Polls Have Canadian Voters Popping Around In A Tiny Pinball Machine

First, harper's struggling, Mulcair has the lead, Liberals are in third-place territory.

Then, the Duffy Scandal, Earl Cowan's outburst, and the Syrian refugee tragedy, and harper's on the ropes, Mulcair surges and Trudeau is stagnant.

Then, in mutual bickering, Mulcair begins to attack Trudeau from the right. Trudeau gains. harper gains from the diversion.

Then, harper finds his racist mojo. Trudeau starts talking like a leftist. Mulcair's boyish crush on Margaret Thatcher, idiotic Zionism and unpopular (but principled) stance on niqabs keeps him down in third place.

The gyrations are pretty small. This is a tight, three-way race, which in our archaic electoral system, could even produce a harper majority. Especially with Green Party self-righteous fanatics acting as spoilers across the country.

What I'd like to know, is how could those people who now like harper have also been the people who were disgusted with him only a couple of weeks ago?

[I'd also like to know why Dr. Dawg continues to interact with the villainous scum, Peter 1, Jay Currie, and that pretentious vile "K" thing. Doesn't he have a happy, off-line life? What's the point of debating with serial liars and racists like that for, what? over ten years now???]

Still and all, I'd rather this guy were PM than harper

harper Defends Saudi Arms Deal ...

NOTE: I wish I knew html. Then I could edit the bizarre formatting that blogger has introduced for reasons known only to itself.

Supposedly the geniuses at the heights of the Canadian political edifice don't think that human rights are a winning issue in Canada. That's why nobody really bothers to try to press the harpercons (or past Liberal administrations) about our fairly noxious record. Then, for a few days, surprise surprise, Canadians become outraged at the news of fleeing refugees drowning enmasse in the Mediterranean, and there's a bit of a blip. Then it's forgotten, because, polls show that Canadians are mainly concerned with "the economy" (which is to say, with their personal well-being). (Whereupon which all the parties peddle the same neo-liberal bullshit that's got us so completely fucked.) 

Personally I think what is wrong with this thinking is that it's the same empty-headed, self-fulfilling prophecies of all those "political experts" in the UK who declare Jeremy Corbyn as "unelectable" after they've lost election after election.

I wish there was more of a moral compass in this country. Take, for instance, our evil abuse of the First Nations, year after year, decade after decade. Under Conservatives and Liberals. After fucking the whole country over for around a decade, perhaps Paul Martin thought his Kelowna Accord would be some sort of personal legacy. We'll never know, because when Jack Layton asked him to stop destroying Canada's public health care system, Paul Martin refused. Martin was defeated and then lost the subsequent election all on his own due to his record of dithering and fall-out from AdScam.

The NDP's Charlie Angus and Niki Ashton are good on First Nations, but NDP governments in British Columbia show how deep such sentiments lie. They're good individuals, but politics is so corrupting that you can't depend upon anyone. Because this is a racist country. A capitalist (and therefore selfish and amoral) country.

Still and all, harper takes the prize for being the stinkiest piece of shit running down our collective leg. And I really think it would be easy to destroy Captain Closet if one really went at this issue with the intensity it deserved.

We have a $15 billion dollar sale of light armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia's internal security force. (Not its smaller national army.) Saudi Arabia is a gross human rights violator. A super-corrupt dictatorship that savagely oppresses half its population just for being female. (harper will fight against Muslim women in Canada who might even voluntarily wear veils or niqabs, but he will provide weapons to a country that FORCES women to wear them. Because he's a brainless idiot.) 

Actually, that last parenthetical statement? I feel I have to qualify it. harper is an idiot. But he's not literally "brainless." I'm pretty sure the hypocrisy of his war on the niqab in Canada and his support for the Saudi dictatorship has occurred to him. The thing is, he just doesn't care. Remember, harper ran for that closet the instant he heard the gunfire in the hallway. he abandoned a fellow Conservative who was in a wheelchair. he abandoned all his followers. Because he didn't care about them. he doesn't care about anything other than himself. The niqab is important to him because it is a useful wedge issue to drum up votes. If a woman in a niqab, or any woman in Canada, ran to a women's shelter from an abusive husband, harper's contribution would have been to have cut the shelters funding or whatever federal contribution ever went to victims of domestic violence.

Anyways, while he was on the campaign trail recently, a young woman asked him about the $15 billion deal with the detestable Saudi regime. Was he putting Canadian jobs ahead of human rights concerns. His reply:

Well look. um, as I've said in the debate, um, it has been, it's frankly, all of our partners and allies were pursuing that contract. Not just Canada. So this is ah, this is, you know, ah, a deal with a country that frankly, notwithstanding its human rights violations, which are significant, this is a contract with a country that is an ally against the Islamic state, a contract that any one of our allies would have signed. It is the largest contract in Canadian history. Some 3,000 direct jobs in the London area, and look, we expressed our outrage, our disagreement from time to time with the government of Saudi Arabia for their treatment of human rights, but I don't think it makes any sense to pull a contract in a way that would only punish Canadian workers instead of actually expressing our outrage against some of these things in Saudi Arabia.

Vile, evil, stinking bullshit from start to finish. The product of a selfish sociopath who also happens to be a mental mediocrity. Let's parse it, shall we?

"All of our partners and allies were pursuing that contract."

Absolutely irrelevant.

"Notwithstanding its human rights violations, which are significant ..."

What the fuck does THAT mean you cretin? "Yeah, okay, my fishing buddy is a serial child molester, sure, no question ..."  I mean, WTF??? How do you get a pass for such a "notwithstanding"???

"is an ally against the Islamic State."

Well, an honest look at the situation would tell you that Saudi Arabia is also an ALLY of the Islamic State. The latest enemy in the GBWT, And, besides, as the Tyee article shows, these carriers are for domestic suppression and NOT for the Saudi army to use in fighting foreign threats.

"A contract that any one of our allies would have signed."

1. Just goes to show how scummy our allies are.
2. If your allies jumped off a cliff, would you follow them??????

"The largest contract in Canadian history."

Irrelevant.

"3,000 direct jobs."

So, $15 billion for a mere 3,000 jobs. And we help prop-up a misogynist dictatorship that exports terror around the world? Considering the way that harper likes to flush our tax dollars down rat-holes and corruption, $15 is a drop in the bucket. I'd rather our government spent that money itself and gave out contracts for humanitarian purposes, like building transport helicopters to bring emergency relief to remote places; more efficient wind turbines, infrastructure for electric cars, mass transit, ... anything other that the blood-soaked dollars of the Saudi monsters to suppress their own people.

And all the rest of the shit. "We express our outrage from time-to-time." What utter, empty cynical bullshit. "Why do something like not give them weapons when we could ACTUALLY express our outrage against SOME OF THESE THINGS in Saudi Arabia?"

How do we "actually express our outrage" while at the same time contributing to their ability to commit them?

And then, in the last portions of his reply, you can hear his drooling, slobbering army of Earl Cowans begin to clap. It would be poetic justice if any of these ignorant, self-centered pieces of shit found themselves being tortured by a Canadian government that was getting all sorts of weapons and advice from other countries around the world. Then, maybe, just maybe, they'd think of all the poor victims of the monstrous House of Saud being oppressed and tortured and murdered with tools purchased from Canada and its other scum-bag allies.

Not that I want that to happen to these walking, talking farts. Besides, they're all so ignorant, lazy and stupid, that these thoughts don't enter their empty heads while they're relaxed and comfortable with full bellies. They'd be (justifiably) incapable of thinking about other people if they found themselves in a torture chamber.

Seventy Reasons to Hate stephen harper

So, the Tyee has a pdf document that describes 70 of stephen harper's crimes against Canadian democracy. A small sampling:

Harper Found in Contempt of ParliamentFor refusing to disclose information on the costing of programs to Parliament, which Parliament was entitled to receive, the Harper government became the first in Canadian history to be found in contempt of Parliament.
Against Court Order, Refusal to Share Budget InfoEven though it lost a court case and was ordered to comply, the Harper government nevertheless refused to share 170 times reasons and impacts for cuts with Canada's independent budget watchdog, mocking Parliament's right to control the public purse.
Conservative Cabinet Staffers Granted Immunity from TestimonyA PMO edict absolved political staffers from ever having to testify before parliamentary committees.
Conservatives Falsify Reports and DocumentsAmong documents deliberately altered in the writing or the quoting by the government:CIDA document by Bev Oda's office on Kairos; the Senate Committee Report on the Duffy affair; a report by former auditor general Sheila Fraser on financial management.
Repeated Duplicity in Afghan Detainees ControversyAmong the abuses: Parliament was misled and denied documents. An inquiry was shut down. Tories attempted to discredit diplomat Richard Colvin whose testimony diverted from the government's line.

And yet, and yet, ... neither the NDP, the Liberals or the Greens appear to see harper as a threat greater than any other political party. Certainly they don't see what harper has done to Canada as being as important as their own fantasies of their partisan self-interest. What we have now is a tight, three-way race, with the Greens happy to act as spoilers in a number of areas. Why should there even be a RISK of another harper government?

I understand why people might be Liberal or Green or NDP. I've been an occasional NDP member myself. I get it. The NDP ran against the Liberals for so many years in the past because they believed they had something better than what the Liberals did. I understand why most Greens think it's vitally important that they run candidates everywhere.

But there should have been an agreement to get rid of harper a LONG time ago. Because as idiotic as our political culture can get, stephen harper is a menace to our stumbling progress to date. Picture that loathsome alcoholic, drug-addled Mayor Rob Ford in the middle of his mayoralty. Waking up hungover, head-pounding, nauseous. Vaguely ashamed. Driving around intoxicated. Slobbering sexist slurs. Racist tirades. Stupidity. Laziness. Ignorance. Stupidity.

That's the "Conservative" political bowel-movement personified. And harper is the untelegenic, cowardly, stupid, lying front-man for corporate Canada, who use the drooling imbecile demographic to control one-quarter of the voters in this country, giving them a realistic enough base to steal one election after another.

But by all means fuck-heads, engage in yet another election contest with these cheaters and fraudsters as if the Conservatives are just another political party and this is just another run-of-the-mill election.

Argh.

Speak Out For What You Believe In

Speak out against racists trying to trash refugees or force Muslim women out of niqabs. Speak out against racist ignoramuses trying to insult the First Nations. Stand up for trade unions. Stand up for the environment. Stand up for peace.

The ONLY way we will take back the narrative from the "Ford Nations/Donald Trump/stephen harpercons" is to be loud and proud about what we believe in.

Linda Nichol - Veteran For harper

If you go to pretty much any major internet story about the "ABC Veterans" you'll probably find Linda Nichol in the comments section. She claims to be veteran. (With great details that I never bothered to follow up on.) She'll swear up and down that harper has been the best friend that veterans ever had. If you want to blame someone for the lump-sum payments for injured veterans, blame the Liberals, who imposed that policy in the first place. Nobody has spent more on veterans, provided more services, etc., etc., than has stephen harper.

The point of this post isn't to creep on Linda Nichol. Assuming she is who she says she is, she's a retired CF person who has all the time in the world to debate online to defend the prime minister she honestly believes has done more for veterans than any other prime minister. But why then, is there this movement of virulently anti-harper veterans? What about all the stories of deliberately vague processes and deliberately vague denials of benefits? Why the shameful circulating of veteran activists PTSD records? How come, even with the whole "decade of darkness" meme about the Liberals, there was never a veteran's group that said "Anybody But Liberal"?

I've said for a while that I think there must be a lot of time-serving, shameless toadies at the upper echelons of the Canadian Forces. The sort who will leave their own people out to dry in order to curry favour with their harpercon masters. The institution is rife with racism and sexism anyway. They do nothing about that. They covered up for pedophiles amongst our Afghan Army allies. They'll let Peter MacKay use their helicopters as a personal taxi service and then nickel and dime wounded veterans. Could she be one of those types? I mean, she doesn't really address the issues raised in the original stories. She just argues with individual commentors and says that there are 700,000 veterans in Canada and most of them just LOVE stephen harper.

Just interesting. 

Elite Morality

So, I'm back at the gym these days and CNN is on the big screen tv in the changeroom. And I notice they're talking about how US troops say they've been forced to turn a blind eye to Afghan soldiers raping little boys. Two US soldiers who intervened and roughed-up one of the pedophiles were dismissed from the military.

The actions of Quinn and the other soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland, against the American-backed police commander displeased their superiors in the U.S. military.
Quinn says he and Martland were relieved of their duties shortly afterward. Quinn has since left the military and Martland is now being involuntarily separated from the Army.
They had directly confronted a thorny issue for U.S. forces in Afghanistan: the subculture of bacha bazi, or "boy play," in which young Afghans are used as sex slaves by grown men.
For U.S. service members in Afghanistan, the abuse of children is infuriatingly hard to stop, especially when it's carried out by Afghan commanders allied with American-led forces.
"The reason we weren't able to step in with these local rape cases was we didn't want to undermine the authority of the local government," Quinn said. "We were trying to build up the local government. Us acting after the local government fails to can certainly undermine their credibility."

Seems that something similar happened here in Canada didn't it?

Then, on top of Conservative PM David Cameron supposedly having inserted his university-age penis into a dead pig's mouth, there's the British upper-class pedophile ring under Thatcher story:

What have we got now? Maybe TWO MILLION deaths as a direct result of US policy in the Middle East in the Clinton-Bush-Obama era?

Cuts to health care. Deadly de-regulation of railroads. Cruel and racist abuse of the First Nations. Disgustingly piggy-packing on the heroism of Terry Fox. Deliberately stirring-up racist hatred of Syrian refugees to galvanize their voting base. Being a lying, degenerate, hypocrite drug user, but voting for continued "carding" harassment of black youth.

This is right-wing "morality" folks.

But Jeremy Corbyn didn't button the top button on his shirt. He didn't sing "God Save the Queen." He stole a couple of sandwiches! (Actually they were given to him.)

The mainstream consensus is insane.

On "Bulletproof Neoliberalism"

Was reading something interesting in Jacobin Magazine recently, called "Bulletproof Neoliberalism." It tries to answer just why is it that despite failing utterly to bring a new era of full employment, productive investment and human freedom and happiness, and, instead, bringing an era of financial market collapse, gargantuan corruption and inhuman austerity, that neoliberalism still rules the roost ideologiically speaking.

What is going to come after neoliberalism?” It was the question on many radicals’ lips, present writer included, after the financial crisis hit in 2008. Though few were so sanguine about our prospects as to repeat the suicidal optimism of previous radical movements (“After Hitler, Our Turn!”), the feeling of the day was that the era of unfettered marketization was coming to a close. A new period of what was loosely referred to as Keynesianism would be the inevitable result of a crisis caused by markets run amok.Five years later, little has changed. What comes after neoliberalism? More neoliberalism, apparently. The prospects for a revived Left capable of confronting it appear grim.

Me-me thinks it's a good question. The article deals with one Philip Mirowski's attempts to solve the puzzle. In his book  Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown he deals with three issues: Neoliberalism's manipulation of ideas, the ways that our lives (and minds) have been shaped by immersion in neoliberalism, and the faulty analyses and tactics of the leftist opposition to it.

NDP vs Liberals

Just remember; I'll be voting Liberal where I live. But I've been a little dismayed by the speed with which Liberal partisans have been crowing about how they're the progressive ones because Justin Trudeau says he's not afraid to run deficits and Mulcair's insisting he can balance the budget.

You Can't Save The Environment Without Democracy

Remember when harper had a minority and he didn't control the Parliamentary committees that examined and critiqued his legislation, so he had a manual printed up for his committee chairs about how to stymie their work? Remember how harper and his minions repeatedly lied to Parliament and obstructed Parliament until they were eventually found in contempt of Parliament, triggering the 2011 Federal Election? Remember how harper employed electoral fraud on a larger and larger scale until he eventually was able to steal a majority government? Notice that now that he has a majority he's rammed-through legislation to make it even easier to steal elections and to hide this fact from the public? Or how about how he smashes through massive omnibus bills that include the wholesale gutting of our environmental laws and he invokes closure on debating them and allocates very little time for Parliamentary committees to examine them?

"Democracy and the Rule of Law."

Now that harper has democracy bleeding on the floor, it's the Rule of Law's term. Among other signs of his contempt for the Rule of Law, the most important is his constant battling and belittling of the Supreme Court. Because he wants nothing to stand in his way.

Even if it was the case the harper is so delusional and stupid that he imagines his pro-pollution actions, his undercutting of Canadian workers with the Temporary Foreign Workers Program, his anti-Muslim bigotry, his militarist fantasies, his pandering to the wealthy, etc. etc., are in the best interests of Canadians and the Canada as he knows it (as the empty-headed idiot savant Wayne Gretzky seems to think); he should still be condemned for his utter cowardice at defending and fighting for his beliefs.

No matter how delusional harper might be, he has no right to knee-cap democracy just because he thinks he's doing good.

And, given the likely probability that harper knows that he's just servicing the rich and powerful and placating his necessary voting base with red-meat such as Islamophobia, poor-bashing and vicarious wargasms, his abuse of democracy is just insane, evil bullshit.

My expectations for Canadian democracy are pretty low at this point. Search this blog using the term "Mulcair," and you'll see I'm no great fan of the man. I'm far to the left of the NDP but I tend to vote for them because they're the most left-wing party likely to have an impact politically. Use the search-term "Liberal" on this blog and you'll see that I hate those corporatist mother-fuckers as much as I hate the corporatist, sell-out mother-fuckers of the USA's Democratic Party.

But I believe that both these parties will show, because they have done so in the past, more respect for our quasi-pseudo-democratic system than has harper. We will at least return to the stage where our politicians at least have respect for the forms of our quasi-pseudo-democratic system. (As opposed to the United States, where decades of abuse of the system, aided and abetted by the moronic delusion that "they're all the same" and "those damn politicians in Washington and their stupid games! We can, and we should, ignore them, and allow the oligarchs to do whatever they want, and nothing bad will ever happen to us!" ... led to a situation where Congress refused to approve Obama's military action in Libya and Obama went ahead with it anyway. And then life supposedly went on.)

I say this even though I realize that the stink of harper's nauseating contempt for parliamentary democracy will linger and continue to infect our political culture, long after he's died in prison. he already infected Daltonbot McGuinty who refused to provide the majority in the Ontario legislature with the information on his $750 million gas-plant closure scandal. Other parties elsewhere will probably look at harper's behaviour as guides to swift and sure implementation of their own agendas, rather than as the horrible, anti-democratic precedents that they are.

We must remain vigilant after harper goes.

We could stop harper now if we weren't such a bunch of clueless, lily-livered sheep. But given that we ARE clueless, lily-livered sheep, we must depend upon elected representatives, utilizing the formal powers they have as parliamentarians, to defend the forms of our quasi-pseudo-democracy for us.

I'm not interested in the debates on the economy. They're all neo-liberals drunk on the rancid kool-aid. I'm not interested in yet another Liberal resorting to left-wing rhetoric on the campaign trail. (Lucy, Charlie Brown and the football come to mind here.) I'm not interested in Mulcair's present platform or his past or present delusions at the moment.

All I care about is whether they'll return us to a stage where we respect the forms of our parliamentary traditions.

Because we won't be able to do anything about the environment unless we have a government that listens to the scientists that it pays to provide information on important subjects like the health of the environment, that the private-sector greed-head despoilers don't care about and won't pay for.

We won't be able to be a grown-up people who vet their legislation in an open and honest manner.

And we won't have those crucial, vital things unless harper is defeated.

Which is why I find it the height of juvenile folly to fixate on a distant FOURTH party in a first-past-the-post electoral system. Why am i supposed to care about your fucking pride and your stupid sense of entitlement as you do what you can to split the progressive vote and allow harper to steal yet another majority and thereby condemn my children and my grandchildren to blargle-rargle, rahr, roar! Rant! Rave! Flecks of spittle!!! ....

stephen harper Hid in a Closet

Lest we forget ...

You can't pretend to be a fearless leader who is the only one who can protect his people, and whose bravery justifies your dressing up in actual military gear, when you're a pants-pissing coward who flees to a closet leaving your followers to their fate.

So there was some sort of debate on the economy last night. I was out drinking so I didn't see it. Probably for the best. Various pundits have credited the win to all three of the men involved. Some call it for Mulcair. Others for Trudeau. Others for harper. If Elizabeth May had been allowed to participate, some might have called it for her!

Who cares what harper has to say on the economy??? Here's what we know:

• harper is a detestable coward.
• harper demonstrated and was convicted of Contempt of Parliament. (This should matter in a Parliamentary democracy.)
• harper practices election fraud.

The conclusion can only be that harper is not a credible candidate. So un-fuck him.

Deranged Partisans

I know I've gone after Obama-bot "Driftglass" before, but this really takes the cake. It's from last year, with the Edward Snowden taking refuge in Russia after exposing the US National Security Agency's illegal domestic spying program. Empty-headed people were condemning Snowden as a traitor, and, obviously, running to an enemy country just proved his traitorous nature.

In response to that stupidity, Glenn Greenwald tweeted

"How irrational to choose Russia over the luxurious, super-max hellhole of life-long solitary confinement the US generously provides people"

Well! That got Driftglass's knickers in a twist you can imagine! He rants and raves for several paragraphs, but one of his main points is that NOT ALL whistleblowers in the United States of America get "disappeared" into solitary confinement in a super-max prison, therefore Greenwald is LYING in that tweet!

The idiot takes the case of CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who was prosecuted by the Obama administration for having leaked details of the CIA's torture program and was sentenced to 30 months in prison in a low-security facility.

Forget that Obama praised the idea of whistleblowers and that ... actually, NO, don't forget that. Obama praised whistleblowers. Said they were necessary. So John Kiriakou admittedly broke the law, but he did so to expose not just crimes, but outrages against human decency. The very thing that Obama says whistleblowers should be praised for. And Obama decided to prosecute him and lock him up for two-and-a-half years.

You'd have to be a victim of partisan derangement syndrome to even think that's the least bit justifiable. You'd have to be a hopelessly terminal case to imagine that it's actually a club to beat Greenwald with. Especially since Greenwald mentions Chelsea Manning by name. Notice that the revolting Driftglass doesn't even attempt to rationalize her brutalization.

Driftglass rants like a pathetic idiot throughout that post. Read it for what it is. Tragic evidence of a capable mind driven mad from political tribalism. We progressives are obviously not immune to the fanaticism and blindness that the generally less-intelligent right-wing falls into.

Liberals praising Paul Martin to the skies, or NDP'r's twisting themselves into selling Mulcair's support for Zionist atrocities come to mind.

Corbyn, Sanders and the Electorate's Move to the NDP

The stunning landslide victory of leftist Labourite Jeremy Corbyn over his Blairist rivals is part of a larger global phenomenon. It is the same thing propelling US pseudo-socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders' surprisingly robust campaign for the Democratic nomination against the militarist-corporate Hillary Clinton. It is the same thing that saw a left-wing coalition elected in Greece (only to be betrayed, it seems, by what appears to be excessive pragmatism). It is the same thing that saw millions of Canadian voters turn to the NDP in the last federal election.

It's testimony to the failures of neo-liberalism. Centrist politicians are buckling everywhere. Even the US "Tea Party" in their own blinkered way, are rebelling against their Repugnican Party's traditional leadership. The grassroots of the party appears taken by billionaire buffoon Donald Trump who has called for abandoning free trade and returning manufacturing to (white) American workers. It appears that the right-wing base, in the USA, in Canada, in the UK, while perfectly happy to blame racialized minorities and homosexuals and the poorest of the poor for their problems, are also deeply angry and in revolt against the banks, the corporations and the neo-liberal managers in general.

Right-wing populism, left-wing analysis, both are opposed to the neo-liberal consensus. Because it failed. It's like I said over six years ago; We did everything they asked and we only got continued and deepening poverty and economic chaos:

Remember that people. And grasp the significance of it. They created gigantic debts and caused enormous suffering with their monetarist, anti-inflation recessions. And inflation was under control (on their terms). We signed free trade deal after free trade deal, making it easier for manufacturing to relocate to where labour was cheaper (due to democracy being necessarily weaker), regulations were lighter, taxes were lower. The labour movement (both in Canada and the USA) is a tamed beast. We've surrendered job security, pay increases, all to be more efficient and competitive and flexible. The wealthy, the "wealth creators" according to the fiction, and the corporations (other sources of dynamic job creation) have received enormous tax-cuts over the years. We've privatized many public services, reduced many others, and social programs have been re-tooled to encourage scrambling after any shitty job that comes along.
Look, we did all these things and we were promised economic prosperity. These promises were later downgraded to "relative economic stability."
And what did we get? Come on, really, what did we get? We find ourself in the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s. Not "NOT relative economic stability." Not a bump in the road. But total massive failure.

It remains to be seen how many deluded saps will continue to vote for the harpers, the Trumps, the Fords, the racist, xenophobic, cynical, hypocrites of the right-wing.

It remains to be seen how many silent centrists are out there. People who will cling Liberal or Democrat no matter how many times their progressive promises get tossed into the memory-hole after election.

But the NDP itself is showing signs of embracing the cynical centrism of the Liberal Party. I've long believed that the NDP has been staffed by an ossified, contaminated bunch of time-serving mediocrities. They routinely paid only lip-service to the leftist values of the party's base. This brain-trust was so busy reading corporate news opinions and analysis, so busy consulting with pollsters, so obsessed with the votes of the mainstream, that they "formed a picture" in their heads as to what was necessary to win elections and this (in their minds) consisted of aping the Liberals as much as possible.

The horrible reality we have now is that these people have interpreted the massive voter shift to the NDP (as a result of the failure of the same Liberal mindset that they wish to emulate) as a vindication of the right-ward slant of the NDP ever since Jack Layton took it over. They're going to piss it all away by stupidly trying to give Canadian voters what they already rejected from the Liberals.

No matter how much neo-liberal economists want to ignore it; manufacturing jobs have been lost. Public sector jobs are shrinking. Tuitions and debt levels have exploded. Housing prices have skyrocketed. Wages are stagnant. Employment is increasingly precarious for more and more people. And everything is committed to satisfying the gargantuan appetites of a financial sector that that is based on massive public subsidies and corruption.

More and more people are hurting. ("Losers" in the sensitive parlance of neo-liberal propagandists.) And people are going to fight back. No matter how often they're smacked down. They have no choice. Just like our First Nations activists and the Palestinians. Regardless of the odds, people will have no choice but to resist. Anyway they know how.

harper's Polices are Indefensible

... we know this because harper avoids questions; blocks questioners; hides from protesters, because he knows he wouldn't be able to defend his policies if pressed.

Canada's Tyrant In Waiting???

This man is sometimes angry. And he has a beard. And he makes the MoS angry. And I don't think the MoS has a beard

Have you heard the latest threat to democracy? It involves Tom Mulcair's stated adherence to the long-held NDP plank to abolish the unelected Senate. The Senate is an appointed body that is supposed to provide greater representation to Canada's regions than is served by the "representation by population" House of Commons. But, just as Mike Duffy is supposed to be residing in PEI, the official story is not the real story. The Senate is a place where Liberal or Conservative prime ministers have been able to place party loyalists, bag-men and retiring colleagues where they can continue to serve their partisan interests and do so on the taxpayers' dime.

The "House of Sober, Second Thought" was based on the inherently undemocratic British House of Lords. In that place, members of the aristocracy had the power to nullify any legislation from the elected House of Commons that was felt damaging to the aristocracy's interests. It was famously described by British minister David Lloyd George thusly:

At Newcastle in October he told a riveted audience that ‘a fully equipped duke costs as much to keep as two dreadnoughts and they are just as great a terror – and they last longer’, and was asked if it could be right that the Lords, ‘500 men, ordinary men chosen accidentally from among the unemployed’, should override the judgement of millions of hardworking people.

As an UNELECTED AND APPOINTED body, one that was initially more elitist than the House of Commons, and one which only served to allow past governments (including defeated governments) to block or thwart the will of present governments, the NDP has long felt that the Senate should be abolished.

To hear Liberals speak of it though, no country can survive with a unicameral legislature. Abolish the Senate, they say, and Canada would soon descend into the chaos of Canadian provincial politics.

...

Er, um.

But wait! There's this political "expert" who tells us that it's unconstitutional to reform the Constitution.

Partly it's our history with this stuff. We haven't had a very great record in dealing with this. The one big success in 1982 brought us the Charter of Rights, but it arguably led to the near breakup of the country in 1995 because we generated this myth that Quebec was betrayed in 1982. We spent all of the 80s and early 90s trying to get new constitutional reform and they all failed, including the Charlottetown Accord referendum, and it actually causes strain on the federation to engage in these processes and it's actually regarded by some people as unfortunate. 

Or something like that.

But wait! There's the fact of Tom Mulcair's stated desire to simply impose abolition of the Senate by personal fiat and to fucking HELL with the Supreme Court and the provinces!!!

MULCAIR: I'm not going to sub­contract that one. It will be my job as prime minister to open up conversations with the provincial premiers, as I've already started to do. But you're right, like most Canadians I didn't spent a lot of time – I mean when I studied political science, thought a little bit about the Senate. Didn't find it very useful but it was not something that kept me awake at night. The day that group of unelected officials – now some of them are good individuals – I'm not taking that away from them – but Mr. Harper has had a habit of naming defeated candidates and party bag men and other officials to the Senate. The day, Peter, that they had the temerity to reverse legislation on climate change that Jack Layton had – successfully had adopted by the elected people in the House of Commons, it made me realize that it is time for us to get that changed. Now I know it's difficult. But when I was in provincial politics in Quebec, we changed something that was as relic of the 1860s in the Constitution which was religion based school boards. And we changed them. We changed them to language based boards which were more adapted. We had to get the National Assembly to agree on it and I was part of that, even though I was in Opposition. A lot of hard work with the English speaking community. We worked hard to get it through the House of Commons and the Senate and we got the Constitution changed. Now fair enough, it's one province and it's one subject. But to say that it can't be done, as others would have you believe, is to say that we're stuck with this relic of our British colonial past. I don't agree with that.
MANSBRIDGE: BUT IS IT A PRIORITY?MULCAIR: Well it's a priority to the extent that I won a mandate for it on October 19 a priority to the extent that I will make the effort to continue to meet with the premiers and I know how tough it's going to be. But we go after these jobs because all the easy things have already been done.

Or, well, er, something like that.

Or maybe it's just the case that Liberal hacks (including those who are of such sterling moral calibre that they'll be voting for the Liberal Party's poodle, Elizabeth May's Green Party and NOT the Liberals) are just looking for any idiotic excuse to trash their rival on the left?

Speaking of idiotic excuses to trash rivals on the left; I find it thoroughly disheartening that the NDP would side with the harpercons against Justin Trudeau's statements that he isn't afraid to run deficits to pay for some necessary things. I get that the NDP gets unfairly crucified (as opposed to "fairly" crucified) for its deficits, and that Mulcair would have to campaign on balanced budgets even if he wasn't a closet Thatcherite, but they should come up with more original, and less hypocritical criticisms of Trudeau than that.

Also, this idiocy that Trudeau is smearing genuine small businesses when he says that a lot of rich people incorporate themselves as a small business to save at tax time, is worse. Trudeau was simply telling the truth. And a lot of small business people are even bigger right-wing assholes than the corporate-fucks.

But I have never had a great deal of admiration for Canada's political culture when it comes to issues of class, economics, or foreign affairs. The important thing is to stop our downward moral/cultural/democratic trajectory by stopping harper.

harper Hires Lynton Crosby: the rat will go down snarling

In yesterday's post, I didn't want to give the impression that I think that harper has given up on winning the election. If he had, he wouldn't have sent Jenni Byrne back to Ottawa. If he really thought it was over and he thought it was all Jenni Byrne's fault, he would have said; "Sure. Stick around. Why not? What does it matter?"

Instead, the idiot thinks that the sinking economy, the Duffy, Carson, Brazeau, Wallin scandals, the national revulsion at the harpercons' refugee policies, and the embarrassments caused by public outbursts of their shit-headed fans and shit-headed candidates are all the product of Jenni Byrne's abrasive, fanatical personality.

If he gets rid of Byrne, he can save the Conservative Party's chances in this election. Yeah! That's the ticket. (What an idiot!)

No. All I said was that harper is a physical and mental wreak, crumbling under the avalanche of bad news. That he's a coward and a bully who can't stomach the failure that he's brought upon himself. (And I do think that he will fail this time. Although vote-splitting and election fraud might save his bacon again, I think more people hate him, less people will vote for him again, and he might not have the margin to steal another majority.)

As ephemeral vigilance says; if harper believed it was hopeless, he wouldn't have hired Lynton Crosby to take over the campaign. Crosby, a snarling, anti-immigrant Aussie racist, shows that harper just believes that the Conservatives have to fight harder. Crosby is going to be like Earl Cowan if that racist ignoramus had a degree in public relations.

harper is a cornered rat who plans to go down fighting, and infecting as many of his adversaries with diseases as he claws and bites in his final death throes. In this case, harper will be spewing cultural and moral poison, stirring up his rabid base in one last orgy of hatred, racism and cruelty.

The hiring of Lynton Crosby provides a clue as to what the detestable Chris Alexander is doing in Ottawa. Is Alexander finally, at long last, doing something to expedite thousands of Syrian refugees into Canada? Evidently not. They've hired a guy supposedly expert at marketing and pandering to anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiments among the population. Chris Alexander is merely sitting at his office, enjoying himself masturbating behind that nice desk in the nice office, hoping he can continue to do something similar after the election. How hard can it be to CONTINUE to bar refugees from Canada? The old policies are doing the job nicely.

The hiring of Lynton Crosby shows why harper is in no hurry to work with the other party leaders to do something about the refugee crisis. harper has no intention of doing anything. harper's appeal is to racists. harper himself is a racist. he has a long history of involvement in racist organization and other inhuman organizations ("National Citizens Coalition" and now the "Conservative Party of Canada").

Hopefully harper hasn't damaged the psyche of Canada to the extent that the celebration of naked bigotry and selfishness that is coming will overwhelm the latent decency of normal people and help him shit out another quasi-victory. Hopefully, Lynton Crosby's talents at selling hatred won't help harper's final results. Hopefully we can defeat this monstrosity and start creating a country that increases its capacity for goodness, at long last.

harper on his last legs

For as long as it's available, I ask people to check out the video of stephen harper listening to journalists' questions about Syrian refugees during his campaign stop in Welland. Clearly, this is a guy who is not having a good time.

And let's face it: stephen harper is insane. he practices a lunk-headed version of Christianity that believes in Armageddon while at the same time he worships wealth. he is a twisted person. A shallow person. Given to fits of rage and pique at the slightest thing. He's a thorough bully and a complete coward.

And his bid for re-election is going even more disastrously than could have been expected. harper knew before he started that he had no good options. he banked everything on the price of oil and the price of oil has gone down the crapper. On top of his only recently abandoned policy of replacing Canadian workers with imported slave labour, the collapse of Alberta's Tar Sands could trigger a significant upsurge in unemployment. he knew the Duffy and Carson trials were scheduled around the time of any election.

he decided to call a long election, in the hopes that he could out-spend and out-campaign the other parties. Hopefully the electorate would get sick of all of it and tune everything out. Plus, the loathsome Pierre Poilievre had done so much to rig the game in their favour that election fraud will be even easier this time.

But then, the Duffy trial turned out to be far worse than people anticipated. (Perhaps it is worse than even harper anticipated. he's delusional enough and stupid enough that he might not have processed what basic questions about the PMO would reveal.) It's resulted in harper having to throw his long-time boy-toy Ray Novak under the bus.

Then, one of his vetted campaign guests (who got past harper's cowardly screening process) exposed the ugliness of Canadian Conservative voters for all to see, in a tirade to the journalists present. That ignorant ranter then turned out to be the same imbecile who shouted a racist remark at Olivia Chow during her run for mayor of Toronto last year.

Then the refugee crisis blew-up in their faces and the cruelty and racist crudity of the Conservative Party came up against the beliefs of normal people that when millions of people are in obvious distress, a large wealthy country like Canada can and should take in at least a few thousand of them. The psychopath Chris Alexander first tried to bluster his way past questions on the matter, until, failing in his goal, he lashed-out with a bunch of obvious lies about the media's failure to report the matter. That such a brain-damaged incompetent as Chris Alexander is one of the "star" candidates for the Conservative Party is a testimony to the low functioning level of most true believers. Alexander had to be sent back to Ottawa to (ostensibly) attend to the refugee crisis, but really to hide-out from the public until the memory of his utter stupidity and callousness had subsided.

Then, two of harper's candidates turned out to be, respectively, a tradesman video-taped pissing in a customer's mug in her kitchen, and a wannabe actor who posted videos of himself masturbating while making prank phone calls which included mocking the mentally handicapped.

Then a riding association director responded to the unexpected anti-harper statements by the new "Miss Universe," a Cree woman justifiably angry and disgusted over harper's abuse of her people with a bunch of racist slurs against the First Nations peoples. She had to go.

Paul Wells, who I thought had half-a-brain, is trying to insist that harper appears to be having a great time on the campaign trail.

But look at the photo above and look at the video. harper is clearly fatigued. He's had to send the raging monster Jenni Byrne from directing his campaign back to Ottawa, because she's clearly responsible for the problems so far. Not harper! Not his idiotic choices; the fall-out from his own racist refugee policies; his own arrogance and corruption; the low level of harpercon candidates; the sputtering abusrd outbursts from his demented supporters.

he's got that same watery, verge of tears look in his eyes that he had when he almost got deposed by a Liberal-NDP coalition. Look at him wince as yet another of his fans blurts out about how the media should care about Canadian kids who drown in pools and not Syrian refugees drowning in a desperate attempt to flee from wars. (And, anyway, do you suppose this shit-head cares about, say, First Nations children, taken from their parents and placed in over-crowded foster homes where they drown in the tub as a result of carelessness and neglect?)

harper is up there; heavily sedated (to calm his furious rage) weaving back and forth, tired, dispirited, afraid. Stupid.

This is a man whose sanity was never very robust, who is having a very bad time, during a long, drawn-out process whereupon he is very likely to lose all the trappings of power that validate his delusions and his bullying. It's all very likely going to be taken away from him and it's making him even sicker in the head than he usually is.

Stephen Colbert trying to be "inclusive" with Repugnicans

Everything that's wrong with the world. Sure, US Democrats are either loathsome or delusional or both. But Repugnicans???

There are the "grassroots" types who think homosexuals should be murdered (or at least driven to suicide by bullying), and that children fleeing from constant street violence in US-supported "failed states" in Central America should be deported back to their deaths because they're disease-carrying Spics, ... and that Blacks deserve to be murdered by the police; and on and on with their filth they go. And then there are the "elites" who tell their bought-and-paid-for shills to pander to the racism and homophobia of the "grassroots" because no matter what; such shameless political whores implement the most corporate-friendly legislation.

I get why Colbert thinks he has to do this. But it's wrong. Check out this comment from here:

A couple three of the bits were overdone and drawn out—the Oreos Trump thing was funny the first bite, then the second, but it went too predictably long, like an SNL overkill. Same with the Hummus commercial. He didnt do well with the serious part of interviewing—as soon as Clooney went into his Darfur experience, he let George talk but didnt do any follow up, or dive deep questioning, and then quickly skirted the conversation to Georges “lovely” wife…that made me think he will in fact struggle with the transistion from part playing, to being able to handle serious interviews—which we were told he could in fact handle. Sorry, he blew it tonight–and then tried to play “gotcha” a bit with Jeb. It also still reeked of anti conservative, Yay! all things Obama, and Left is Best stench—which truly he should lose and open it up to be a bit more inclusive…I mean with the closing number routine of “We got to live together”, he should think to be a bit less politically alienating and to in fact include everyone in the humor. Quick Subtitles naming the musical guest performers would’ve been impressive—I counted maybe 5 I recognized, vs. the shouting their names over the closing credits.
First night I’d give him a B minus….he was smooth though, but he has had 9 months to prepare. Funny, quick witted, but the serious interview skills (lacking) truly said maybe he’s a bit more limited than I thought he’d be. Even Letterman was good at diving a bit deeper—but no one has since matched Carsons ability to do it smoothly and without malice.

I mean, I'm sorry, but what was that? You want the political bowel movement you are part of to be taken seriously because of WHAT particular delusion? Fuck you. I remember recently reading some online harpercon supporter describing herself as "I have a job, and a brain," and I could only pity her. Sorry honey. Your admission of support for stephen harper shows that you're a total ignoramus and probably pretty scuzzy underneath the surface.

Because you can tell this person must have some claims to intelligence, but the whole right-wing pity-party drivel that it engages in!

Let's be clear here: The harpercon party of Canada consists of a bunch of sleazy conmen and closet-cases. End of the fucking story.

And the racist, suckers of Jesus's cock homophobes n' chumps of the Repug base should get down on their knees and beg for our forgiveness; instead of whining that they are not being pandered to. They have nothing of any value to contribute to ANYTHING so long as they're still so fucked-up as to self-identify as whatever it is they call themselves.

Right now they're falling over themselves in adoration in to a serially-divorced, 1-percenter, Chinese-slave-labour-loving, bullshit artist named Donald Trump. And they expect to be taken seriously?

Seriously??????

No. A thousand-million times no!!!! You deserve the same level of opprobrium as NAMBLA. And until our society gets it through its head that the Republican Party of America (and the Conservative Party of Canada) has the same intellectual and moral weight of middle-aged men who would only fuck 12-year olds, we will make no further progress.

Violence For Peace?!?

It seems counterintuitive, doesn't it? Protesters for peace turning violent? Violence doesn't solve anything.

Like, when I see someone physically attacking someone on the street and calls for them to desist don't work, the next stage is to circulate a petition amongst the people passing by, imploring the assailant to stop. Or, I drop to my knees and begin to pray that the attack ends. Finally, if all else fails I do some research about how violence harms both the victims and the perpetrators. (My friend, the post-structuralist, sometimes opens up a can of food and pours the contents on the sidewalk next to the melee, or gets on the nearest bus and folds his arms and pouts.)

The LAST thing you want to do is physically restrain the attacker and do what's necessary to let the victim flee to safety.

I don't know. I suppose that I'm not making much sense.

I only think that to equate physically lashing out at politicians and other militarists, whose cynical, deluded policies are causing widespread suffering and death to MILLIONS of people, with those very same policies of suffering and death, is ludicrous.

Do you get what I mean?

I think the Left has to get comfortable with the idea of justified violence. And, I've said it before; advocating violence can get murky. It can backfire on us. If it wasn't for the fact that the Canadian peace movement has been totally fucking useless at restraining Canadian participation in mayhem and death in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, Haiti, Israel, the Ukraine and elsewhere, I might accept that violent protest causes more harm than good.

Accountability

They wouldn't be able to get away with this shit if we didn't let them:

On Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.
The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead withthe trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition.
That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour and military vehicles), but training, logistical support and the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.

The first step is to be able to know just what our would-be masters are doing. Which is why stephen harper is so determined to eviscerate the very notion of government transparency and accountability.

I don't think harper or Canada in general, has had much to do with arming the fundamentalist terrorists in Syria. (harper HAS sold arms to the barbaric, fundamentalist-extremist Saudi government with little disclosure.) But harper has certainly been contemptuous of Canadians' right to know what our troops are doing in Iraq and Syria. (I posted earlier about how harper's shit-head fans confuse providing basic information about what are troops are doing with providing real-time details of every mission and endangering their lives.)

We seem to have acquiesced to this as passively as we did to harper's theft of the 2011 election. That election was spurred by harper's blatant contempt of Parliament.

But I think it's high time that the Canadian peace movement get fucking militant about protesting harper's militarism in Syria and Ukraine. Because Canada is stupidly contributing to a refugee crisis that has already displaced MILLIONS. Jesus, this is on top of the millions of lives ruined by the Iraq holocaust. AND we're stupidly banging the war drums where they can cause even more horror and bloodshed; the cynical conflict between the USA and Russia in the Ukraine. Tens of millions could be killed if psychopaths on either side launch their nuclear missiles.

The justifications for all of these conflicts are garbage. Their advocates are scum and morons. These are OUR soldiers; OUR tax dollars; OUR national reputations at stake. We need to act. We need to be passionate about respecting our limited rights and freedoms.