It isn't your imagination, they really are talking to themselves

The SUN-TV news network was never intended to cover the news, it was intended to make the news. Some might even say make up the news, but what I mean is that the gang of clown-shoed commentators put together by right-wing Quebecor chieftain Pierre Karl Peladeau and former PMO flack Kory Teneycke are paid to act out and grab headlines, not to report the news.
Nobody watches SUN-TV outside of a few elderly shut-ins, the staff at QMI newspapers who are a captive audience, Blogging Tories and professional media watchers. 

Bill Brioux, a freelance TV writer for CP, owner of TVFeedsMyFamily.com and a former Sun Media TV columnist, has access to BBM numbers. He says the audiences for Sun News Network are indeed minuscule.

“Very few Canadians watch Sun News Network. A look at the BBM Canada overnight, estimated ratings for a typical mid-week night, Wed. Dec. 28, showed that their highest rated show was The Source with Ezra Levant at 10 p.m. with 38,000 viewers across Canada. ByLine with Brian Lilley at 9 pulled 35,000. Only 5,000 and 6,000 of those viewers were between 25 and 54, across Canada. There are more people, on any given night, in a mall in Toronto,” says Brioux.

So who does watch Sun News Network? “The vast majority of the few viewers SNN does get are way over 50, outside the demo advertisers want. So SNN draws enough on a nightly basis to fill a senior’s mall,” says Brioux.

He went on to say that after the top two shows, Sun News Network gets even fewer viewers. “Beyond Lilley and Levant’s shows—the two highest rated SNN offerings by far—everything else stiffs,” says Brioux. “Charles Adler has bombed from the beginning, drawing 8,000 at 8 p.m. and 2,000 at 11 p.m. on the 28th—and zero in the 25–54 demographic both hours, across Canada.”

As for David Akin’s Daily Brief, Brioux says 6,000 viewers tuned in over the supper hour. But the late-night slot tanked. “Daily Brief at midnight got zip and zip—so few viewers, BBM Canada could not measure them. The same night, CBC News Network peaked at 198,000/60,000 viewers.”

The idea behind the "news" network is to make a lot of noise through calculated and contrived outrageousness and get the other media in the country to pay attention. This results in the media that most people do watch and read - the CBC, CTV, Global TV, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Montreal Gazette, Vancouver Province et al - reporting "both sides of the story" and thus giving the radical right wing side of an issue equal balance with the truth, thus advancing the radical conservative neofascist agenda.
Every time Ezra Levant prances around in a fright wig or tells a foreign executive to go fuck his mother for opposing the destruction of the environment, every time some ignorant spokesbimbo insults a guest and spouts nonsense, every time Michael Coren tells the audience that real Canadians hate brown people and non-Christians --it makes the news, the blogs (including this one) go nuts and people talk about it.
With very few exceptions - and they should be ashamed of themselves - the people on SUN TV don't care about the news or journalism or truth - that isn't the business they are in. They will say or do anything to get covered by other media. They have to, because no one is watching them.
Essentially, SUN TV is engaged in cultural trolling and the way you get rid of trolls is to quit feeding them. So I call on other bloggers, other journalists, the real news media in Canada to stop giving these trolls the oxygen of public attention.
As long as the CRTC refuses to force cable companies to make them a standard station and force subscribers to give them money, SUN-TV will not turn a profit. Eventually PKP will get sick of shovelling money down a hole and Levant, Adler, Coren, Erickson and the rest will all be forced to go out and try to get real jobs.
And being a professional clown only looks good on a resume if you are applying for a job at Ringling Brothers or a rodeo.

Crossposted from the Woodshed
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Canada's little ray of SUNshine

Canada's ethical snake-oil salesman and Glenn Beck wannabe Ezra Levant continues to keep it classy.  As far as I can tell, Ezra's objection isn't that Chiquita Banana keep paying right-wing death squads to murder labour activists in South America, but that they are denying that they are boycotting tarsand products as a PR dodge. How dare they obey free market principles, eh Ezra? I don't know how the mother of the Chiquita Banana exec feels about you suggesting her son should have carnal knowledge of her, but your mother must be so very proud of you.

Crossposted from The Woodshed

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This will not stand!

"You won't recognize Canada when I get through with it"
-Stephen Harper

Not content with running roughshod over the wishes of the majority of Canadians and eliminating the long-gun registry, ignoring the majority of wheat farmers and cutting the throat of the Canadian Wheat Board, the Harper conservatives are now starting to tinker with national symbols.

Dam the beaver — use the polar bear as official emblem, Tory saysOTTAWA—A Conservative senator says it’s time Canada was symbolized by something more majestic than a buck-toothed rodent.
Senator Nicole Eaton wants the polar bear to replace the beaver as an official emblem of Canada.
She says the polar bear is Canada’s “most majestic and splendid mammal,” and a powerful symbol in the lives of native peoples in the North.
She believes the furry, white carnivore’s “strength, courage, resourcefulness and dignity” is an appropriate symbol for modern-day Canada.
By contrast, she derides the lowly beaver as a “19th century has-been,” a “dentally defective rat,” a “toothy tyrant” and a nuisance that wreaks havoc on its environment.

                                                                                           I suppose next they will want to change the flag to a circle of 10 white maple leaves on a blue field in the top left corner over a field of red and white stripes, or maybe just bring back the Red Ensign, since they seem to want to burn down anything that has happened since Diefenbaker was prime minister. Tweet

One of these things does not belong ...

Harper, Obama talk plans for perimeter security

Manley, CEOs, propose details on perimeter security

CATSA airport security screening measures tightened

Government of Canada enhances aviation security

CATSA lays off 15 to 20% of airport security screeners

The Cons have directed every airport in Canada to reduce its security screeners by 15-20%

Vancouver International Airport - 120 screening officers laid off May 16th

Greater Toronto Airports Authority - 400 laid off

Montreal Pierre-Elliott Trudeau airport - 80 laid off

Ottawa International Airport - 11 laid off

Calgary and Edmonton - 15% reduction in screening staff

Hey, I'll bet the screening staff reductions are because they'll be using those new full-body scanners instead ...

Chair of the BC Association of Aerospace Workers :

"newly purchased multi-million dollar full body scanners will be left unmanned and unused ... because there is just not enough staff to operate them."

And you just know that even if we all consented to having Trusted Traveller barcodes tattooed on our foreheads, you still wouldn't be allowed to board if you're packing Astroglide, although apparently handcuffs are still ok.

Cons blacklist Sisters in Spirit

The Cons will consider further funding for Sisters in Spirit but only if they stop using that name and give up lobbying all levels of government and maintaining their database and research into the nearly 600 missing Aboriginal women. Unbelievable.

It was only last week that Status of Women Minister Rona Ambrose praised Sisters in Spirit when she announced details of a $10 million national strategy to address "the disturbing issue of missing and murdered Aboriginal women" :

"The journey truly began with an initiative called Sisters in Spirit that was led by the Native Women’s Association of Canada. The association has undertaken an incredible amount of research... they have brought to light the shocking extent of these horrendous acts of violence."

Yet in Rona's Status of Women government webpage announcing the new strategy makes no mention of Sisters in Spirit at all and now the APTN News reports that Sisters have been excluded from receiving any of that $10M.
Instead they must apply to Status of Women for less money under new rules which will prohibit them from their use of the name Sisters in Spirit, or maintaining and extending their research database of nearly 600 missing Aboriginal women, or lobbying government.

Con MP Shelly Glover, Parliamentary Secretary for Indian and Northern Affairs :

"That project was finished. Don’t mix apples and oranges. That project was finished, now we’re working with them to pursue other projects."

Other projects? Bullshit.
Sisters in Spirit is their database and their advocacy work and their vigils. That's who they are.

So where's that $10M going? A good chunk to the RCMP.

Details in a very good 2 minute news vid from APTN. Go.

Then write an effing letter :
Rona Ambrose : Ambror@parl.gc.ca Phone : (613) 996-9778
Shelly Glover : Glover.S@parl.gc.ca Phone : (613) 995-0579
SWC NDP Irene Mathyssen : Mathyssen.I@parl.gc.ca Phone : (519) 685-4745
SWC Lib Anita Neville : Neville.A@parl.gc.ca Phone : (204) 983-1355
SWC Bloc Nicole Demers : Demers.N@parl.gc.ca Phone : (450) 686-2562).

Red Alert! The Russians still have planes!

Frankly I don't think we can be expected to write a whole new blogpost every time DefMin Flying Ace "Airshow MacKay" and his trusty sidekick Woodstock Kory climb up on top of the Con doghouse to fight off the Red Baron yet again in the Arctic, so this time we're just going with what David Pugliese reported last time 18 months ago (h/t Maclean's) :

"The military officers I was talking to yesterday were full of kudos for Defence Minister Peter MacKay for a move that one described as “playing the media like a finely-tuned fiddle.”
The officer was referring to the breathless Canadian news media coverage of the flight of two Russian bombers that were “intercepted” by Canadian CF-18s …
Yesterday’s incident prompted some amusement at NDHQ about how gullible some in the news media can be and how easily some journalists swallowed the government’s bait hook, line and sinker."

We would just like to add in the media's defence that this time they didn't actually swallow, opting instead to spit it out quietly into a hankie afterwards.

.

Update : Ok, here we go - the new government talking points from conservative.ca :
Info-Alert
Subject: Ignatieff Liberals Embarrassed by Russian Bomber Flights Over Arctic

"Mere days ago Michael Ignatieff pledged to cancel the new fighter jets the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces urgently need.
Embarrassingly for him, Russian bomber flights over the Arctic -- just two days ago -- underscore why our men and women in uniform need modern equipment to do their jobs. Perhaps because he wasn't in Canada at the time, Mr. Ignatieff is unaware of how past Liberal governments gutted our military. More proof that Michael Ignatieff isn't in it for Canadians. He's just in it for himself."

etc ... etc ...

Dimitri Soudas - Still on the milk carton

The search is on for Youtube impressario and PMO Director of Disinformation Dimitri Soudas.
.
A House of Commons bailiff seeking to serve Soudas and another staffer with a summons to appear before the Ethics Committee was twice refused entry to the government offices where Soudas works by the security desk.
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Soudas has been summoned to answer the Ethics Committee's questions on
"allegations of systematic political interference by ministers' offices to block, delay, or obstruct the release of information to the public regarding the operation of government departments".

The Search for Soudas continues via Google, where the number one search result reads :

"No one takes Ethics Committee summons seriously"

"At the end of the day, [Ethics Committee Chair]Paul Szabo and this kangaroo court have no credibility and no one takes their summons seriously."

So said Con MP Pierre Poilievre in August two years ago when he was only an associate member of the Ethics Committee.
Since becoming fully-fledged, and also Parliamentary Secretary to Steve, his job there is apparently to pipe up "Point of order" every few minutes like some demented Energizer bunny until the Chair finally cuts his mike.

Lib Wayne Easter's spirited response to John Baird's surprise appearance before the Ethics Committee on Tuesday in place of Dimitri Soudas has already been well covered. Soudas cancelled only minutes before the committee convened, in keeping with Steve's new rules forbidding ministerial staffers from appearing before committees.

Chair Paul Szabo at first let Baird speak, setting off an hour of angry opposition motions to dismiss the usurper, interspersed with Poilievre's points! of! order! By contrast, the Con committee members dutifully bent over their brand new talking points on "ministerial responsibility for their staffers", carefully read aloud with heads bowed down when it was their turn to speak.
Eventually Szabo broke a tie vote over whether or not to let Baird stay and booted him out.

Well sure. After all, as Minister of Transport, Baird is not Soudas' boss and would not be able to answer any of the questions the committee was intending to ask Soudas, despite Baird's sinister hand waving about something he called "collective responsibility".

And as Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac of the Bloc pointed out, the last time a minister appeared before the committee on behalf of one of their staffers - that would be Christian Paradis, Minister of Asbestos - his idea of "ministerial responsibility" was to just blame the staffer.

Carole Freeman of the Bloc brought up committees' right to subpoena witnesses :

"[Soudas] is an ordinary citizen and should be treated as such. A house leader does not have the power to change existing rules simply by standing up in the House and making a statement."

But then there was another tie vote that I haven't seen discussed.

What to do about the many named bureaucrats already scheduled to appear in the few weeks remaining before the committee last meets on June 22? And what to do if their ministers wanted to show up in their staffers' place?

Chair Szabo asked for a motion to give him authority to summon the witnesses already scheduled to appear ... if necessary ... even if it meant allowing those witnesses' ministers to come as substitutes in their stead.

A pretty weak motion but as he explained, they were waiting on an expected future ruling by the Speaker on such witness substitutions. And he was only asking for either the scheduled witness or his/her minister to appear if that's what was offered.

OK so it was an astoundingly weak motion to exercise parliamentary committees' right to summon witnesses, but you know what? That vote was tied up 5 to 5 - the Cons vs everyone else - and only passed because the Chair broke it by voting in favour.

Pierre Poilievre suggested what he called "a friendly amendment" to solve the impasse over the next scheduled witness :

"just replace the name of the political staffer in question with the name of the Minister."

Your moment of hideous irony : The work currently before the committee is looking into "allegations of systematic political interference by ministers' offices to block, delay, or obstruct the release of information to the public regarding the operation of government departments".

Getting our money's worth

I mentioned in an earlier post that for the amount of money being spent on the G8/G20 meetings just for security, the government could build a money wall around the main venue for the G8 summit.

I ran a few more numbers. $1.1 billion dollars would allow the government to pay 150,000 security officers $100 per hour for the entire 72 hours and still have $20 million left to buy crullers and large double-doubles from Tim Horton's for the massive security detail.

It would take a better mathematician than I am to figure out the all the numbers, but I'm also confident that for $1.1 billion they could hold both conferences in a giant hollow sphere made of 18 carat gold floating off shore in Lake Ontario. $1.1 billion dollars would buy you nearly 36,000 kilograms of 18k gold. Maybe we could just have Stephen Harper and his Cabinet covered in gold leaf -- that would be sure to impress the visiting dignitaries!

This money is getting spent somewhere, and I suspect that a lot of it is going for fat "consulting fees" and no-bid contracts to Conservative Party of Canada backers. I expect the eventual auditor's report will have more pages discussing pork than the annual report of the Canadian Hog Farmers Association.

Leave your suggestions on how the money could be spent in the comments.




Crossposted from the Woodshed




NB: This is the 5,000th post on The Galloping Beaver - yay us!

The national anthem - Thou Dustiness command

Friday Update : After 68 days of careful deliberation and a mere 48 hours after its inclusion in the throne speech, "thou dustiness" gets binned, having successfully served its purpose of providing an amusing distraction from the other dust collecters in the throne speech.



According to this poll at CBC, most do not think two months off were required to consider recalibrating the gender neutrality of the national anthem :

O Canada
Our home and native land
True patriot love
Thou Dustiness command

"Thou Dustiness" is doubtless responsible for the idea of a National Monument to the Victims of Communism in the throne speech, in addition of course to the dust bunnies under your bed.

Bill C-300 in a minefield of Cons

You are a Con on the Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committee reviewing Bill C-300, An Act respecting Corporate Accountability for the Activities of Mining, Oil or Gas in Developing Countries . You have just heard in committee that women raped by the security guards of a Canadian mining company overseas are "forced to chew and swallow the condoms used by the guards during the rape".
Do you :
a) Demand to know what steps the mining company has taken to stop the abuse, or
b) Ask whether Bill C-300, which would penalize Canadian companies sanctioning such abuse abroad, might promote "complaints against Canadian companies in a frivolous or vexatious way".

Ok, that's not quite fair. I'm sure the member was appalled at what he heard - indeed he said so - just not quite appalled enough to know his first duty is to human rights not corporate rights. This is a recurring theme with the International Trade Committee, where Liberal John McKay's Bill C-300 is currently slogging its way through a minefield comprised of 6 Cons, 3 Libs, 1 Bloc and 1 NDP.

Bill C-300 will put in place badly needed human rights, labour, and environmental standards that Canadian mining and extractive companies receiving government support must adhere to when they operate in developing countries.
Con fuckwittery in committee ranted out here.

On April 22, 2009, Bill C-300 passed second reading in the House by a mere 4 votes : 137 to 133. It was the Libs/Bloc/NDP vs the Cons - but 20 Libs and 7 NDPs were absent from that vote.
Time to send them all a little note about that - Mining Watch has one all written up for you already - just add that you expect them to show up and support it next time.

The missing Libs :
Michael Ignatieff: IgnatM@parl.gc.ca ; Bob Rae: RaeB@parl.gc.ca ; Carolyn Bennett: BenneC@parl.gc.ca ; Scott Brison: BrisoS@parl.gc.ca ; Irwin Cotler: CotleI@parl.gc.ca ; Rodger Cuzner: CuzneR@parl.gc.ca ; Ujjal Dosanjh: DosanU@parl.gc.ca ; Judy Foote: Foote.J@parl.gc.ca ; Ralph Goodale: GoodaR@parl.gc.ca ; Albina Guarnieri: GuarnA@parl.gc.ca ; Mark Holland: HollaM@parl.gc.ca ; Marlene Jennings: JenniM@parl.gc.ca ; John McCallum: McCalJ@parl.gc.ca ; Dan McTeague: McTeaD@parl.gc.ca ; BernardPatry: PatryB@parl.gc.ca ; Glen Pearson: PearsG@parl.gc.ca ; Marcel Proulx: ProulM@parl.gc.ca ; Geoff Regan: ReganG@parl.gc.ca ; Scott Simms: SimmsSc@parl.gc.ca

The missing Dippers :
Charlie Angus: AngusC@parl.gc.ca ; Nathan Cullen: CulleN@parl.gc.ca ; Claude Gravellelle: Gravelle.C@parl.gc.ca ; Carol Hughes: Hughes.C@parl.gc.ca ; John Rafferty: Rmailto:Rafferty.J@parl.gc.ca ; Denise Savoie: SavoiD@parl.gc.ca ; Peter Stoffer: StoffP@parl.gc.ca

Thank you.
And a special thanks to Impolitical for giving it a boost.

He's not sayin', he's just...you know...sayin'

Sure, he's a block away from where the president is speaking, and he's carrying a sign suggesting the need for violent revolution/assasination and bloodshed while packing heat, but it isn't a threat. He's just a patriotic American exercising his legal second amendment rights.

Remember when George Bush was president and pacifist peaceniks were getting jailed for wearing the wrong T-shirt to town hall meetings and protestors were kept penned up in "Free Speech Zones? I never thought that would seem like the good old days. If this guy can get through a 30 second TV interview, he's going to be the new poster child of the gun-toting angry right. Imagine Joe the Plumber with a 9 mm instead of a monkey wrench.

Update (or should I say reload?)

Yup, a gun nut for certain. Chris Mathews, as usual, acts like a dick, rattling on and making the whole process about his questions rather than the guest's answers, but the answers are there. This nimrod thinks people should pack heat at all times. Yeah, that's a good idea, look how well it's worked out elsewhere in the world, like say, Ethiopia or Afghanistan. And notice he has nothing to say about health care. He says he knows history when it comes to assassinated presidents and yet still brought a gun to a public meeting, supposedly to make a point about standing up for people's rights. Funny how no one ever thought to bring a gun to public meeting during the eight years that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were shredding the Constitution.

Until someone finds out that this guy has a criminal record of shooting people or molesting goats or some such crap, I think we can count on seeing him on FOX at least once a week as their new "Second Amendment expert" or some such nonsense.

(crossposted from the Woodshed)

Bill C-15 : Keeping up with the failing US war on drugs

Bill C-15, the Cons' latest shot at implementing the failing US war on drugs in Canada, guarantees, among other travesties, mandatory jailtime for people who grow and sell five marijuana plants.

Believe it or not, this is an improvement over their original proposal - jail time for just one plant -until the Bloc and NDP managed to leverage it up to five plants in the Committee on Justice and Human Rights hearings where this new bill was hatched - and where 13 0f the 16 expert witnesses spoke against it.

From Friday's Hansard, Jim Malloway, NDP :

"California, New York, Michigan, Delaware, Massachusetts are all repealing their mandatory minimum sentences with other states considering the same.

Former counsel to the United States House of Representatives committee on the judiciary, Eric Sterling, stated emphatically his decision to promote mandatory minimum sentences in the United States was probably "the greatest mistake of my entire career over 30 years in the practice of law".

What the Americans found was that the goal of the legislation to reduce drug use failed. The goal of safety in the communities failed. The goal of raising the prices of drugs and lowering the purity failed. The goal of reducing organized crime failed."

Yeah but they do have one in every hundred adults behind bars now, much of it petty drug crime related.

Thursday in the HoC, Keith Martin, Lib, asked why we can't "decriminalize simple possession, for example, of marijuana and allow people to have a couple of plants"?

Indeed. People receiving mandatory sentences of one year or two years less a day will wind up in the already overcrowded provincial prisons.

The Canadian Bar Association, as quoted in the HoC :

"We believe the Bill would not be effective, would be very costly, would add to strains on the administration of justice, could create unjust and disproportionate sentences and ultimately would not achieve its intended goal of greater public safety."

The Libs will have to suck it up very hard to vote for this one on Monday, as they party with the Cons like it's 1969. The NDP and the Bloc will vote against it.

Scott has a round-up of the Liberal blogger revolt; Jennifer is firing off emails. Well done, Liberal bloggers!

I may move back just to vote against these jerks

As a Canadian who has lived outside of Canada for a dozen years (and yes Mom, we are coming back eventually, honest) this kind of headline turns my blood to frozen concrete.

Ottawa says it has no duty to protect Canadians outside country

A lot has been done to help Khadr in Guantanamo: Justice Department

By JANICE TIBBETTS, Canwest News
ServiceJune 3, 2009

Canada's legal duty to protect its citizens, even children, ends at the border and there is nothing in domestic or international law that obliges the government to seek Omar Khadr's repatriation, say federal arguments filed in court.
The government contends it has done plenty to ensure the "well-being" of the Guantanamo Bay detainee - from supplying him with magazines to ensuring he receives medical treatment and facilitating contact with his family - and any further protection is at the discretion of the state, not the courts.

This is not happy-making news for all us expats, especially those of us who live in countries where "the usual suspects" means anybody foreign.
This could mean I am one misunderstanding away from life imprisonment since the government of Canada doesn't feel that they have any duty to assist me in any way should the police pick me up and imprison me for any reason at all.
And that does happen in a lot of countries. Police in Tokyo routinely stop foreigners riding bicycles to confirm the bike isn't stolen. Bikes here are supposed to be registered and usually carry a sticker with the owner's name - and if your bike happens to be registered in your Japanese wife's name, well, welcome to jail in Japan, where you don't have a right to a lawyer during police interrogation and are not even officially presumed innocent. This hasn't happened to me, but it does happen.
And that's in Japan, a nice civilized G8 country. Anyone care to try their luck in Central America or Africa or Saudi Arabia without any assistance from "Canada's New Government"?

Yes, why don't we say the Pledge of Allegiance in Canadian schools?

"First we lost saying the Lord's Prayer in school, then the Pledge of Allegiance, and now the singing of O Canada..."

So complained the aunt of a student at the centre of the New Brunswick controversy over a primary school principal reducing the daily O Canada ritual to once a month and special occasions. I watched her say it on CBC National tonight.

Good grief, lady, what the fuck country do you think you're living in?
Canadian students don't stand up in class every morning and put their hands over their hearts and think up new and amusing ways to riff off "My friends are leeches ... in a bag ... "
New Brunswick is still in Canada, isn't it?

CBC National didn't tag the pledge gaffe in their otherwise sympathetic report into the savaging of Erik Millett, the school principal who tried to balance the conflicting demands of three sets of parents. He decided to change the playing of "O Canada" to once a month during assembly instead of piping it into every classroom every morning to avoid singling out the students whose parents objected to the anthem by pulling them out of class. Instead he had the student of the pro-anthem parents lead the school in singing it at assembly once a month.

That was back in 2007 and that should have been the end of it.

Instead Millet has been recently pilloried in the media for "banning the national anthem in school", a number of ill-informed Con MPs denounced him in the House of Commons, and he received death threats from local parents who took sides. Death threats.
After being inundated by emails criticizing the principal's decision, the local school superintendent ordered that the anthem be placed back in daily rotation.

Tonight on CBC Millett tearfully recounted how this witch hunt all began when the Con federal minister he ran against as a Green in the election slagged him about his anthem dilemma in a newspaper article.
Millett's now in therapy and doubts he will return to teaching.

Read that quote at the top again.
Then go and help Liberal Arts and Minds figure out how we can stop this kind of dangerous right wing jingoistic nonsense in Canada.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Con MP inexplicably goes on and on about auctioning off kidneys on eBay...

and issues a challenge ...

"Mr. Bruinooge said that it is illegal for an individual to have a kidney removed and auction it off on eBay.
"The bottom line is that people like myself are not going to stop until, at the very least, unborn children have more value than a Canadian kidney," he said.
"Your kidneys have more protection than an unborn child until the moment it is out of the woman," Mr. Bruinooge said. "I challenge anyone to debate me on that point, because I don't think you can. It is very true."

Ooooh, pick me, Mr Bruinooge, pick me.
It is not permitted to auction off kidneys on eBay.
It is not permitted to auction off fetuses on eBay.
Therefore kidneys do not have more protection than fetuses on eBay.
Next.
.
In addition to his preoccupation with kidneys, Mr Bruinooge, recently elected to head a secret "pro-life" caucus of federal Lib and Con MPs, would also like to see the abortion debate reopened.
Hell, why not? And what about slavery? Has anyone seriously debated the pros and cons of slavery recently? Because I'm guessing eBay doesn't allow slave auctions either.

Kidney watch blogroll : Hysperia, Impolitical, deBeauxOs, Cathie, JJ, LuLu, Antonia, and Scott
Cross-posted at Creekside

Budget 2009 : the Contest!

Via Maxwell's House, we learn that Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finangling, has thrown open the doors to all Canadians to contribute to Budget 2009 at the ministry website! Really. What's your pleasure?
Sure there's a handy list of suggestions but also a page to write in your own.

Sven at Fish Eggs has an idea :

"Every Canadian Citizen, will, for the next twelve months, receive a $2000 monthly payment. If you make more than $35,000 per year, it will be progressively taxed to ensure it gets to those whom need it the most. Simple.

This programme will run for one year only. Short.

As the lower income earners all know, this money would enter the economy almost completely, as there is little or no room for most to squirrel away their money. People could spend this money to buy a car, thus bailing out the auto industry. Or they could choose to spend it on housing, thus bailing out the housing industry. Or they may decide to invest in more education and go back to school, thus bailing out the education sector. What matters here is that the PEOPLE would decide where to put OUR hard earned tax dollars. The politicians would then be able to see where we chose to put our money and they could then craft legislation to reflect these investment choices made by Canadians. Effective."

Go for it, Sven.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Dear ReformaTory talk show shlocktroops

and "every tool" in Guy Giorno's toolbox, aka "All Conservative Members of Parliament" :

If it was ok for Harper, Layton, and Duceppe to jointly write to the GG in Sept 2004 to :

"respectfully point out that the opposition parties, who together constitute a majority in the House, have been in close consultation. We believe that, should a request for dissolution arise this should give you cause, as constitutional practice has determined, to consult the opposition leaders"

then why are you now all huffy about "backroom deals", referring to the possibility of "a coalition you didn't vote for" as a "coup"?

Did Layton only become a "socialist" and Duceppe a "seperatist", as most of you seem to prefer to spell it, some time after 2004?

Also, in your comments at NaPo and CBC, where Layton has now become a full-fledged "communist", your outrage that the Bloc is "only out to destroy Canada by separating" would gain considerable credibility if you didn't respond to this perceived threat to Canadian unity with a threat of your own to resuscitate the Western Separation movement.

Just sayin' ...

Cross-posted at Creekside

The Manning Centre for Building Democracy for Cons

Preston Manning, Stephen Harper, and Rona Ambrose pose with "the first graduates of the Manning Centre's Executive Program in Political Management at the Future Leaders Series Dinner held at the historic Chateau Laurier in Ottawa on April 18th, 2007"

... one of whom appears to be doing up his fly.

.

I didn't know about this rightwing think tank till I saw The Cylinder's post this morning with a link to Sooey for a G&M article from 2005 :

"Former Reform Party leader Preston Manning and a small group of friends have raised an initial $10-million from wealthy Albertans to launch a new non-political institution designed to promote conservative ideas in Canada...The aim of those supporting the Manning centre is to have conservative political forces win two of every three elections by changing the way Canadians view public issues, instead of losing two out of three, or three out of four, as conservative parties have done throughout Canadian history."

Ok so who'd ya get?

Preston Manning - founder of Reform and Alliance parties, Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute

Gwyn Morgan - EnCana Corp

Rick Anderson - ASCI-Anderson Strategic Consulting Inc and chairman of Hill & Knowlton Canada

Tom Long - chair of Ont Premier Mike Harris’ campaigns, co-chair of the founding convention of the Canadian Alliance Party

Tasha Kheiriddin - CBC Newsworld producer, Ontario Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, VP of the Montreal Economic Institute, member Fraser Institute

Nigel S. Wright - Managing Director of Onex Corporation aerospace and defence group

...and much much more!

.

Patrons - Mike Harris, Ralph Klein, Bernard Lord

Fellowships - Blogging Tory Stephen Taylor, seen here being recognized by Preston Manning "for outstanding contributions to conservative online communications"

Advisors - Andrew Coyne, Tom Long, Hon. Tony Clement, Michael Walker - founder of the Fraser Institute, Michel Kelly-Gagnon - president of the Montreal Economic Institute.

.

Incestuous little bunch, aren't they?

There's a "Student Leadership Seminar" coming up...Ottawa, Nov. 21 & 22

"Calling all students: Learn the effective practices for campus activism, and how to plan for political participation.
The intention is to ensure each participant develops the social and intellectual skills to realize their respective goals, and be an asset to Canada’s democratic-conservative tradition.
You will hear from some of our country's most respected politicians, campaigners, strategists, journalists, and activists."

And they are?

Presenters : Monte Solberg, Michael Coren, Tasha Kheiriddin, and Blogging Tories Stephen Taylor and Aaron Lee Wudrick.

Alrighty then.

A page of members' contacts and their specific areas of expertise is provided for media requiring experts to interview, thus going some distance toward answering the question of why the experts interviewed by the media are so often conservative.

They also support an online journal, C2C, featuring the writing of many of those mentioned above, plus David Frum, Tom Flanagan, Kenneth P. Green of the American Enterprise Institute, Christopher Sands of the Hudson Institute, and a not altogether surprising number of familiar newspaper editors and columnists from across Canada.

Do stop by the photo gallery to see Ottawa mayor Larry O'Brien, Joseph Ben Ami, Dave Quist of the Institute of Marriage and Family, the guy doing up his fly, and, of course, Steve.

Cross-posted at Creekside

"OK, coffee break's over. Everyone back on your heads!"

Last week the Party Cons laboured mightily to bring forth an uber list of resolutions for their big ConCon bunfest opening in Winnipeg yesterday.

Fetal rights, marriage is the union of one man and one woman when religionists say so, the notwithstanding clause, cutting back student loans and don't mention childcare, one North American perimeter - nothing was considered too Reform/Alliance/wack to be cobbled together in what it pleases them to call their "proposed policy amendments".

Yesterday Steve showed up with some advice for ConCon '08 - see post title.

Cross-posted at Creekside