Veterans are outraged. Now they need to do what they once did best. Lead. Part 3.

Unification, led by Paul Helleyer in 1968 and permitted by Lester Pearson, was a wound most veterans still bear. Initially intended as a modernization to bring three separate services under one joint operational roof, it steam-rolled well beyond the original plan to create a single service which was purportecly able to share resources and personnel across the the three combat elements. It was to become a dumb idea championed by a self-aggrandizing fool who today sees aliens in his cereal bowl. But the damage to morale, traditions and the ethos of the services was extensive. So extensive, in fact, that when veterans look back at the past several decades they are unable to connect the last major re-equipping of the armed forces with the prime minister that actually did it: Pierre Trudeau. And they are just as blinded to the fact that Brian Mulroney, despite all the typical conservative rhetoric, sold off critical combat capability during his tenure.

Let's end the history lesson there and get to the point of this whole discussion. Veterans are now the recipients of some of the shabbiest treatment ever at the hands of the federal government and the fault lays, not just with Julian Fantino, but with Harper himself.

Harper, always prepared to pump Canadian military history for the lazy patriotic vote it garners, is a tribalist, self-centered, sociopath. Fantino was his perfect hatchet-man. But make no mistake about it, what is being done to veterans now is very much calculated by Harper and the elitists who surround him.

Of the roughly 1.1 million Canadians and Newfoundlanders who served in the 2nd World War, less than 90,000 are alive today. At an average age of 90, those veterans are dying in the hundreds per month. Korea veterans, a much smaller group, have all but vanished. No veteran of the 1914 - 1918 Great War survives. In short, the corps of veterans from the declared wars and Korea is shrinking rapidly.Veterans from the Cold War era, Gulf War 1, peacekeeping and Afghanistan do not constitute the same numbers as the large group that returned from the world wars and, (get ready for this), the Harperites don't really consider them veterans in the same light anyway. Those veterans do not meet the Conservative fetish of military glory associated with the big total wars. If you don't believe me, replay some of Fatino's interviews where he tries to minimize the standing of today's veterans by elevating the risk and contribution of municipal police, himself included. He's trying, along with Harper, to make national service, with a full combat liability, no more than police work.

And we all know, for a multitude of reasons, it is not, and never will be, the same thing. Julian Fantino never once deployed for the better part of a year to any one of the world's shit-holes. Ever. We did it with all too familiar regularity.

So, here's the thing, (and you need to absorb this one fully). What Harper is doing to veterans is NOT singularly unique. What he is doing to you, he is doing to everyone. He has shattered the Canadian public service. He is destroying labour law in this country. His myopic focus on creating a petro-state (in Alberta) has promoted accelerated rust-out in the Canadian manufacturing sector. Essential middle-income jobs are being destroyed in the most populated areas of the country in favour of corporate wealth generation from wanton resource extraction. You are just another domino to fall in a long line of tiles. Complaining loudly will do one thing: he'll do what he can to silence you faster.

It's not that Harper doesn't care about you. Harper doesn't care about anybody. He consults nobody outside his elitist circle; he accepts no advice; he answers no questions. When cornered, he runs for cover and hides.

Veterans are in a decidedly exceptional position, should they (we) choose to exploit it. We have always been there for Canadians and we have nothing to hide. And Canadians in general appreciate that we have honestly done our duty on behalf of this country in the best interest of our country.

Do what you have always done best. Lead, and accept nothing short of a fully completed mission.

A majority of Canadians sympathize with veterans. They do not accept the mistreatment and the abuse at the hands of a sociopath. They are watching you. They want to see what you are going to do.

There is a strong belief that if your loud protestations garner some kind of pay off, that you'll take it and resume your seat at the camp table. That would leave the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have had their lives and dreams crushed by Harper's policies sorely disappointed. And you will have lost them forever.

Do the right thing. Get out front. If you never want another Fantino, you have to gather your forces, muster your strength, fight off the fear and get rid of the whole force from which the Fatinos originate.

You need to suck it up and realize that you are only one segment of the population which has been kicked in the genitals. You need to organize and slam Harper hard. So hard that he is totally and completely de-stooled.

If you do not do this, Harper will be back, even if he pays you off this time, and he will do untold amounts of damage. Your meager pension will not withstand the financial assault he will carry out on you if he is returned to government. Do you like your health care plan? He'll kill it. Do you expect to get Old Age Security? It will be gone. Don't believe me? Ask a 55 year old when they get to access their Canada Pension Plan? No one figured on that one but Harper ripped it away from them.

It is time that you considered all of those Canadians you never saw when you were in Bosnia, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, the Golan Heights, Cyprus, Haiti, Cambodia, Viet Nam and any number of places where bullets flew until we took the lead and realized that they want you to get out front, look them in the eyes and say, follow me.

You don't have a lot of time. If you think Harper is going to wait until the fall of 2015 to go to the electorate, you're not paying attention. He is under so much pressure that he could trigger an election at any moment. Never mind the "fixed election date". He's already broken that law once before. All the signs are there and if you're not ready, he'll trample you.

You need to look at the door to your front and realize that it could open at any moment and expose you to a hail of hostile fire. So, get organized and lead. Make your issue big and make it a part of the bigger issue. Harper is not and never will be your friend. He lives in a world where hatred and ignorance are political weapons. You can defeat him and deny him his weapons. Quit worrying about who replaces him. We've all been in situations in far flung places where victory meant we got rid of the nasty prick in the chair without knowing what came afterwards.

You've done it before.

Do it now. Lead.

A strong, stable conservative majority full of liars

This will get the Wurlitzer spinning:

Stephen Harper's Conservative government has won this year's Code of Silence Award from the Canadian Association of Journalists.

The annual award recognizing Canada's most secretive government or publicly funded agency was handed out in Toronto Saturday evening.

The federal government was named for keeping information out of public hands on files such as the F-35 program, avoiding questions at media events and for restricting both public and media access to contentious information.

You have to ask. With a "strong stable conservative majority", why are they still trying to hide everything?

(Gotta love the Maxwell Smart graphic)

Is this still a democracy?

Lawrence Martin asks the question and then lays out years of Harperist malfeasance.

Real democracies, as we learned in high school, are supposed to be open and tolerant of dissent and have checks and balances and run fair elections. Those kinds of things. 

But anyone who scrolls through recent media, conservative media included, might be forgiven for concluding that we have something more closely resembling the opposite. Something more akin to billy-club governance. Think of the ironclad controls, the scorning of accountability, the censorship, the smearing of opponents, the power unto one. The abuses are not just opposition talk. They’re writ large in Auditor-Generals’ reports, in internal documents and journalists’ investigations. Some of the abuses have happened in other governments but have they ever happened on the scale we’ve seen from this crowd?

Read. Weep.

Following the crumbs

Back here I told the story of a frustrating bit of research where I ended up finding a small bouquet of strange connections between the Harper Conservatives and the BC Liberal party of Christy Clark. The problem was, I felt there had to be something more or, at the very least, something substantive. 


The other problem is that connections like this don't exist in a vacuum. There had to be some form of political courtship and there had to be an event when it all came together.


I was pretty much knackered at that point but thought that rather than just leave it dangling I should offer up the connections I had and see if the finest people in the world, our readers, could see something significant. Cookies were offered. 


Now, rather than give the entire synopsis, I'll link to the connections that were found in the order they were gathered. You go to each one because they each have extensive research for you to gather in.

First to jump into the swamp was RossK, our inimitable Gazetteer. Assisted by one of the only people who can dig a cockroach out of a database full of rats, North Van Grumps, he came up with a new name: Nina Chiarelli.

Next to wade into the illustrious pond of castor canadensis was the most excellent Alison, who, being something of a beach watcher in her own right, gave us a newer arrival: Dimitri Pantazopoulos. She also makes the point that Ken Boessenkool was a lobbyist for Enbridge ... our Northern Gateway crowd.

Once again NVG pulls some files from his wicked archive and RossK  finds another angle that cannot be ignored.  


Beijing York, in the comments section waved an idea around. Were the Harperites infiltrating beyond their precincts? 


It turns out our intrepid BY had something. We found Harperite connections in the Ontario PCs, the Alberta Wild Rose party and, (it should go without saying), spilling over a chair in the Toronto mayor's office. 


So ... what else?


Well, there is just what we've got. Alison's connection is significant. Pantazopoulos appeared to be on the public payroll on 4 April 2011, after working on Christy Clark's leadership bid. And, as RossK points out there was public knowledge of Pantazopoulos' hiring on 17 March 2011, just 3 days after Christy Clark was sworn in as Gordon Campbell's replacement. 


Now.


Add this. Harper's operatives were here during the BC Liberal leadership campaign, as we have already seen. 


Were they here by request? Were they here to secure an HST friendly premier, no matter what he or she looked like? 


Gordon Campbell was squeezed out by his own caucus over the plummeting fortunes of the BC Liberals over the HST. To this day, you would have to root deep into a badger hole to find anybody who doesn't believe that Campbell and his cabal didn't have the whole idea planned before the 2009 provincial election. And an FOI request proved it. 


Campbell was in the Harper boat.


Did Gordon Campbell drop a Harper bomb on BC?

Royal Commission?

Bad idea. Now, take that down and give your heads a shake.

An exceptionally informative piece on the type and timing of any public inquiry into voter suppression and other electoral irregularities, (Yes. I'm looking at you, with the blue frigging cravat), is right here.

The investigation must be allowed to continue  - unimpeded.

I personally believe the Harper election campaign was dirtier than an overnight disposable diaper, but the investigators need to be able to develop findings.

The trick is to keep an eye on Harper. He is going to start maneouvring to protect his ass. The thing is to keep it fully exposed by pulling his pants down at every opportunity.

We've all been playing defence with Harper and his mob. As Noni Mausa says, it's time we out-maneouvred them. As the start of this episode has demonstrated, when Harper is caught off-guard, he doesn't come off as much of a leader. So ... be ready for his next move and be prepared to cut him off at the knees. (Figuratively of course. It would be wrong to leave a mess for whomever displaces him).

Not so fast Giorno

Mystified, he is.

“It looks like there is something worth investigating there and that's a concern to me, to you, to all Canadians because the right to vote is sacrosanct and anyone who wants to mess around with that right, interfere with that right is doing not just the Conservative Party, not just the people of Guelph, but all Canadians a disservice,” Mr. Giorno said on CTV’s Question Period.

Not just Guelph. This is nationwide and denying it doesn't make it go away. Then ...

“When you're running a good campaign, you don't have time for any shenanigans outside those three core activities of identification, persuasion and mobilization [of voters],” he said. 

Who said it was a core activity? A browse through of the the Conservative Constituent Information Management System shows that it can easily be used for purposes other than those described by Giorno.

So was there a "Campaign Ethics" unit? Given the Harperites propensity for a wide range of nasty political behaviour both off-writ and during a campaign, it doesn't look like it, does it?

And The Gazetteer has a question we've been asking in Saanich-Gulf Islands since 2008.

Points of disappearance

The problem with tracking moving targets is, if they're any good at all, is that they're not exposed for very long. The same targets keep popping up in different places.

In its own way, that seems to be happening amongst the Harper Conservative war room crowd.

Saskboy brought up an interesting name affiliated with this. Ryan Sparrow. Yes, this Ryan Sparrow.

A quick look at Crestview Strategy, child of Mark Spiro (Former leader of the Target Seat Management Unit) and the home for more than one federal lobbyist reveals a veritable who's who of Harper operatives.

Along with Ryan Sparrow we find Ivanna Baran. Don't know her? You'll find her name on this list.

Then, also at Crestview, there is Mike Donison. Yes, you've read his name here before. He is the former national director of the Conservative Party of Canada and gained some notoriety during the "in-and-out" scheme. He was initially charged under the Elections Act and was let off the hook when the party and the Conservative Fund came to a plea agreement which saw the party and its fundraising mechanism pay $52,000 in fines. All of that happened after Donison called some of his party brethren "turds" for refusing to participate in the "in-and-out" scheme because they sensed something wrong.

Crestview is looking like a Harper operative recycling operation. 

But when it comes to moving targets you have to head over to The Gazetteer. There you'll find evidence of one particularly mobile Harper operative: Michael Sona.

He showed up in Ottawa ... with a Minister ... in National Caucus ... waiting "... to see what the PM has to say to us in Cabinet ..."

"Rogue"?

Right. 

Rats chewing at their own tails to get out of the trap

The theatre provided by the Harperites yesterday was more than a little entertaining. It also smacks of desperation. Dr. Dawg provides a comprehensive walk through the sewage.

I found this rather interesting:

And later this week, these little latter-day Joe McCarthys want to drag Adam Carroll, the kid involved, in front of the Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics Committee—my God, the sheer irony of that choice!—to give him the third degree.

The problem is that he hasn’t done anything illegal, and what he has done, he’s already ‘fessed up to. Taxpayers’ dollars are going to be spent on this fatuous witch-hunt, no doubt intended to generate enough fog to help get them out of the robocon jam they’re in. Will the corporate media be sucked in? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

Agreed ... but that ain't all. This is a first-class act of "railroading" by Del Mastro. "Staffers" can't be held to account by the Information, Privacy and Ethics Committee. 

As Kady, Canada's self-admitted parliamentary committee-junkie, points out, this, if it ever warranted going further than it already has, belongs at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

As far as I can tell, the Del Mastro motion doesn't even try to squeeze itself within the broad but not unlimited mandate of the ethics committee, which includes, among other matters, the Access to Information and Privacy Acts, as well as the Conflict of Interest Act, which deals the conduct of designated public office holders. 

It was under those statutes -- ATI and CoIA, specfiically, that ministerial staffers Sebastien Tognieri and Kaz Nejatian were called to testify on their activities as ministerial staffers by the previous iteration of ETHI. Employees of party research bureaus, like MPs' staff,  are not covered by that particular law, which is why issues related to the conduct of non-ministerial Hill staff -- including the alleged use of House of Commons resources -- fall under the aegis of Procedure and House Affairs. 

Which suggests that the odious Del Mastro is doing this purely for the theatrics, which, as Dawg points out, will almost assuredly see the Harper tactic of cloaking committee activities in secrecy lifted.

They're acting like they have something to hide.

They are scared.

Keep them that way.

Things to energize your outrage (with update)

When Peter MacKay, misuser of RCAF aircraft and abuser of authority, comes out with something like this it bears doing the opposite of what he suggests.

The Conservative Party does not need to look into "robocalls" made during the last federal election any further, Defence Minister Peter MacKay says.

"It's certainly not something our party condones," MacKay said Sunday of the fraudulent calls to voters. "It's inappropriate behaviour to say the least."

Not the keenest dog in the kennel, is he? From the one who lied and sold his party to a bunch of knuckle-draggers this only heightens my desire to look deeper. He overplays little stuff and downplays the big.

Alison, ever persistent, drags out a little more including the highlight of the day: a link to US Republican dirty politics. Things are getting ... oh so, Segretti.

Lawrence Martin catalogues a litany of  Harper party Nixonian performances. This is good lunch-time fare. Don't slurp soup while reading. You'll just end up blowing it out your nose.

Great line of the day comes from Owen at Northern Reflections.

MacKay's claim that there is no need to  further investigate the Robocall affair is akin to saying the coming of Spring is an isolated incident. 

 And, of course, the whole mess is being tabulated by the ever diligent The Sixth Estate. It's an unbelievably comprehensive piece of work. I'm bookmarking that page. I think it's going to continue growing.

A small little update before you sit down with the pudding.  Kady has a list of 95 Conservative riding campaigns who employed RMG. What? You may think that, but I could never comment.

A little viewing to go with dessert.

How can you tell when the Harperites are behaving like Tea Partiers?

When the crew at Balloon Juice notices.

Welcome to the world stage.

OK, this is your brain on drugs

And this is a Harper Conservative's brain on pure room air

 

Now read Cathie ...

Then Kady.

A debate based on fact?

Robert L. Brown, pretty much lays down the gauntlet over Harper's claims that the Old Age Pension is "unsustainable". In his article he refers to a report by the Chief Actuary of the OAS which actually challenges Harper's assessment with facts.

So do we need to worry about the sustainability of OAS?

Not according to the Chief Actuary.
Based on the assumption that the cost of living would rise 2.5 per cent a year and that earnings would rise at 3.8 per cent a year (i.e., real wage growth of 1.3 per cent per annum), the Chief Actuary projected that the cost of OAS as a percentage of GDP would be 2.2 per cent in 2007; it would then peak at 3.1 per cent in 2030, then fall (as baby boomers die off) to 2.7 per cent in 2050. He further points out that, if these assumptions prove to be true, each generation of retirees will receive an OAS benefit that will be a smaller ratio of their final pay (the replacement ratio) than the generations before.

The rub, of course, is that Harper is more than willing to ignore facts to introduce legislation based not so much on perception, but in order to create an illusion.

Raising the eligibility age for OAS is regressive legislation. It’s well known that wealthy Canadians live longer than poorer Canadians. Look at a blue-collar worker with less than a high-school education who retires at 65. That person’s life expectancy could easily be around 10 years. If you raise the age of eligibility for OAS to 67 from 65, you remove 20 per cent of that person’s expected benefits. A wealthy Canadian, on the other hand, could just as easily be looking at a life expectancy of 20 years. Thus, moving this person’s age of eligibility up by two years is a 10-per-cent reduction in their benefits.

So two key questions need to be addressed. First, is raising the age of eligibility for OAS really necessary, or is the system sustainable as is? Second, how does one justify a public policy shift that’s so clearly regressive in its impact?

 Those two questions should be germane. However, we're dealing with narcissistic sociopath in Harper and in order to get to those questions we would first have to get past the personality that first raised the issue.

The first question is easily dispatched by looking at the Harper omnibus crime bill. Is raising the age of eligibility for OAS really necessary? Well, were the measures in Harper's crime bill really necessary? In a field of statistics demonstrating a falling crime rate Harper ignored the facts and committed billions of dollars to increase Canada's incarceration rate. Further, he dumped a huge portion of the cost of his bill on the provinces.


Necessity is not the force behind Harper's initiatives. He is creating an illusion.


The second question is even easier using the same example. How does one justify a public policy shift that is so clearly regressive in its impact? Justify? If there is a mantra to the Harper regime which has become patently obvious it is that they justify nothing they do. What they are good at, however, is silencing anyone who opposes their grand plan.


Harper and his crowd are tribalists. Necessity and justification are contrary to the imperatives of the constructed culture centered around the illusion of greatness, however damaging that may be to others.

Added: I had not seen Owen's post when I published. Apparently we're using the same comparisons.

Putting the boots to granny (updated)

If the priorities of the Harper government aren't fairly clear by now you, you've been living under rock. Everything is driven by the ideology espoused in this Harper speech.

Now, Harper is going to start executing the agenda everyone on the right said he didn't have. You know - the hidden one.

One would like to think that Harper's blustering at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland was simply his continuing attempt to pat himself on the back for no other reason than his very existence. It was these lines which have everyones' ears pricked up:

As I said earlier, one of the backdrops for my concerns is Canada's aging population.

If not addressed promptly this has the capacity to undermine Canada's economic position and, for that matter that of all western nations, well beyond the current economic crises.
...

We must do the same for our retirement income system.

Fortunately, the centrepiece of that system, the Canada Pension Plan, is fully funded, actuarially sound and does not need to be changed.

For those elements of the system that are not funded, we will make the changes necessary to ensure sustainability for the next generation while not affecting current recipients.

That generated immediate speculation. And so it should. Harper is nothing if not the dirtiest player in the room. He has already demonstrated that he will publicly smear anyone who stands in the way of his plans. He has used government to attack any and all who express the slightest opposition to his authoritarian advance on power.

He's also a coward for failing to stand on Canadian ground and make such a pronouncement. And if he goes ahead with what many suspect is a rise in the age of eligibility for Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement to age 67, it also makes him a Mulronyesque liar. During the 2011 election campaign, in a blatant vote buy, he promised something completely different. (Page 28).

As a real economist has pointed out, Canada is in good shape to deal with the wave of baby-boomers approaching retirement age. There is no need to adjust retirement ages upward in this country and Harper has no legitimate mandate to implement such a change.

The only pension plan that needs to be overhauled is the one in which he and his political cronies reside. The original purpose of that plan has long since vanished.

As far as attacking wasteful spending, (something all conservatives talk about but never actually do), his first target should be the things he created.

Harper, devoid of conscience, steeped in his personal fable and determined to enrich his corporate masters will likely forget the name Solange Denis, the 63-year old woman who stood up to Brian Mulroney. And if he proceeds to gut this country's retiring generation, intent on ignoring the single largest active voting block in the country, you might brace yourself for the next ugly maneouvre.

Update: As might be expected from somewhere among the tax-payer funded, very expensive battalion that constitutes the PMO, the talking points have been issued. Interesting isn't it? The body of the Conservative caucus is so unreliable that they need "talking points" on every single issue.

In any case, as Kady points out, the author fails to acknowledge that all this speculation (and the pulling down of the Harper mask) was caused by Harper himself.

And I will point out that not one, not a single one of those talking points puts the speculation to rest nor does it address facts.

And on the maple flag side...

There's this from Cathie.

Oh dear! Did the Harper government lie to us again?

A federal agency created by the Harper government with great political fanfare in 2008 is costing millions of dollars to achieve pretty much nothing.

The Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board has just about everything a budding government agency could want.

So far, it has spent over $3.3 million for new offices, computers and furniture, well-paid executives and staff, travel budgets, expense accounts, board meetings, and lots of pricey consultants.

All that's missing is a reason for it to exist at all.

Personally, I hate it when that happens. 

Waiting for the snowball fight in hell

I agree with Cathie.

I am done with giving the Harper Cons the benefit of the doubt. I'll believe they'll actually amend the residency requirements law only when I see them bring it to the Commons and whip their caucus to support it.

From whence the power flows

DAMMIT JANET! is keeping a weather eye on the emerging pack of Conservative anti-choicers intent on imposing their authoritarian religious will on the women of this country. Go read and then return.

The article referred to in fern hill's post comes from the uber-propagandist, anti-woman, Lifesite. What makes it interesting is that it is not breaking news. Lifesite has simply regurgitated this older report from The Windsor Star in an apparent effort to keep up some momentum which would have been lost over the holidays.

What makes it more interesting is that this is now the fourth nutball Conservative to have yapped off in less than two weeks about "re-opening" the abortion debate.

To which Harper replies that it won't happen while he's prime minister.

There is absolutely no reason to believe him.

Harper's party is manufactured from an alliance of the worst of political outcasts. Refugees from former Ontario premier Mike Harris' "common sense revolution" to evolution-denying, thought-vacant, science-is-too-tough-so-it-can't-be-true christian freaks. Then Peter MacKay, after lying to his membership, folded the rotting corpse of the Mulroney-shredded Progressive Conservative party into the batter. From all of this, the Harper party built its base.

Charles P. Pierce recently described the current day Republican Party in the US thusly:

... nativist hooligans, anti-intellectual crackpots, Christomaniacs, and the sad detritus of American apartheid ...

A description which, with only the slightest adjustment, would serve to describe the alliance of refuse which makes up the Harper party. Lee Atwater*, if he were alive today, would be proud.

And now Harper has a problem. His alliance of feces-flinging knuckle draggers got him what he wanted and they're starting to call in some markers.

While the Harperites were stuck in a minority in parliament he could easily shut them up on the premise that such extremist ideological public statements, unpalatable to most Canadians, would not only deny them a future majority but might cost them their tenuous minority in any future election.

Now, Harper possessing the power he craved, and the position from which to expand it, will either have to deliver or pay an even greater price - division from within and a dilution of his personal hold on power. He can no longer silence the freaks with the threat of an electoral loss. Re-election doesn't come up for 36 months and the poo-chuckers have been sitting on their hands for six years. They are, if nothing else, an impatient lot who will demand the reward they were promised or think they were promised for giving Harper his dream.

Harper has already proven he is prepared to drive legislation with only ideology at the wheel. He's also demonstrated a keenness for jack-booting his legislative agenda into law.

Now, he's going to kick it up a notch and make sure you can't hold his party of rejects to account for their words. From Frances Russell:

When Parliament rose for the Christmas break, there were signals the Harperites were planning to go where no government has gone before and place all business conducted by parliamentary committees -- or at least all potentially embarrassing business -- behind closed doors.
...

The government is especially sensitive about discussions on social issues such as abortion, capital punishment and official languages, Comartin says. He warns that if the government is able to keep everything behind closed doors, it can, given its majority on each and every committee, ensure committee reports will be "totally opaque" so that the public will never know what was said or what specific action was taken.

The only reason you would want to hide all that away is because you've got something to hide. And the reason the government is so sensitive is because they know it won't wash with most Canadians.

Clearly, abortion is back on the table. Harper is feeding you the big lie.


* Lee Atwater was the repugnant individual who, when he wasn't smearing or generating outright lies about opposition candidates during US presidential campaigns, became known for building the base of the US Republican party with southern anti-black racists. His legacy in the US Republican party lives on.