Constitutional Monarchy: The Stephen Harper Edition

I'm not even dully surprised at the grotesque wankery of Canada's Conservative Government.

We don't have "democracy" the way the rest of the world has it. Our head of state is the Queen of England, our Senate is appointed, not elected. At one time Mr. S. Harper made much of this, promising an elected one, which I personally don't want for reasons I've mentioned here before. He also has expressed a dislike for the monarchy.

A year ago, threatened by a move to establish a coalition government that would have represented the 60-odd-percent of Canadians who are currently shut out of Bushland North, Stephen Harper, demonstrating a quick-change in principles ummatched except in every other thing he's done, ran for the umbrella of the monarchy he previously deplored.

He asked the Governor-General to protect his failed government by shutting down, or "proroguing" Parliament for three months. And for no known reason she acceeded.

At the time, his excuse was that Parliament wasn't functioning. Which it wasn't, because he'd ordered his winged monkeys not to co-operate when working on Parliamentary committees.

This year, he ordered his people to do this again, especially in regard to the Afghan detainee investigation. He's in contempt of Parliament, and should be under indictment for such.

Now the news says that he's asking the GG to prorogue again.

The only thing worse, if she once again bends Canadian democracy over the table for him, will be the conservative wankersphere orgasming all over itself at Harper's "statesmanship."

Is it any wonder that half the electorate stayed home last election?

I hope the GG tells him to go ₤µ©λ himself with a rasp.

Pre-publication update: The CBC reports that the PMO is announcing proroguement has been achieved.

If there were a god I'd ask him/her/it to damn these lousy bastards to hell. As it is, I'm stopping just short of expressing a public wish for a competent assassin. Let me be clear: I don't actually want Harper assassinated. But I do think about wishing for it.

What democracy remained in this country just died.

Blowing It On Torture

My Conservative government. Is their fifteen minutes up yet?

Not, alas, judging by what passes for leadership among the Opposition parties these days. It's so pathetically bad that I'd vote for the Bloq Quebecois, if they ran a candidate in my riding.

The situation:
A senior diplomat causes an uproar by claiming that almost all detainees handed over by Canadian Forces in Afghanistan were, and continue to be, tortured.

The response as we might have wished it:

Harper could have had it made.

He could have said "Yes, word had reached us of people being tortured. That's why we stopped transferring prisoners to the Afghan prison system not once but at least twice."

He had plausible deniability in himself: "I never got the memos"--Which may even be true.

He could have blamed it on the "previous Liberal government"--An old fave (despite the fact that the "previous government" in this country is now his), and he might even have had a smidgen of justification.

The actual response:
The Conservative machine swings into full denial mode, lying about who knew what and when, producing the usual bullshit charges against the whistleblower, which fail to stick, and stonewalling any attempt at an inquiry before pretending it was their idea all along.

Harper claims the committee investigating Colvin's claims must allow his man Mulroney to testify. Headlines appear saying "Harper says witnesses must co-operate with investigation" or some such bullshit.

In fact, this isn't what Harper's saying. He's saying the committee has to accept Mulroney's testimony at face value without first getting a look at any of the documentary evidence.

Then he says the committee won't be allowed to see Colvin's correspondence (that is, they won't be allowed to read for themselves who was told what and when) because it's just now turned out to be classified.

Huh. Who'da thunk? I'm sure Harper's real busted up about it.

Way to clear the air on that one, Mr. Prime Minister.

Unfortunately it's unlikely that Michael Ignatieff will make much issue of this. He once wrote a thought piece that essentially asked what was wrong with torture. It was a rhetorical exercise, as far as I can tell.

But the Conservatives have already begun shrieking that the Liberal leader is on record as supporting the practice, as though that made their own underwear-staining enthusiasm for it any prettier.

Harper should be in the dock for contempt of Parliament. But then again, he should have been there at least a year ago.

Justice Delayed is Justice ₤µ©λed Over

Or maybe we should just call it "Ashcrofted."

A US court has struck down the lawsuit Arar vs. Ashcroft.

Arar, if we recall from the high and far-off times of about 2001, is the Canadian citizen detained without excuse in JFK International Airport and then flown with the outright connivance of the then-Liberal Canadian government and the active assistance of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (a Service which historically provides neither security nor intelligence) to Syria, where he was tortured.

When it turned out Arar was not in fact an Al-Qaeda operative, the Canadian government initially stonewalled before finally issuing a begrudging apology. Naturally, Arar sued and received a hefty sum of money as compensation for having his rights as a citizen denied.

However, Stephen Harper Conservative Government of Canada™ has demonstrated a total inability to learn from the experience.

The US government quite simply told Arar to ₤µ©λ off. Among the other shining features of this unpolishable turd of a Republican-positive decision was this little beauty, as described in Glenn Greenwald's piece:

Arar did not, for instance, have the names of the individuals who detained and abused him at JFK, which the majority said he must have. As Judge Sack in dissent said of that requirement: it "means government miscreants may avoid [] liability altogether through the simple expedient of wearing hoods while inflicting injury."

Ladies and gentlemen, your antiterrorist forces, 2010 model:



One of the most disappointing things about Barack Obama's presidency so far is the outright refusal to repeal the Bush acts that made the president and his minions untouchable in cases like domestic espionage and outsourced torture. You would think he might have a little sympathy.

Another Threat to Marriage

Doubtless the right wingers will want to campaign against this one as well.

Pathetic.

In Defence of Offenders

In the news today I see that sex offenders in Georgia and Florida have reputedly taken to living in tents.

The group of nine men were told to live in the woods in the southern state after they were unable to find housing far enough away from areas where children congregated, such as schools and playgrounds.

Georgian law bans the state's 16,000 sex offenders from living, working or loitering within 1,000ft of schools, churches, child-care facilities and other areas where children gather.

Yeah, that law makes sense. Just like the current fad of "outing" such offenders online, or posting their mug shots in the neighborhoods where they get released.

Look: A sex offender by definition is one who's been caught. Many, if not most, of the ones who do time can't be fully rehabilitated. They need watching, pure and simple. And they absolutely need access to the support systems everyone else has to ensure they're at the lowest possible risk of reoffending.

These guys probably aren't the problem! They're trying to comply with the conditions of laws that would be regarded as unfair if imposed on many other classes of offender.

What's needed isn't exclusion. What's needed is a way to ensure that these guys can return to the community in safety, or conversely where the risk of re-offence is unacceptably high, what's needed is a mechanism to keep them under direct and constant supervision.

And that's why the Stephen Harper Conservative Government of Canada™ pisses me off. They're trying to kick over one of the few frail anti-re-offence agencies that exist. Wish I could find the link to that, dammit ... It was right here a minute ago. They've apparently chopped funding to one of the few working sex-offender post-release counselling-and-treatment outfits. I'll keep looking.

But in any case, the Stephen Harper Conservative Government of Canada™ has an embarrassingly fluffy relationship with the desperately disfunctional US prison system.

The problem is the fundamental difference in perception. Canadians regard the purpose of prison as an attempt at rehabilitation. A machine which turns crooks into citizens (albeit at a very low rate).

US Republicans and the Stephen Harper Conservative Government of Canada™ (if that's not a redundancy) see prisons as a massive private machine where inmates=profit, and rehab and trying to open doors gives way to punishment and training the thugs to damn well stay in their place.

Nonethless, Public Safety caveman Peter van Loan asserts that such places will "return people to the community better able to live law-abiding lives." Despite the fact that it doesn't work. Hasn't worked in the US, and--surprise!--Hasn't worked here.

Note: Yes, I know the government said privatization isn't on the table. Let's consider this like adults, shall we?

Stephen Harper, alleged economist either mistook or lied outright when he claimed there wasn't a recession coming. Immediately after winning his second minority, he said strong measures had to be taken to blunt its impact.

Stephen Harper passed a law saying an election had to be held, was mandatory, this October. Last year he broke his own law (As a lawbreaker himself, doesn't he worry about being carted off to a US-style jail?).

So this government isn't known for what you'd call "frankness". Drop the "f" and you'd be about right. Their ideology calls for privatization of public functions, without regard to inconvieniences like "facts" or "reality."

You want to know where opposition to relaxing marijuana laws comes from in the US? Three guesses and the first two don't count. When prisoners=profit, sacrifices have to be made, eh? Sometimes human sacrifices.

Stupid Liberal* Tricks

Premier Gordon Campbell and the BC Liberals* (who are conservatives) have just announced that, for some reason, they've lost $2 bn in revenue that they projected we'd have since June. Extrapolated to the end of the year, that suggests that their financial projections--the ones they fought the election on (you remember--the election which included the promise of no new taxes?)--are off by about $6 billion.

Or in short, Gordo is a lying ©µת+. An utter bastard. A worthless political skin stuffed with $#!7, piss, and corruption.

Anyone who was watching the election (that is to say, roughly 12% of the people who actually bothered showing up) knew that both the BC Liberals(wac) and the NDP were using maximum-rose coloured glasses for their projections. Carole James and the NDP missed their big chance to say "I told you so" by accepting the government's goddam lies figures wholesale. Which was convienient, as the NDP promised a bundle of goodies they couldn't pay for in the first place, PLUS they promised to do away with our carbon tax on gasoline.

But the cynicism of outright lying on the major points of one's platform is breathtaking.

I'm sick to death of this cynicism and corruption. Voters need to goddam well engage. From now on, anyone who complains about taxes with receive a withering "And who did YOU vote for?" from me.

Persons answering that they didn't vote, or meant to but missed the bus, or had a podiatrist appointment, or similar, will be beaten vigorously about the head and neck with a bottle filled with slips of paper on which shall be written all the campaign promises made and broken by the Campbell government.

It'll probably have to be a gallon bottle. Never mind--I'm going to have to drink at least that much to ignore how badly these @$$#013s are screwing this province.

We were already swirling around the bowl before Gordo's Commandos gave the chain an extra yank. Here's to the next decade of defecit spending as we try to cover the shortcomings of another uselss pack of "greed-is-great" mongrels.


*The BC Liberals--Because when you behave like a pack of federal Conservatives, it's just a name, and means no more than their promises.

Oh, the Wildlife-ity!

Raincoaster has been following the threads of the Great Meerkat Conspiracy, which has explained so much in terms of the rarity of fairies, the reduction of fish stocks, and the shortage of four-leafed clovers (they got the leprechauns first, don'cha know).

However, now ominous news reaches our peepers of the newest soldiers in the Meerkat War With Fish and People.

It is truly the saddest of news, for once-respectable raptors have now been recruited into the ravaging ranks of the Meerkat Army.

Read it and weep:

Eagle smashes car windshield with fish

Two targets with one bird, eh?

This, as Rick Mercer used to say on "Made In Canada", is not good.

We urgently await a statement from G Eagle on whether this indicates a change of eagle allegiance in the Total War Against Terror, Intrigue, And Meerkats (TWATIAM).

Stay calm, be brave, watch for the signs.

Conservatism: The View's Great With Your Head Up Your Collective

I'm honestly wondering whether Conservatism isn't merely a political viewpoint, but a psychotic disconnect.

Case in point: Our own Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is blaming Canada for the recent imposition of visa requirements on Mexicans, which you may recall was a summer surprise from his government.

That is, asked to explain his government's actions, Harper goes for the "It's not my fault--The country I'm trying to rule over just likes brown people too much!" defence. No surprise there, really.

Gutless, brainless, unconscionable ... And speaking of that:

I'm still glad I don't live in the United States. Because apparently Republicans have no idea what the term "discourse" means.

Invited to have a town-hall debate on health care reform, they respond with a) death threats, b) invitations to bring guns to said meetings and be violent, oh, and c) faking their own beatings. More on the Passion of Kenneth Gladney here.

The distortion and lying by shills for the Repugnicans reached its peak with Sarah "Moose Head" Palin's nutty claim that under the Obama proposal some sort of bureaucratic health board would pronounce on the fitness of her offspring to live

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Well I can understand why Palin would be worried about a panel with the power of life or death judging the usefulness to society of the mentally deficient. But even if such a panel were convened, they'd surely have enough humanity to spare her: culling mental defectives in the Palin family would likely leave no-one to care for poor Trig, who has Down Syndrome.

Your Republican Party: Fighting for the rights of the common folk to remain ignorant, fearful, exploited, and ill. Huzzah!

--And god damn them to hell.

In my own province, the BC "Liberals"--who are Conservatives (It'd take too long to explain--Here's the Wikipedia) are mulling over cutting some six thousand surgeries in Vancouver, and also closing a third of Vancouver emergency rooms during the Olympics.

The reason is that the Liberal government told the health authority to suck it up and refused to even negotiate funding a $200 million shortfall in budget because all spare money is earmarked for the Olympics--which is also why we're getting a "Harmonized Sales Tax"--which isn't a tax grab, apparently, but purely co-incidentally adds taxes to items previously spared them.

What's most disturbing about this non-tax-grab is the cynicism behind it. The Campbell Liberals campaigned specifically on a promise of "no new taxes" after adding a 2¢ "carbon" tax on every litre of gas. Note: I support the gas tax. Consumer-level carbon taxes are pretty much the only way to make significant change. However instead of the money going to green initiatives, the goverment plugs it into general revenue to bolster their abysmal budget figures.

Bear in mind that all health changes instituted in the past fifteen years have been from the BC Liberal Conservative party. So if the health authority is scrod--and I believe it is--the people to blame are fairly easy to spot.

You may remember the Olympics--the ones that are some 100% or something over budget and climbing? Turns out that the BC Liberals based part of that budget on the willingness of employers to pay their employees to work at the Olympics instead of, well, at work--Like, y'know, at their businesses.

For some reason that doesn't seem to be working out. So the BC government is going to second its own employees--that is, civil servants from the force that the first Campbell government slashed to its barely-functional bones--to do the Olympic jobs instead of, y'know, providing government services.

Oh, and that's on top of the massive incentive program already offered to BC government employees who volunteer at the Olympics--they actually get paid to take paid leave.

The Olympic security budget is $900 mil, up from an estimate of $180 million--I think they assumed Superman would be available, so the shortfall is understandable. But Superman is likely to be covering for the cops who are also being drafted into the Olympics' service. Courts will be all-but-closed for most of February in BC.

Conservatives just don't connect with reality anymore. They've earned their tme in the wilderness and should just go away and let the adults handle things until therapists find a cure.

Law With Tongues of Flame ... But No Teeth

As I sit here with the smoke of a local forest fire in my nostrils, I notice this from CTV:

Despite B.C. fire turmoil, people still taking risks

Updated Thu. Aug. 6 2009 1:51 PM ET

The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER -- Despite international attention to B.C.'s burning forests, some people are still lighting camp fires and discarding cigarettes in the woods.

Forests Minister Pat Bell had first-hand experience last weekend when he had to tell some Shuswap campers to put out a campfire they were burning in the woods.

Bell says if he had a ticket book, not only would the group have received a $345 fine, but an administrative penalty as well.

The minister says there is zero tolerance for fire in the woods and already more than 50 tickets have been issued to people breaking the rules.

Bell says fire activity in the province is at the highest level seen in his lifetime, with more than 2,300 started this season, 800 more than at the same time in the horrible fire season of 2003.

About 400 aircraft and 4,000 people are working on the fires which have cost the government more than double the original budget at $135 million.

Oooooh a $345 fine! I'm friggin' trembling.
Let's compare that with the damage from forest fires in BC this summer: Roughly $200 million in insurance claims alone, to say nothing of the cost of fighting the fires.

Wow--$345 in return for possibly contributing to millions in annual damages. Who the hell are we kidding?

Let's see what Australia does, shall we?

Looks like, depending on how you interpret it, you could go to jail for up to fourteen years in some states. Good damn idea! Here's New South Wales' rules for lighting fires under a ban:

Penalty for offences

For lighting or causing a fire during a Total Fire Ban
Up to $5,000 fine and / or up to 5 years in jail
Higher penalties can apply in certain circumstances.

Now there's a fine fine!

Makes $345 look pretty arbitrary and weak, doesn't it? Why couldn't it have been $567? Or 8,910? Or 212,223?

Personally, I want ramming a car off the road to be covered under self-defence when the idiot in said car is seen to have jettisoned a ciggie butt. And although I'm a big fan of gun control, I feel that shooting someone who ditches a butt improperly in a forest fire zone should be reduced to a misdemeanor. Call it "unsafe discharge of a firearm" or something.

I'm really a big law-and-order guy. Ask me about my plan for traffic control through random sniping sometime.

The Healthcare "Debate"?

Let me declare my biases:

I'm Canadian

I was born to parents whose own parents didn't have "socialized health care" and who regarded it as one of the finest achievements of civilization

The Canadian health care system helped, at the very least, to save my life on at least one occasion.

So I'm mad when I see the system so mischaracterized by the forces who want to continue screwing US citizens out of their money. Because that's what private-for-profit health "care" does: It rations health care. The very thing it accuses "government-run" or "bureaucratic" or "socialized" health care of.

Because economics is all about scarcity. The scarcer something is, the higher a premiuim it may command on the open market. Healthy people just aren't good "health consumers."

It is reckoned that the US pirate-for-profit system costs several billion dollars in lost productivity each year, not counting the $46 bn in direct costs. Yet there are outfits out there who are frantically trying to avoid the Obama health care debate by going to their "consumers" and trying to defend their (the consumers') right to go bankrupt for cancer treatment, their right to pay premiums and have coverage denied anyway, and their right to go entirely without any form of health care. And, purely co-incidentally I'm sure, these organizations end up defending their right to profit off the sick and healthy alike, through fear.

The US system simply doesn't make sense in a civilized world. Of course, a civilized world would have to be one in which profit might occasionally have to take a back seat to charity, mercy, forbearance. Which doesn't suit insurance companies at all. After all, it takes an especially twisty kind of thinking to take the wrong end of a bet on whether or not you will die, and still make money on the deal.

The Calgary Herald has today an excellent, simple editorial outlining the fractured thinking going on behind the drive to preserve health as something people who produce nothing and contribute nothing good to the economy should continue making a profit on (I'm speaking specifically of HMOs. Insurance itself is useful, and a vital financial instrument that has to be in place for any kind of market-based economy to thrive).

Oh, and to any US Avid Fans: If you hear anything from a Doctor Brian Day, ignore it. He's a rotten lousy shill for the health insurance industry. Because up here in "Marxist" Canada, where "rationed" healthcare dictates who gets what, we allow people to see private quacks out of their own pockets if they like. And we allow said quacks to set up clinics so that they can go about the business of gouging money out of the healthy.

In Canada, doctors are in private practice. But the patient is shielded from predation by drug companies, "health management" companies, and doctors who're so terrified of liability that they send you for unnecessary tests.

The US can't do it like Canada, exactly. There are too many entrenched interests, too long a history, and possibly too decentralized a government (Although we've steadily been devolving responsibility to the provinces--and it's been a bit of a disaster).

Now, no system will ever cover everything (there's that scarcity again). But it seems to me that while government provided systems usually have to justify refusing care, all an insurance company has to say is "Sorry--we don't cover that." It's on record: Companies have routinely sent "deny-first" letters to clients hoping they'll simply give up and go away.

But the US has a chance to step out and show the world. Perhaps a blended private-public system like many of the Scandanavian countries would do it?

Like the old commercials say: "Two flavour great--No debate!"

In any case, if they really want an easy way to jump-start the economy, the first thing to do is to get everyone some form of basic health coverage.

More Conservative Economic Genius

Not content with having deliberately and with malicious, venial, stupidity aforethought spiked the Canadian nuclear medicine industry, increased wait times four-fold or so, and bankrupted the country unto at least 2014, my Conservative government decided to announce yet another delightful "What-the-₤µ©λ-are-you-playing-at-you-@$$#013s?" moment this week.

Because once you've done such a wonderful number on the economy already, why not top the $#17 sundae with a rancid cherry and kneecap the tourist industry?

Tourism is a huge part of Canada's economy. People like to come and see things like pristine lakes, airy mountains, and green trees, often because many of these people come from places where such are in short supply, often due to a history of short-sighted, near-criminal, cripplingly stupid and often conservative governments; Like ours.

So during a recession, when the industry has already taken a number of kicks to the collective crotch (new US passport requirements, "staycations", et al.), the smart thing to do is:

A) Demote a minister who funded a gay pride parade for $400K (in complete accordance with her mandate and economic sense) which contributes million$ to the Greater Toronto Area.

B) Introduce new, more stringent travel requirements such as, oh I dunno, how 'bout a visa requirment for Czechs and Mexicans? Preferably without prior notice, so that no-one can prepare for the new rules.

If you're an idiot, and a Conservative Party Minister (but I repeat myself), you do both.

The article says that Mexico was the number-one refugee claimant nation. But if Mr. Harper hadn't chosen to allow staffing levels to fall through attrition, or at least had hired replacement workers on a one-for-one basis, at Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the backlog wouldn't have been a problem.

Besides, the Cons ₤µ©λed over ALL immigrants a year or two back by rewriting the rules so that if your claim simply doesn't make it off the pile, you have to go to the foot of the queue and start again.

(Unless you're a doctor. Then we'll poach you from some third-world hellhole that desperately needs you, and put you to work in the grossly understaffed world of public transportation at minimum wage, but hey--You'll be living in the greatest ... Well, the secon- ... Um ... Hang on a mo' ... the, ah yes, seventeeth greatest country in the world!)

The changes also made it possible to jump the queue. Whatever the faults of the old system, it was at least fair. But of course "fairness" is one of those words the Conservative party has to grab a dictionary on hearing, along with "compassion" and "empathy".

There is really nothing more to say than "When the hell are you going to pull the ₤µ©λing trigger Mr. Ignatieff? Would tomorrow work for you? 'Cos I'm busy today, but I could spare the time to vote these turkeys off while I wait for my local hospital to scrounge up some isotopes so I can rejoin the wait list for a test or two.

We are living under the single stupidest, single worst, uniquely damaging government of Canada in the history of the country. Only Mulroney could ever have claimed to have ₤µ©λed us over more and worse. And he was a Conservative too.

Co-incidence? I think not.

I hate these clowns and their bankrupt pathalogy of an ideology more every day. I hope Harper ends his days in a refrigerator box. Or possibly as a 230-lb Native inmate's prison bitch.

Is there one thing, a single thing, ANYthing, they've managed to do right?

Note for Conservative Party members and other humour-challenged persons. I don't REALLY want Harper to end his days in an appliance box, nor as a big-ass prison inmate's girlfriend (unless he wants to be--Prison can apparently do that to some guys, and I think there's a good chance he and Muldoon might end up there). A simple slow fade into the ignominy he deserves and the designation of "Worst. PM. Thus. Far" will suffice (I'd say "Worst. PM. Evar", but the unfortunate possibility that another Conservative government might get in before he dies still exists, however remote).

This is what Liberals and other thinking types call "hyperbole". Do feel free to look it up, won't you?

On the Great Infestation

Sigh. My house is not my own anymore. In a more enlightened society, Mme might be accused of harbouring a nuisance.

Some beasts are useful: The sturdy shetland pony, the sheepdog, the goat. Mankind has built a relationship of mutual trust and reliance with these.

Then, there's the sort that lounges about on your couch for hours on end before slouching off for a hurried six-hour nap, whilst scratching your furniture to splinters and doing abominable things in various dark corners, all the while gleefully consuming food in quantities to make Roman orgy-goers cry "Oi--steady on, mate!"

Such beasts shed hair like an over-forty rock band, and leave unspeakable trails of spittle trailing across the floor, to say nothing of the partially-digested items trailing in its wake. When not regurgitating your food, said creature is rubbing up against you demanding more of it, not to mention more of your valuable gin and beer.

Yes, having the damn thing in the house is something of a trial. But Mme Metro and I are happy to do it as respite care. This allows her regular attendants the chance they need to recover following the repeated hydrophobia shots, deworming, and delousing they must be put through from extended contact.

The cats are fine, and looking pretty healthy, by comparison.

I had a recent picture, but was reluctant to post it, for the health of the Avid Fans' brains. Let's just say I know just how this little dog feels:


see more dog and puppy pictures

They Have Become What They Refused to Deny

In the wake of two murders comitted by right-wing whackjobs over the past two weeks, the response from Conservatives has been to say "Well, they weren't really Conservatives." They also weren't true Scotsmen.

Some folks made so bold as to describe the man who attacked the Holocaust Museum in Washington as "left-wing," deliberately and with malice aforethought confusing National Socialism with Socialism. The confusion is easy to understand: First, both are equally evil in the eyes of conservatives; Second, the people making said accusations are sadly stupid.

But conservatives will not long be able to continue using their own version of the "lone gunman" theory. Because these actions don't take place in a vacuum. Between the silent dog whistles of talk radio and the plain old silence of Conservative leaders, the right wing has been complicit, if not actively conniving, in acts of murder.

Don't believe me? Take a look at Paul Krugman's column here. Not enough for you that a Nobel-winning economist can connect the dots? Then look at this op-ed from Frank Rich.

But we've all seen this stuff before. Any one of us has found Conservative blogs, articles, and the like which, while frowning down their noses at the violence and mayhem that the politics of the right seem to inspire, don't quite manage to disavow any of it.

Case in point, Bill O'Reilly--one of the globe's nastier denizens--who categorically continues to deny any responsibility for enabling the murder of Dr. Tiller. This despite carrying on a bully pulpit campaign against Tiller and his practice: providing late-term abortions (which are always medically necessary on the fewer-than-three-percent-of-all-abortions occasions when they are required).

But they're all like this. In the face of the most vituperative accusations against US president Obama, every level of Republican leadership has remained silent. The most any of them has ever said boils down to "Well I don't agree with what he did but you have to admit he had a point ..."

And in their refusal to deny, and their enthusiasm for, these things, they come to own them.

The shocking thing is that not even the most-highly placed of Conservative leaders seem to be making the fiery disavowals that should be made to separate the so-called "lone whackos" from "mainstream conservatives." And why? Because there is so little difference.

This is why I no longer describe myself as a conservative. Because when I hear that word I no longer know whether the person using it to refer to themselves means "I support free trade" or "I passively condone murder."

And in such circumstances it's certainly best to be clear.

My Conservative Government at Work

This one's long. But it's important. I've tried not to go postal down here, and tried to keep my arguments germane.

Lately my government, which had no mandate to make the sweeping and destructive changes it has already wrought in my little country, has been chatting up privatization, with serious words like "scrutiny" and "public funds."

They're strapped for cash, their financial incompetence is on full display, and they really need some scapegoats. So they have declared that privatization is the solution. It'd put some desperately needed billions back in "the taxpayer's" (read: the government's) pocket.

Atomic Energy of Canada is first on the chopping block. Last year Harper made headlines by firing Canada's nuclear safety watchdog for proposing to shut down Chalk River nuke plant for maintenance. His excuse was that such a shutdown wasn't necessary, and would deprive Canadians of vital supplies of medical isotopes.

This week Chalk River developed problems and had to be shut down. Nothing was mentioned by Mr. Harper or his stooges about a shortage of isotope supply, other than that we should expect one.

But the Harperites DID begin making rumbling noises about how inefficient government-run companies (Crown corporations) are, and mused about privatizing AECL.

It must be a great temptation. They're staring down $50 billion of debt the voters aren't likely to forgive them for. They'll never win a majority now unless someone gets pics of Michael Ignatieff actually sodomizing a Canada goose (and even then it's probably a coin toss).

So why not add a few billion to the balance sheet by flogging some Crown land, some Crown corporations?--Hell, maybe even some Crown Royal.

There's just one problem. Well, a couple. Three actually. Well I can think of four:

1) Crown Corporations often occupy a niche that private industry either didn't want or shouldn't be allowed to have. For example, private companies retailing isotopes provided by Atomic Energy of Canada have doubled or tripled their prices in repsonse to the shutdown. The AECL factory price hasn't changed.

Imagine what'd happen if a private-for-profit outfit got hold of the main supply of medical isotopes for the world.

2) It's quite hard to flog the non-profiting bits of Crown corps. Sure you can bitch about all the public money you're putting in, but does that make it much more attractive to private investment? So you're either selling only the good bits, or a resource--something irreplaceable that private firms want their hands on in the worst way.

3) Finally this. These aren't corporations. They're Crown Corporations. There are times when divestiture of public assets makes some sense. But we've already done that--We had two prior recessions in the past thirty years. During those recessions, and ever since, we've cut public service jobs, "trimmed fat" and reduced public corporate investment to record lows.

Moreover, they're mostly irreplaceable resources: If the Harperites flog AECl there's no getting it back. We can't just build another $30-bn reactor and set up shop anew. For one thing the Oppostion Conservatives (you surely don't believe they'll be in government, do you?) will scream blue murder at the "unfair" competition by the state enterprise ... or at the tax dollars spent on it, either way they win.

And the stuff that isn't resource is even less suitable for privatization. Now we know Harper hates the CBC. It does a decent job of reporting and is noteably unbiased. But of course, since Harper's world doesn't correspond to reality he loathes it the way he loathes the taste of an overcooked baby. He much prefers FOX, as we know.

But it's not an "asset"--It's our heritage.

4) Finally: it's not his to sell!

No government has the automatic right to sell publicly-owned property in the first place--They are there to manage it. Such management might well require selling it off, eventually, but not at fire-sale prices for the expediency of trying to tuck in your own financial shirt-tail.

This isn't a selloff to improve the efficiency of government or industry, or protect the public purse. Its purpose is twofold: One, to pour more money into the government balance sheet so that their performance doesn't look so damn pitiful, and two, to see if they can sell their free-market-uber-alles ideology while doing it.

Harper doesn't have a majority, doesn't have a mandate, and has not the right to sell any of these assets.

Oh, and um, speaking of assets ... 'Cause those Conservatives must have missed it, being so concerned for taxpayer dollars and all ... Do you think the Canadian government did serious studies into GM's performance before pouring $7.1 bn taxpayer bucks in "loans" into it?

I guess that's different--GM's a private company, and it's all free-markety and presumably efficient and profity and $#17 like that.

Pull the trigger, Mr. Ignatieff. I'd hold my nose and vote for you to chase this dangerous loser and his crack brained coterie of misanthropic, uncharitable, vicious dogs out of my country's highest offices.

Will Somebody Please Put a Fork in Cheney and Let Him Know He's Overdone?

Unable to lie quiet, Cheney seems to have found a second wind, with which to try and explain away the grotesque, capering, misdeeds of the Bush calamity of an administration. From today's "Say What" sampler over at Doonesbury we have this justification for Bush's inaction on "terroristic" threats prior to Semptember 11th, 2001:

"You know, Dick Clarke. Dick Clarke, who was the head of the counterterrorism program in the run-up to 9/11. He obviously missed it."
-- Dick Cheney, on Richard Clarke

"Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack" (5/3/01)

"Bin Ladin's Networks' Plans Advancing" (5/26/01)

"Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent" (6/23/01)

"Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats" (6/25/01)

"Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks" (6/30/01)

"Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delays" (7/02/01)

-- subject lines of Richard Clarke emails to Bush Administration prior to 9/11/01

Unfortunately, I think we're due for rather a lot of this crap until either someone buries his head across running water from his body, or until someone shuts off the liquid helium pump that powers his circulatory system.

It's over, Dick. The bad guys have been consigned to the rubbish bin of history and a lucrative career on the rubber-chicken circuit (instead of Gitmo, alas, where they properly should be held until a fair trial can be arranged) and the good guys have to try and pick up the pieces. All you're doing is offering lame-ass excuses for failing to close the barn door before the horse bolted, and trying to justify your horrifying criminal actions afterward.

Shut up and lie the hell down.

Or, if I may quote someone whose name escapes me:

"Go fuck yourself."

A Nerve-shredding Thought Occurs

In the post below I stated that the Harperites (why dignify them by calling them "Conservatives"?) believed government should be run like a business.

And that's the problem. Have you seen the way business behaves?

Harper's watching the CEOs of Goldmann-Sachs (golden sacks) and the other corporate welfare recipients, and wondering "How do I get MINE?"

He's clearly got the idea that if he bankrupts the company--I mean the country--he'll then be in line for a bailout and a bonus.

Naturally, that too will land on the taxpayer's shoulders. Reminds me of a song dedicated to the predatory practices of the banking industry:



That was from the US bank Capital One--My once and former credit card provider.

However, we do have the Canadian equivalent:

Okay, Lemme Put to You a Hypothetical Situation:

You're the elected leader of a large western democratic monarchy. Going into an election last year you said there was no economic crisis. Then you said there was, but it wasn't necessary to do anything about it. Then, having yielded ideology to reality at the insistence of the opposition you said you would have to do something about it for the good of the workin' folk. Then you bailed out international megacorps. Then you said "By the way, there's gonna be a defecit. About $30 bn worth".

So here's where we stand: Having gone from record surplus projections to (optimistic but still abysmal, and vice versa) defecit projections in four statements, this week you say "Actually, er ... It's going to be a wee bit bigger than we thought ... Um ... How does, oh, FIFTY billion dollars sound?"

Faced with calls for the resignation of your obviously grossly incompetent Minister of Finance, staring down the debt hole you gouged in our economy in the service of "Conservative" ideology, and wishing you hadn't completely spent up the surplus $30 billion you were gifted by your Liberal predecessors you:

A) Issue a mea culpa, and like any good CEO, tender your resignation. After all, your ideology claims government should behave like a business.
B) Ask for a vote of confidence in the house and accept the possibility of an election.
C) Take quick, decisive action by firing your finance minister and recognizing that your no-brakes free-market ideology is a failure.
D) Threaten to show old videos of the Opposition leader.

Guess which one our Dear Leader, Steve Harper, picked?

May I suggest that Canada add $300 million to the defecit? That's what it costs to hold an election. And whatever it costs it'll be cheaper to put someone else in power.

The Conservative Party of Canada: Making bad ideas even worse, lying about it, and wondering why the voters don't seem engaged.

Hey There (Number Twenty-Something for the "I-Know-I've-Been-Offline-Awhile" File)

Mme and I had a little mini-break last weekend in Banff, the place where everyone is from somewhere else. In one day I was served and had money taken by eight Aussie women. So if you're sitting around in Bundaberg and wondering where all the good Aussi women have got to, you need to visit Banff. If you're a Canadian, sitting around Banff or Whistler and wondering why all the local girls have funny accents, may I suggest Byron Bay? Okay, so half the women in Byron are Dutch, but you're still more likely to encounter a fellow Canuckistani.

Well a lot's been happening in the world, but little of it seemed to require a post:

We were all supposed to $#17 ourselves over swine flu, but it really doesn't seem as bad as all that. The World Health Organization was right to crank up the pandemic alerts, because there was a genuine risk. But I feel that fast precautions may have averted the worst of it. Besides, in the end it's a 'flu. It poses a major risk to those with immune disorders, and to the elderly and the very young. Like all flu do. Wash your hands, quit snogging strangers at the pub, and you're less likely to be exposed.

A friend of mine, Big Jim, posted a link to healthnet or whatever that friggin' colloidal-silver-flogging network is. Just as last time, it's all a big conspiracy by "the six companies that own all media" and their partners, the pharmaceutical industry. Among the claims: Canada is a corporation, because something named "Canada" is apparently registered with the SEC. Media film at the time showed machinery "producing vaccines", and colloidal silver was shortly to be banned (for at least the third time).

When I tore the post apart, he deleted my post, claiming my discussion was "irrelevant". So I asked directly for the names of the six companies. He refused to name them, saying I should Google them--That is, I should go to a mega-corp to investigate the megacorps that have such a lockdown on media that nothing contrary ever gets published except by people who believe the New World Order and the Reptillians are about to overwhelm us any minute now ... Aaaany minute now ... It's coming ... Don't say we didn't warn you ...

Then he closed his post by saying "This is just my opinion. If I'm wrong, I'd like to know."

I could shoe the Kentucky Derby with the irony in that statement. I have as yet refused to go back and re-post my original and see whether it gets deleted again. I mean, he's a friend. Crack-brained and paranoid, but a friend nonetheless.

Meanwhile, the Mulroney-Schreiber inquiry into whether ex-Prime Minister was taking money from an arms dealer has yet to conclude what most of the country already knows: Mulroney was a Conservative (despite Stephen Harper's desperate and lowlife attempts to have his name stricken from the roll) and a profiteering crook. But I repeat myself.

My general feeling is that when you're meeting in a hotel room and trading envelopes stuffed with cash, someone's getting ₤µ©λed. And since neither of the principals in this case is worth that much, it was the taxpayer. Unfortunately justice in this case has ground on so long, and ground so fine, that there really isn't anything left. I just hope we get a verdict and a prosecution, and at least see both men in jail, before one of them cacks out.

Iran released journo Roxana Saberi, thus catching a slight ethical edge on Barack Obama, who's unfortunately handling the abundant evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the Bush administration the way a cat handles a cat-turd on a linoleum floor. Bad enough he's refused to prosecute the torturers and their enablers. Worse that he's not even pumping for a truth-and-reconcilliation commission. But worst, he's failed to repudiate the current regime of domestic espionage.

Still, he isn't Bush, or any other Republican. And that counts for a lot. Especially while the mainstream of the Republican party is echoing Rush Windbag's sentiments that he hopes the country goes down the crapper because it'll apparently prove that Democratic presidents aren't fit to run the show.

The momentous dishonesty of a tubby, rich, white, stogie-puffing pervert and "ex-"drug-addict making such a statement whilst standing amid the rubble of "No Child Left Educated", a tanking economy fuelled in part by tax cuts to fat, rich, white dudes, two failed invasions, and a legacy unequaled since Rome fell, seems to have escaped Mr. Limpbough.

The Pope is touring the Middle East. Yeah. Whatever. Interestingly, the main manufactured outrage over the tour seems to be over the fact that he's a former Hitler Youth member. On this one, I'm with the Vatican. It has ₤µ©λ-all to do with his current positions. First off, many people were HY members in the final days of the war. A trucker buddy of mine's dad was "recruited" to serve on the barricades in Berlin when he was fourteen or so (and recruited at gunpoint into the French Foreign Legion shortly thereafter--I'll tell you the story sometime). And secondly it isn't as though he's touring Israel denying the Holocaust. Finally, for a wonder, his handlers seem to have managed to keep him from making any stupid gaffes like "Condoms raise the AIDS rate" thus far.

The latest shuttle mission is trying to sort out the Hubble space telescope again. This is annoying. Here's why: NASA has a project slated for 2012 or so, it's supposed to create a telescope array--several telescopes all flying around a specified distance from each other--with a baseline around 10,000 miles. We've just discovered several nearby stars with what look to be Earth-like planets in them. With a telescope with a baseline of ten thousand miles, if there's any intelligent life out there, we'd be able to read the license plates on their saucers with that kind of power. I want this to happen soonest. It may be the closest to real space exploration we manage to get to in my lifetime.

Because if we keep re-electing the bozos we're getting, we may need to find some new real estate, soonish.

The Right Wing: Screwing Itself Into Irrelevance, Part Two

None Dare Call it "Coalition"

Oh is this ever going to be awkward

Anyone remember a time when a few other parties were talking about forming a union of parties to wrest the wheel of government from the singularly incapable pack of rethreaded loose screws currently steering our country into the $#17ter? And what did the Right Wing call it? Ah yes: "TREASON". That was the word they screamed shrilly from their blogtops.

What did the PM say about that effort? Ah yes:

"My friends, such an illegitimate government would be a catastrophe, for our democracy, our unity and our economy, especially at a time of global instability."

~Stephen Harper, back in the days when Coalition was a bad word.

There was talk of making common cause with "socialists" and "separatists". And now? Well I guess they're all about teh compromise, eh? A kinder, gentler sort of dictatorship. Presumably this was what they had in mind when Harper FIRST proposed such a joining.

Harper's switched positions more times than twin hookers on $5-a-shag night in a logging camp. It boils down to one thing: Stephen Harper stands for Stephen Harper, and what Stephen Harper stands for is whatever will keep Stephen Harper in power.

He sold whatever Conservative credentials he had (and he hadn't many--most of his claims of "Conservatism" were just an unrelenting love for the Reform Party's dumber positions) with the budget, in which the "Conservative" (whose friggin' thesis concluded that governments should never try to spend their way out of a recession) decided to blow the money he hadn't already tossed down the boghole in order to keep power, knowing that a majority of his opponents required at least a symbolic sop to the nationwide fear of the recession he helped spend us into.

So now conservatives hate him too. And since he didn't have a hope in hell of a majority, it's likely his bum'll be polishing a rocking chair ere long.

The NDP can't support him and maintain any credibility when they used to crap on the Liberals for voting cynically to support the government rather than trigger an election. The Bloc Quebecois runs the risk of the same if they support the guy they were willing to sign up with the Liberals to help defeat last fall.

So Mr. Harper, I direct your attention to the south, to the US, where the Republican party is crumbling like Dracula in the sunlight. Look to your future, sir. You certainly haven't been looking to the country's.

However, I'd like to put the Liberal Party and NDP on notice: We are, we must be, better than this. Better than the fear, better than the loathing of that which is different, better than the fear of change, better than fear of the future. Start showing some goddam vision, please. Quit trying to imitate the Conservatives just because they didn't suck enough to get voted out last time.

I want a party with vision, and perhaps when we come back after this messag I'll tell you what that means.

Meantime, here's an unrelated commercial. And why not? We all have to spend ourselves stupid to help this economy, right?

Is That Last One a Little Intense?

Probably. My excuse is that I'm avoiding having to think about the GM Venture van sitting in my driveway awaiting a compression test.

If anyone asks why GM is going the-₤µ©λ broke, you can describe the procedures for removing the alternator:

Disconnect battery cables.
Disconnect front engine mounts and rotate engine forward as far as possible.
Undo alternator bolts.
Raise vehicle on ramps, hoist or stands.
Disconnect the g'damn subframe and drop three inches.

To remove a ₤µ©λing alternator? Seriously?

Oh, and why, asketh the Avid Fans (all five of them) dost thou pullest out ye olde alternator when lo, ye wishest to test the compression?

Because it's in the way of the spark plugs. For which the procedure is also supposed to include rotating the engine forward on its mounts.

If GM survives the next couple of months, I want their engineers sent to friggin' Siberia, given a '98 Venture, and told they can return when and if they can disassemble the vehicle into major components using nothing more than a metric socket set, hydraulic jack, and a pair of axle stands.

(Don't even get me started on why the hell a vehicle built, probably in Canada, in 1997 has non-metric bolts holding the stupid alternator on).