Shits n' Giggles Time

I was thinking of not blogging, or just posting a link today. But then while I was out walking the dog (a dog that wasn't my idea!) I passed a Toronto Sun newspaper box and I saw the headline: "Our choice is clear - stephen harper."

First of all, this surprised me because I thought they were actually endorsing the NDP in this election. I'd seen some surprising editorial headlines on my Facebook newsfeed saying they thought Mulcair was the most respectable candidate and that harper was too disgusting and dangerous.

Oh well. In retrospect it was too weird to be true. (I guess I should have done more than read those headlines and teasers.)

Secondly, I was struck by how their choice is "clear" as if stephen harper is clearly the best candidate by far. Banking everything on one natural resource and ignoring manufacturing? (And then the volatile natural resource market tanks?)  Selling GM shares at bargain basement prices to fake a surplus? Driving wounded veterans to suicide? Ending home mail delivery? Appointing hacks as senators to do party fund-raising on the taxpayers' dime?

I would think that even limiting things to the issues that the Toronto Sun would find important, that harper would, at the very least, not be the "clear" choice for them. Sadly no. So, for shits n' giggles, I'm going to read their endorsement and react to it as I go.

There's been a lot of talk in this election about strategic voting -- voting for someone you don't really support to block someone else you support even less.

That's not our advice to our readers in this very important election.

Right. Now, who would the Sun and its readers vote against? My bet is on Justin Trudeau. I'm sure they're tortured by this, but Sun readers would probably put their personal hatred of a "Trudeau" over their hazy, incoherent ideological fears of the NDP. Even if Tom Mulcair is crazy-angry and he has a beard. It's been the Liberals who have tended to have more power and money than the NDP. There's some good, salt o' the earth folks who vote NDP. (Northern miners, Saskatchewan farmers.) But the Liberals are the urban, effete elitist latte-sippers. And, well, Trudeau is a Trudeau. The epitome of the FRENCH-speaking elitist intellectual who made their cereal boxes bilingual and hooked us all onto the great Free Mason conspiracy of the metric system and whatever cockamammy idiot theories they have about Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Plus, well good fucking gracious; "JUSTIN!!!!!" What's not to despise??? Justin Trudeau is an insanely handsome mother-fucker. (I don't mean that literally, but I'll bet these harpercon deranged degenerates would.) He's kinda like Joe Namath was to Grandpa Simpson:
Grampa: "Probably. I'm trying to watch the Super Bowl. If people don't support this thing, it might not make it." 

Howard Cosell: "Joe Willy Namath, swaggering off the field, his sideburns an apogee of sculpted sartorium. The foppish follicles pioneered by Ambrose Burnside, Appomattox 1865."

Mona: "His wild, untamed facial hair revealed a new world of rebellion, of change. A world where doors were open for women like me, but Abe was stuck in his button down plastic fantastic Madison Avenue scene." 

Grampa: "Look at them sideburns! He looks like a girl. Now, Johnny Unitas, there's a haircut you could set your watch to."
Okay. Let's continue ... no strategic voting for the Toronto Sun ... gotcha ....

We urge you to vote for the leader and party you believe is best qualified to lead Canada.

On that basis, we endorse Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives.

Okay? But why? How?

Harper successfully led Canada through the worst recession since the Great Depression, emerging in better shape than almost any other developed country.

Ask any of these numb-nuts "HOW" harper did that (and subtract the surpluses that were the work of Paul Martin and his austerity and Martin's refusal to let the big banks merge and engage in the criminal speculation they were wanting to ) and you won't get a coherent answer. It appeared that Canadian households simply ignored the crisis and continued borrowing to buy houses, keeping the 20% of our economy based on residential housing humming along.

Since then, he has successfully balanced the federal budget and positioned Canada for modest surpluses for the next four years.

Sure, by raiding the EI fund, and by having federal departments withhold spending on such things as veterans' services and even programs for policing child pornography!!! (And that from the "stand with us or stand with the child pornographers" party!!!)

Over his nine years in office he has worked to ease the tax burden of Canadians, by everything from lowering the GST from 7% to 5%, to, in this election, raising the Tax Free Savings Allowance and helping families and senior citizens reduce their tax burden through income splitting.

Ah Toronto Sun! You fucking idiots! I actually support lowering the GST. Despite what neoliberal economists tell us, its a regressive tax. But when you reduce your revenues, you have to make it up somewhere else. Remember Toronto Sun editors, harper had moved the federal government into deficit territory BEFORE the recession hit! The Tax Free Saving Allowance is another budget-buster for the wealthy. It benefits people who already have more money than they know what to do with. And harper's income-splitting isn't just for seniors. I suspect you know that. You're just lying about it because the Liberals have promised to end income-splitting for everyone, because this is, yet again, another reason why the harpercons have to slash spending on veterans in order to squeeze out a meaningless surplus.

He has helped parents by letting them keep more of their money to help with the costs of raising their children in the way they want to do it, not the way the government tells them to do it.

What steaming crap! harper has burdened parents by killing a national daycare program. As if federal daycares with unionized employees would be worse than unlicensed, over-crowded private daycares where children die. It's stuff like this that truly sickens me about the right-wing and their lies and delusions.

He is the only national party leader who understands that in order to maintain its prosperity, Canada must be able to trade with the world and get its resources, including oil and natural gas, to domestic and international markets.

I assume this is a cowardly, round-about way of endorsing harper's ramming through his tar pipelines and his insane idea of loading super-tankers off the rocky, stormy shores of British Columbia. (When they're not leaking all over the goddamned place along the way.)

On foreign policy, Harper has succeeded in the top priority for any leader in the post 9/11 world.
He has kept Canadians safe from terrorist attacks at home while taking the fight to the terrorists abroad, most recently by joining the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

This is such rotten ass-hattery that I can't even be bothered to spit on it.

He has been a staunch defender of democracy in the Mideast and has made Canada Israel's closest ally in the world.
He has been a beacon of moral clarity at the United Nations, which has drifted into moral relativism and hypocrisy, unable to respond effectively to the global threat posed by radical Islamism.

Excuse me while I puke. How the fuck are we defending democracy in the Middle East???? By giving weapons to Saudi Arabia? By token bombing of CIA-Saudi mercenaries? And Israel??? I suppose it's consistent that the racist, anti-First Nations Toronto Sun would back the racist, mass-murdering Israelis. Racist, murderous scumbags like to stick together after all.

Simple point: If you stand behind Israel 100% then you're a complete moral failure.

On the Syrian refugee crisis, Harper has been the only national leader telling Canadians the truth. That is that no matter how many refugees Canada accepts, the federal government must always err on the side of keeping Canadians safe and the only long-term solution to the refugee crisis is ending the Syrian civil war.

BWA-HA-HA-HA! The way to end the Syrian civil war is to continue it!!! Ha-ha-ha! You stupid fuckers are completely insane!!! Ha-ha-ha! And, as for your shit-head notion that there are terrorists lurking among those refugees and that, therefore, the PMO is justified in holding the process up while they select refugees according to their own sectarian religious prejudices, I've already dealt with that stupidity:

Only the right-wing would agree with the insane notion that terrorists are hiding among the Syrian refugees and that this is a grave danger.
Seriously! Take one minute to imagine how that's supposed to work!
ISIS: "Okay Ahmed! We need all our forces now for the great battle against Assad and the Shiites, but I want you and your family to flee to Turkey and go live among the refugee camps. Then, when all your money is exhausted, try to get yourselves to Europe. If you don't drown on the way you'll end up in Greece or Hungary. If you're not arrested and deported or have your brain bashed-in by neo-Nazi thugs, you just might get to apply for refugee status in Canada! Once you're there it'll be a simple matter to buy explosives and organize a terrorist cell among Muslim Canadians and ...."

Let's continue ...

Harper has been unfairly attacked by opponents as a bigot over the government's position on the suitability of the niqab at swearing-in ceremonies for new Canadians, a position he shares with the vast majority of Canadians.

By contrast, we don't think Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair are motivated by evil intentions. We just think they're wrong.

That's awfully big of these morons; to not accuse Trudeau and Mulcair of evil intentions for supporting a woman's right to be veiled at a ceremony. Who the fuck could even construct an argument as to HOW they could possibly be motivated by "evil intentions"????? But, anyway, the Toronto Sun sees this non-issue as decided by majority opinion.

Really? You base your ideas of MINORITY rights on the opinion of the MAJORITY????

You goddamned fucking stupid shits!!! The whole reason for having minority rights is to protect them from the imposition of the opinion of the majority!!!

I called this a "non-issue" because this is about a tiny minority of women taking part in a ceremony. This is AFTER they have proven their identity in a fairly rigorous process. Okay??? Technically, legally, ... factually, ... we know who these women are. Now, it strains credulity to imagine a Muslim woman with "evil intentions" could substitute her niqab wearing terrorist auntie to say the oath for her, but that wouldn't change the fact that she is still the woman who has the name that is on her citizenship papers. Nothing her terrorist auntie could do, walking around with her niece's papers, would allow her to do anything that would threaten the safety of this country.

Do you understand?  It's INSANE to imagine a woman would apply for citizenship and then slip someone else in to the ceremony in a niqab or burqa to take her place. But even if we indulge this INSANE idea, it's INSANE to imagine that anything could come of it!

So there's that taken care of.

But then, what about all the feminist-haters who instantly become feminists whenever the cultural practices of certain groups of Muslims becomes the topic of conversation?

As I've said before, some of these women CHOOSE to wear the niqab because they believe it brings them closer to their imaginary god (or some such thing). The important fact is that for them, while it seems pretty clear to me that this way of dressing was invented by patriarchy, they're doing it because they want to.

So, end of story.

But what about women in households where the man decides what the women in it will dress like? What if it's the product of coercion? Hmmmm. Can you think of anything more "liberating" than to put a woman in a situation where she has to choose between her husband's demands and those of the state? How unproblematic to have women condemned to house-arrest by their men; especially if these women have even partially imbibed the religious-cultural nonsense about it being "indecent" for women to parade around out of doors unveiled?

I can't think of anything as simultaneously bigoted and stupid and counter-productive at the moment.

We don't question their patriotism. We question their ability to keep public sector spending in check and to represent Canada to the world as ably as Harper has done.
That's why we urge you to vote for Harper and the Conservatives on Monday.

Awww! That's so nice of you! Not questioning whether Trudeau or Mulcair are evil and unpatriotic! In so doing, you're better than me! I think harper hates Canada and his intentions are base and crude. But anyway, here's the thing Toronto Sun editors: You can't even pretend to care about fiscal responsibility, because harper's tax-cuts have destroyed revenues, requiring cut-backs in needed public services. And harper was convicted of contempt of Parliament because he refused to come clean about his policies' costs. And he fucking lied, LIED, LIED about the cost of the useless F-35 fighters, to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars. (Perhaps by as much as TWENTY BILLION DOLLARS!!!!!) Also, the money we wasted in the futile war in Afghanistan was also in the billion dollar range. If that money had gone into services for the poor (who you pretend to care about from time to time) you would have gone ape-shit. But because it went into killing Muslims, you're cool with it. (Just so long as we don't spend too much on wounded veterans, right?)

Whatev's. It was good to see that the Toronto Sun's endorsement was as vapid, stupid, incoherent, hypocritical and vile as i thought it would be.