people to 'wave tea bags' brought about only a few hundred "tea-baggers" in most parts of the U.S., despite relentless promotion by Fox News TV hosts.
Oh no. They set out to wave their bags and ended up biting them? Ouch. And don't you LOVE this?
A 68-year-old woman at the Sunbury Pennsylvania protest had to be rescued by police from the Susquehanna River when she inadvertently fell in while trying to dump tea bags in it.
Caramba. I hope she wasn't rescued by a black man. And then there's this dumbassitude:
According to reports, organizers of the D.C. event were told by National Park Service officials that the "million tea bags" they had hauled in on the back of a pickup would have to be taken away, rather than be dumped as planned. They reportedly complied with the request after realizing they didn't have the correct protest permit.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a local think tank, offered to provide its 12th floor board room as an alternate venue to dump the tea bags.
That'll teach them to get dumb rednecks to fill up a pickup AND fill out a permit. And what the fuck is the Competitive Enterprise Institute? Oh right.
Which just about tells you all you need to know about this so-called "grass roots protest."
Together with this ugly photograph...
In short: A bunch of white old people and rednecks got together and tried to start a revolution...to drive the Fascist/Communist nigger out of the White House. And stop the fags from stealing their children etc etc...
And were used like dish rags by a bunch of rich people and companies that don't want to pay taxes.
But since the RepubliCons are now just a rump, and their failed Bush policies are rotting in the recession graveyard, nobody really cares what these tea-baggers do or say. So all they ended up doing was making us LAUGH. And proving that you can't talk and tea bag. Today it's the RepubliCons, tomorrow it will be Stephen Harper's ReformCons...the last of the Bush stooges. The Cons may make excellent K....K....Klowns. But with enemies as dumb and as krazy as that.... How can we LOSE?
As you may know right-wingers in the United States are planning a series of so-called tea parties.
But Alice and the March Hare aren't invited.
These guys are....
So naturally the Department of Homeland Security is slightly concerned. (PDF)
Rightwing extremists are harnessing this historical election as a recruitment tool. Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms ownership and use.
Anti-Semitic extremists attribute these losses to a deliberate conspiracy conducted by a cabal of Jewish “financial elites.” These “accusatory” tactics are employed to draw new recruits into rightwing extremist groups and further radicalize those already subscribing to extremist beliefs.
And I don't blame the DHS.
Because these Cons aren't just krazy.....they're DANGEROUS.
Fight them now or fight them later.
The sooner these Con krazies are taken to a concentration camp....or a secure mental health facility.
Well I suppose it had to happen someday. Stephen Harper's mask finally fell off. He confused Preston Manning's crummy Con conference with a beer garden...or a Baptist Church. And the monster was finally revealed. Harper told the group that his version of conservatism is summed up "in three Fs:freedom, family and faith."
He said individual freedom is vital but it must be tempered by family and faith. Faith in all its forms teaches . . . that there is a right and wrong beyond mere opinion or desire. Most importantly, it teaches us that freedom is not an end in itself, that how freedom is exercised matters as much as freedom itself."
Because by their words you shall know them. And let's be absolutely clear. Not only are the three Fs the slogan of every tinpot fascist dictator from Franco and Salazar to Pinochet and Bush.
It's also the favourite slogan of the Christian Right....including the reactionary, homophobic, anti-choice fanatics from the Family Research Council.
“Family, Faith, & Freedom.” Although these three values seem benign, the framing strategy constructed by the FRC painted a dire picture in which same sex marriage and abortion are threatening America from within, while terrorism is threatening the family from without—a frame that points to the terrorist attacks on 9/11, while leaping over criticism over the war in Iraq, other specific military interventions and the economy. Which makes me wonder who wrote this speech? Was it Harper, or his new/nouveau Deputy Chief of Staff Darrel Reid...the former President of Focus on the Family? Or one of the many other thecons in the cloisters of the PMO?
You know I'm not surprised that Harper said what he said. His pretending to be a Liberal, so he can fool Canadians into giving him a majority, has his rabid base foaming at the mouth and threatening to desert him. So he had to send them a message: I'm still Stephen your Godly servant....I'm still one of YOU. *Hisssss* What does surprise me is that so few in the MSM seemed to hear the coded message or react to it. Because after this, any decent Canadians who don't understand what a threat Stephen Harper's SoCons are to our country and its values, should get brain transplants.
Before they wake up in a Canada they don't recognize. Fight them. Fight them. Don't let them win....
Uh oh. It looks like somebody forgot to warn David Frum that now that Rush Limbaugh is the de facto Fuhrer , Mussolini , Great Fat Leader of the Republican Party. Any RepubliCon who doesn't kiss his enormous ass PAYS.
So when Frummy wrote this about The Porculus. With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party...
He found that out the hard way. On Tuesday evening, the radio host Mark Levin opened his show with an angry shouted 10-minute monologue in which he called me (among other choice terms) a “putz,” an “a-hole,”a “frat boy,” “irrelevant,” and - ouch! - “this Canadian.”
And The Porculus got to do one of his patented victory dances...on Frum's limp body. Thumpity.Thumpity.Thump. Mark Levin on his radio show last night just savaged David Frum. I mean, he sliced David Frum up, chewed him up and spit him out. Frum knew it was bad, but didn't know how bad. I got e-mails from people last night, "You ought to hear what Levin is doing to Frum." Golly isn't that AWFUL? No wonder Letterman compared him to an East European gangster. What will El Rushbo put at the end of Frum's bed I wonder? A pig's head...a two-ton cherry pie...or a one-way ticket to Commie Canada? But seriously is it just me or is Frummy starting to sound like a LIBERAL?
You don't think that one day he'll apologize for Bush, the Axis of Evil, Karl Rove, the religious right ...or just EVERYTHING? Like Vanilla Ice did the other day....
Oh Mighty Monkey God I hope so. Because anything that helps marginalize the Republican Party for a generation has got to be good. And even if The Porculus chases Frum right out of the U.S.... there's a sentimental bonus for Canada too !!
Frummy could get chummy with Iggy.. join the Conservative Liberal Party.... or the Liberal Conservative one. And Barbara would be so PROUD...
