Here you go Stevie. This is for one of your "late" candidates

The ChrisReidDoesn'tSpeakForUsButWeReallyLikeHisIdeas editon:

The OLDEST profession

Right here.

So I'll say a rosary for him. I'm willing to overlook that the same way I am willing to overlook people who shack up, or are divorced and remarried.

Aren't we magnanimous!! And just so, oh so, tolerant!

You just told us what you're all about. Hitler tolerated Ernst Rohm and Edmund Heinse in exactly the same way. Overlook until inconvenient.

Send your cockroaches. We'll be happy to expose them to the light.

Chris Reid - Gone with his blog

Oh... looky here.

The Tories have lost a candidate in downtown Toronto who was running against Liberal incumbent Bob Rae.

The Conservatives say Toronto Centre Tory candidate Chris Reid resigned this weekend after telling them that he couldn't commit to serving four years in government.

What?! He didn't like the pension plan? Aside from that, suggesting that he would have lasted four years is somewhat presumptuous... don't you think?

The Liberals, however, are alleging it was controversial comments posted online by Mr. Reid that led to his departure.

The Tories distanced themselves from Mr. Reid's online writing on Sunday and refused to discuss it.

Sounds to me like a real poor job of vetting. That or they never expected anyone to resurrect his amazing prose from the memory hole. The ideology was apparently fine with them - the fact that he actually wrote it seemed to make them nervous. Give away too much of the game perhaps?

Mr. Reid, an openly-gay environmental engineer, was also a candidate for Toronto City Council in 2006. A blog written by someone identifying themselves as Mr. Reid has been shut down but copies of its web pages, archived by search engine Google, indicate the writer had strong ideas about how to change Canada. (Emphasis mine)

Yes, that writer did.

Recommendations posted on this blog under the title “Political Thoughts by a Gay Conservative” include: closing the CBC; ending Human Rights Commissions and hate speech laws; ending abortion; allowing “qualified and trained” citizens to carry concealed handguns; and ending the Indian Act and the reservation system.

“These policies just keep Indians and their corrupt leaders dependent on the state and unable to ever have the freedom to succeed,” the blogger wrote under the name Chris Reid.

As for his recommendation that Canadians be allowed to carry concealed handguns, the blogger wrote: “It's the only proven way to reduce violent crime and murder. If women and gays really wanted to stop being victims of hate crimes, they'd be in support of this, but judging from discussions, they'd rather be helpless and rely on government.”

Yup. That's what's in Google cache alright.

Excuse me. I have to do this. HIGH FIVE buddy!!! You da man!!

Trying to hide something? CPoC candidates and their blogs (Updated)

BigCityLib has done the heavy lifting and pulled the veil off Toronto Centre CPoC candidate and raving nutball, Chris Reid.

Reid used to have a publicly accessible blog which has suddenly been reduced to members only. If you look for it you get this. Apparently Reid would rather not have people flipping through his archives. Too bad about Google cache and M.J.'s persistence.

Then we have Halton CPoC candidate Lisa Raitt running her Official Campaign Blog. Impressive! Except that Raitt, after realizing that the "comments" section of her blog meant people were going to actually offer their opinions on her views and those of her maximus leader, diddled with the "comment" section until (at time of writing) it vanished completely. Canadian Cynic was maintaining a Death Watch on Raitt's blog, (death being the complete elimination of the comments section of the blog), and as we can see, CC didn't have to waste much time. One day.

By comparison, and since he's running in the same Halton riding as Raitt, take a look at how Liberal candidate (and incumbent) Garth Turner runs his blog.

At least Reid and Raitt are on the same page when it comes to listening to their prospective constituents. If elected, they will absolutely, positively, 100 percent, represent everyone... who agrees with them.

On the other hand: Red Tory has a point. Until Raitt removes the word "blog" from her.... whatever that is... there is still life to be sucked out of it. In fact, Raitt might want to eliminate her "articles" thing (ersatz-blog) altogether since most of her readers are coming from the left-to-centre readership of progressive and reality-based blogs. In short, she's getting some excellent exposure as a joke.