Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Oh Those Fucking Liberals!!

This isn't a very topical issue. It's just that a Liberal blogger who I've only recently encountered and had high hopes for appears to have gone completely off the rails. Eugene Forsey: Liberal has been babbling away lately about "TOTs" ... by which he appears to mean NDP "zombies" ... and how we've been destroying Canada's political scene, ruining all the great, fantastic, super, awesome, rocking work that the Liberals are trying to accomplish. (Somewhere in his ravings I'm sure that Forsey has explained what a "TOT" is, but I don't really feel like taking the time to sort through the whole stream of rubbish and find out where he's coming from.)

The post that did it for me was the second "TOT" installment, cheerily entitled "Totters Kill Canadian Troops"* wherein he lamely accuses the NDP of having Canadian soldiers' blood on its hands. Why? Well, remember when the Liberal Party of Afghanistan thought it would be smart to join the USA in invading Afghanistan, rather than just stay quiet and let the USA and other NATO allies slaughter and starve a sovereign nation, only to impose a brutal, corrupt, puppet-government upon them? To his credit, Forsey remembers this, and slams the Liberal Party for its stupidity (which he opposed at the time).

To his great discredit, Forsey begins to yammer that when the NDP voted in 2007 against a Liberal motion to make 2009 the firm pull-out date from Afghanistan, and stuck to its principled position of an immediate withdrawal, voting with the harpercons to defeat this non-binding motion, that it is now the NDP that has the blood of all the soldiers killed or wounded since 2009, on its hands.

"Yes, I got us into this mess, but unless you agree to go along with it for two more years, you're responsible for everything that happens after that!"

My, my! What an incoherent sentence! What an incoherent argument.

That was the post that made me actually want to respond to the Forsey's whole "Totter" nonsense. But it's because it was piled on top of this post: "The NDP is Dead! Long Live the Greens!" which is a stew of insanity, Liberal arrogance and delusion of epic proportions.

First of all, to deal with the title of the post, Forsey is asserting that rather than serve as vehicles through which people with genuine alternative political philosophies try to get elected and apply their policies, the NDP, the Greens, and any other party (besides the Bloc) are really supposed to be little help-mates for the big Liberal Party of Canada. (Supposedly the NDP used to help the Liberals by splitting the centre-left vote and foiling their chances for majority governments in the past, but now it's the Greens turn to "help" by doing that. ... WHAT?!?)
So it is that I do not mourn the departed, that is simply inexorable nature. I rejoice in the vitality of the Greens, and the helpful, healthy contributions they have to make to Canadian politics. This Liberal is happy to welcome you, and encourages you to play your role with all the vim and conviction that you are already known for. RIP, NDP. Allelujah, Greens.

Anyway, within the bowels of that post, Forsey steps in at least two pieces of his own shit.

First of all, he derides the NDP for the absence of "big ideas" in its campaigns. The NDP is really just a political "zombie" shuffling around aimlessly after the lights went out upstairs.

Um, ... excuse me?? This from a champion of the Liberal Party of Canada? The party of Paul Martin, who aside from helping destroy democracy in Haiti, slash Canada's welfare state while giving away the farm in corporate tax-cuts, was widely mocked as "Mr. Dithers" for not having a fucking clue about what he wanted to do as prime minister? That Liberal Party? The Liberal Party that made Stephane Dion their leader? Dion who used his hard-won credibility as the environment minister who allowed Canada to violate its Kyoto Accord commitments, by having our carbon emissions INCREASE rather than DECREASE as they were supposed to do, to campaign as an environmentalist? And by "campaign as an environmentalist" I mean to propose a carbon tax and then drop the subject after stephen harper makes it difficult to sell, ... that Liberal Party?

Then, Forsey actually goes back to Layton pulling the plug on the Paul "Dithers" Martin government:
OK, so name me the urgent reason that prompted Layton to kill off Martin Govt?

Here, let me help you with that Eugene:

Layton chose the creeping privatization of Medicare as his principal ‘deal breaker’ issue. He chose smartly. Martin cannot come out against privatization because he is clearly committed to it and has almost certainly made back-room promises to allow it to happen.

After the meeting martin said virtually nothing - only that it was a “good meeting.” Not a word on the substantive issue. Layton blasted Martin for failing even to admit that privatization was a problem or that it was even happening.


He continues with a summarization of Liberal activism that is a actually an indictment:
No-one ever gets it. Yet for all the criticism, the Martin Liberals had big ideas, national child care,

NDP called for it too.
aboriginal welfare (Kelowna)

You're kidding, right? After decade-after-decade of malign neglect, there's a shocking incident of mass-poisoning on a First Nations reserve and Martin gathers up all his compradors and decides to dip into his mega-surpluses (obtained by slashing public services and looting EI premiums) to bribe his way out of the scandal, and that's "aboriginal welfare"? It was long overdue, but it was also a day late and a dollar short. It was a drop in the bucket of what was necessary and should not be used to praise Martin.
first half-decent environmental plan (only half-decent, nothing more, but better than before or since).

Sorry Eugene, but the contest for best environmental plan was between the NDP and the Greens.

End of Part One.

* D'yah suppose the lunatic has a post anywhere entitled "Liberals Kill Canadian troops"?

3 comments:

Cliff said...

Yeah I felt the need to point out how unhinged he's getting at my place too, because he's too insecure to allow comments that disagree with him at his place.

thwap said...

He seems to be yammering that Canada couldn't leave without 6 months notice without having to quit NATO.

Nonsense. Would NATO really make a crisis out of a graduated pull-down?

Cliff said...

Plus as I recall the wording of the NDP motion was to 'start the process of withdrawl.' If that meant 6 months, I guess it meant 6 months. Doesn't really change the essential narrative does it?