stephen harper "Rising to the Challenge"

Recently, one "trevorus" gave me a youtube link which turned out to be the harpercons' propaganda effort "Rising to the Challenge." Taking great advantage of their tenuous grip on government power, the commercial shows harper waddling around the hall of Parliament, and in his office, doodling cartoons about bestiality and drinking from a mug of his own piss. Occasionally, some words would appear over top these scenes, advertising the competence and dedication of harper and his gang of idiots. I would like to address these points in order:

225,000 jobs saved

Saved? Saved from what? The biggest recession since the Great Depression. It was a result of the deregulation of the US financial sector during the Clinton years, as well as by the hollowing out of the real economy by decades of pro-business assaults on the foundations of social wealth built up since the 1940s.

I'd like to point out that harper's shit-head of a finance minister, Jim Flaherty, never saw it coming. harper did, but to admit that he'd have to admit that that is why he broke his own fixed elections law, in a failed attempt to win a majority before the shit hit the fan. Regardless, it remains the case that harper entrusts a great deal of economic management to a cretin who genuinely believed that he'd have surpluses into the foreseeable future.

$62 billion to fight the recession

Yes. And you had to be dragged kicking and screaming into spending it! As already mentioned, Flaherty never saw the recession coming, and furthermore, having learned the crude basics of economics in the same way that a dog struggles to grasp what it's owner's bewildering combination of unintelligible vocal sounds and hand gestures are meant to communicate, he was stubbornly unwilling to do what obviously needed to be done until the opposition forced his hand. Then, when empowered by them to begin deficit spending, the harpercons proceeded to turn their "action plan" into a system of rewarding their friends and punishing their enemies.

Cut the GST

I've always thought the GST was a regressive tax and I continue to do so. It replaced another tax though and when harper cuts it, he doesn't replace the revenues. He does this because deficits eventually provide fantastic excuses to slash public services. We were well on our way to deficits before the Great Recession hit, thanks to Flaherty's GST and other tax-cuts.

Extended Employment Insurance Benefits

Wow. Really difficult move, that one. Very complicated as well as far-seeing! Imbeciles.

23,000 projects across Canada

See above.

Lowest debt and deficit in G7

Not through any work on the harpercons' part. They hadn't yet gotten around to freeing up the entrepreneurial creativity of the financial sector the way bankers on Wall Street, in London, and in Ireland and Iceland had been. But harper was going to try. Then events intervened.

Have no fear. harper isn't finished wasting the billions yet either! He's pissed our money away at the Vancouver Olympics. At the 2009 G20. He still wants to spend $35 billion on useless fighter jets and untold billions (he's hiding the numbers) on unneeded prisons.

Over 450,000 jobs created since June, 2009

Really? Gosh! You know, except for the fact that this crowing totally eviscerates their entire worldview (held and believed for decades) that it is impossible for governments to create jobs, that's pretty cool! How did you "create" those jobs anyway? What kind of jobs?

Balanced budget by 2015/2016

Awesome accomplishment! I'm having a foursome with Kim Kardashian, Meagan Fox and the beautiful one next week myself! But good on you for that future achievement. (Who wrote that one anyway? Sandy Crux?)

Unemployment lower than US

You mean the country with the economic policies you've been trying to get Canada to emulate your whole professional life? That one? The one whose policies you WERE pursuing until fate intervened? Whatever dipshit.

Canada an "economic star" (the Economist)

I honestly don't give a flying-fuck what The Economist thinks. Canada has decent employment because our housing bubble hasn't burst yet. Our governments haven't been asked to bail-out imploded banks because harper wasn't able to deregulate them fast enough. The policies that created the world-wide economic disaster are precisely those advocated by the financial-sector shills who write for The Economist.

The commercial's narrator goes on about how Canada is "walking tall in the world." Which must refer to the drubbing we got at the UN over our Security Council seat application (despite all that maple syrup), or Canada's total irrelevance in the Middle East, or our pariah status on the subject of global warming and indigenous peoples' rights.

He then concludes by saying how "We're in safe hands with stephen harper." Yeah, sure. Unless you eat some tainted meat. Or you feel like protesting against one of harper's abominable policies.

Why are we supposed to be afraid of this doofus again? Bring him down.