Note To harper: you Shouldn't Lie In Parliament

Aside from the fact that the criminal scum shouldn't even BE in Parliament, at the very least, harper should have enough respect for the institution that he not brazenly LIE in Parliament. Which is what he did, repeatedly, when asked questions about the Duffy scandal.

Now, harper probably thought (and continues to think) that politicians have lied in legislatures since time immemorial, and in that he's right. The differences are that it doesn't happen as often as he imagines that it does and, as well, the majority of the politicians who have lied in legislatures are his type of politician: corrupt, crooked, bought-and-paid-for scum. Also, it helps if your lies are not so shamefully obvious. Easily demolished. Insults to the nation's intelligence.

But that has been harper's whole game plan. Brazen lying. Lying about F-35s. Lying about his omnibus legislation. Lying about where polling stations are located. Lying about health care. This is a man who defended Bev Oda for tampering with an official document to make it justify a subsequent policy decision. This is the guy who made Tony Clement President of the Treasury Board after the grifter embezzled $50 million from the border security fund. This is the guy who let Peter Penashue run again under the Conservative banner after he was found guilty of violating election finance laws.

So, what's going to make him stop his lying now that he's been exposed as having serially lied about Duffy's expenses and the subsequent hush money? Can we expect a cowardly stupid liar like stephen harper to have a genuine "Come to Jesus" moment and start telling the truth? Of course not! Break out the popcorn and watch as the pathological liar begins to spew out increasingly absurd rationalizations for his supposed ignorance about what everyone in his office was doing, and their supposed continued silence after he was making statements about it in the House of Commons, and his inexplicable failure to clean house after it was clear that (if he wasn't lying) they'd been allowing him to look like a fool for weeks and months.

It's apparently been confirmed that the ranting codger at the Conservative rally who called the reporters "lying pieces of shit" for their questions about the Duffy scandal (the details of which he showed himself to be absolutely clueless about) is the same guy who told Olivia Chow to go back to China during a public event at the last Toronto municipal election.  It's been noted by others that Cowan was sporting a pro-Doug Ford button when he went off at those reporters. Big surprise; a racist ignoramus supports the Ford brothers.  If this guy lived in the USA, he'd be a Trump supporter.

Read something on Facebook yesterday. That Trump isn't a disgrace to the American political system; he's an indictment of it. Elites have been encouraging right-wing know-nothing racists in order to distract attention from and divide opposition to their wholesale plunder and criminality. Trump, harper and Ford brother supporters have managed to rally supporters to causes of mass delusion, disgusting racism, crude buffoonery, religious fascism, ... viewpoints that would have been suppressed only a few decades ago. It is ugly, it is contaminating and, when these fools take power (fairly or fraudulently) it injures our lives. But the thing is, there are NOT that many of them. I've said before that if the rest of the USA that despises Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity were to turn, as one, against those conmen's fans, they would quickly pound them into sauce. Perhaps we should all smash their fucking faces in for a better world.

So, Tom Mulcair, Israel and Margaret Thatcher. Straight off the top, Mulcair was never my choice for leader of the NDP. Furthermore, I don't think Mulcair has all that much to do with the current success of the NDP. Walk down any middle-class street in Canada and you'll find a surprising degree of ignorance and delusion about current events. This is the truth. Maybe 20% of the population agrees with the imbecilic Earl Cowan after all. (Remember, he saw fit to wade into a crowd of reporters and scream that the Duffy scandal is about Duffy having cheated on his taxes!) And that Cowan guy is a political junkie! He thinks about politics so much he goes to candidate's meetings and rallies and sports their campaign pins! But he's so dismally stupid that he has no idea what's really going on.

Ordinary sane people are mainly focused on their personal lives and their immediate circles. The self, the family, the job, the neighbours. "Politics" for them is a distant concept of only hazy significance. It also appears to be boring. And futile. But what the hell, sometimes they watch the news. And television news is a dreadful source of information about politics. The more ambitious of these people occasionally read the newspapers, which are only slightly less dreadful. (Two-thirds Margaret Wente and one-third Naomi Klein at the best of times.)

The point is that the vast majority of people who are moving to the NDP are doing so not out of some detailed thinking about Mulcair's centrism or NDP policies. They're doing so because they've been fucked-over by neo-liberalism (peddled by the harpercons for the past decade) and they cannot recall the Liberals having done anything substantial to oppose this neo-liberalism in living memory. They have a hazy recollection that the NDP resists neo-liberalism and they've decided to give them a try.

But there's a culture in this country that is built, fostered, enabled, encouraged, enforced, etc., by self-centred, self-deluding, narcissistic scumbags of the capitalist persuasion that allows "conservatives" to run racists, boors, convicted fraudsters and criminals as viable candidates (Rob "crack-head" Ford fer fuksakes!) whereas a left-wing candidate who dares criticize Israel, or bully cops, or mainstream greed-heads is hounded until they give a craven apology and are then hounded into resigning.

In such a culture, only certain people can pass muster. That's why you get a product like Tom Mulcair. At the moment though, harper is the greatest menace. But we'll need to really think about how we can build a different culture in this country, and, what's more, make it the dominant one, after harper is gone.

Finally, I just want to say something about the Liberals. And remember, this is from a guy who is going to vote Liberal this election. You're wrong about Canada having hit a debt wall in the nineties. And you're deluded about how progressive you were in the nineties. And when you're schooled about this you proceed to being in denial about it. This too, is part of the culture that has to change. Justin Trudeau's meaningless twaddle about "growing the economy from the heart outwards" is just as cynical and meaningless as Barack Obama's lies about hope and change. Those of you liberals/Liberals who still gush about the US Democratic Party need to pull your heads out of your asses if you're going to be part of the culture of genuine democracy.