The HST will create thousands of elephants in BC

That's right. Elephants. Or, if you've been listening to Gordon Campbell's homeboy, Colin Hansen, it will be jobs.

Same thing.

You see, Hansen is ready at a moment's notice to don his body armour and jump out in front of a microphone to tell you that introducing a 12 percent HST in British Columbia will create thousands of .... (oh hell, just fill in the blank with anything you like)... jobs.

That, however, is his end game. What he never tells you is how he expects all that fresh new employment to be created or even if, after his closed door meetings with the movers and shakers in the anti-PST business world, if he has even the slightest hint of a guarantee that such a thing will happen.

Reason? He doesn't have a clue. He's hoping that the economic crash, (brought about by the very people who are telling him that HST is a job creation formula), will ease and that a slow recovery in the US house construction market will see forestry and mill jobs start to increase in BC. He'll then point to the nexus of unemployment in BC and tell you how his wizardry created jobs. (Never mind that they were the very same jobs which were lost because conservatives of his ilk refused to acknowledge that the financial world had gone south with everyone's life savings.)

So, I take pleasure in pointing out a few things which lead out of Bob's posting.

After protest sprung up around the province Hansen once again took his position in front of the microphone. (Emphasis mine)

Finance Minister Colin Hansen was quick to respond, holding a news conference with business leaders to talk about why B.C. should implement the HST.

"There's no question that the HST is the most effective form of … consumer tax that a country or a jurisdiction can implement," he said, adding the tax will create jobs.

Bully!! Aside from the standard "it will create jobs" bullshit, it raises another small question: The Campbell corporate government has been in power since 2001. How is it that every overture from the feds to implement HST was dismissed by this mob until now? If it's the most effective form of consumer taxation, as Hansen describes it, why did it take eight full years to buy into the idea? Were they just too stupid to realize how cool a system it was?

So, they're either very dumb or they're lying. Either way, they shouldn't be allowed to represent anybody.

The kicker however is the continuing line that Hansen and Campbell had not formulated a plan to implement the HST before the last provincial election (May 2009). By their account, the idea was latched onto after they retook government. (Which would make it a hastily adopted plan without public consultation.)

So, along comes the Victoria Times-Colonist asking for information. They wanted to see the government correspondence related to the HST from January to September 2009. Surprise!

The Times Colonist, like dozens of other media outlets, is requesting the documents to see whether the Liberal government is telling the truth when it says it never considered implementing the HST before the May election. It introduced the tax less than two months after winning a new majority government.

Diligent little devils down there on Douglas Street and what did they get?

A Freedom of Information Request by the Times Colonist for government records about the HST came back with a hefty fee estimate this week: $3,500.

$3,500 for photocopying and vetting?! Yet Hansen says they weren't even considering it before the middle of this summer.

That's a lot of correspondence that piled up in a few weeks.

I wouldn't even bother asking any further. The estimate for the FOI request alone tells the story. There is a ton of documents. And the bill the Time-Colonist would have to pay is either an intentional intervention by a minister to make them go away or the pile is so huge that it stretches back to 2008.

It doesn't matter. It just means the Campbell government is moulded around the things it has always found attractive: corruption, liars and drunks.

The nastiest politician in this Canadian century can dish it out...

But he clearly can't take it.

This, from, of all people, Harper.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper stood unapologetic Tuesday, defended his embattled natural resources minister and dismissed the storm of opposition and public criticism of Lisa Raitt as "cheap politics."

[...]

"This minister has been working around the clock to make sure we get a greater supply of isotopes and make sure we have alternative options for our health-care patients in this country," Harper said.

"That is what the minister is doing. That is what this government is doing, not playing cheap politics."

Some view this as humour. Others recognize that Harper is incapable of humour. And most of us can't believe that Harper actually engaged in such blatant hypocrisy.

And after listening to Harper spin-doctor Kory Teneycke do his little bob and weave this morning on The Current, I still want to know who paid in the attempt to muzzle the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. If it's such cheap politics why was there such a rush to get an injuction preventing the release of the now famous recording?

Teneycke isn't to be believed. He stated that no government department was involved. This is the same piece of crap that introduced Harper Conservative Party attack ads at a media gathering and claimed that because he had taken a day of unpaid leave that he was not legally on the payroll of the Prime Minister's Office.

The turd plays fast and loose with technicalities.

So, the question is, which political torpedo was off the payroll yesterday to provide the Harperites with a technical denial of involvement?

When do we get to put the "gate" suffix on?

There is something about the Chalk River nuclear reactor fiasco that should not go away. Or, as Greg Weston puts it, two things. (My emphasis)

Further proof this is a government that doesn't let the truth get in the way of public opinion is to be found in the contents of Raitt's lost briefing book.

For instance, taxpayers learn for the first time that the Harper government has pumped a staggering $1.7 billion into Atomic Energy just in the past three years -- most of it up in smoke if the Chalk River reactor remains beyond repair.

Even if the reactor had remained working, Raitt's briefing documents say Canadian taxpayers would have had to shell out $72 million this year to produce medical isotopes, 90% of which go to U.S. hospitals.

The documents openly admit the financial truth about Chalk River was deliberately hidden in the last federal budget.

And...

Sixteen months ago, the Harper government ordered the reactor restarted after a shutdown for safety reasons, saying cancer and heart patients would die without an immediate isotope supply.

At that time, the shutdown lasted four weeks and the world's other four isotope reactors were operating.

This time, the situation is far worse -- Chalk River is out of order indefinitely and two of the other reactors are also down.

Yet, Raitt testified at a Commons committee this week there is nothing to panic about.

Either the Harper government lied to Canadians 16 months ago, or it is lying today.

But one thing is certain, there is a huge, deliberate lie involved and it starts with Harper.

When government is caught lying and covering up to protect itself from the bright lights of public inquiry it usually comes with a name, thanks to Richard Nixon.

So when do we hang the "gate" off this one?

More at Impolitical.

Ah! There it is.

Flaherty's lips are moving...

... Again.

The only problem with this report:

The federal government isn't reviewing the assets this year of the department that oversees the CBC, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Tuesday, amid media reports that an auction of the the public broadcaster and other Crown corporations is in the offing.

... is that it's Flaherty saying it.

This from a finance minister who has been wrong about everything, couldn't forecast today's lunch money and, quite frankly, lies.

Proof? Write Income Trust on the board 50 times.

This is just getting stupid

First, go read POGGE.

Get it? Omar Khadr was engaged in a combat action against another soldier. The PMO talking point, copied from the Bush administration, which is now nothing more than sewage, that Omar Khadr intentionally killed an individual with Geneva Convention credentials which protected him is an outright lie.

Those who repeat it are liars. Worse, is that they know they are lying.

Secondly, there is no conclusive evidence, (in fact there is evidence to the contrary), that Khadr actually threw the grenade which killed Sgt 1st Class Spears.

Thirdly, the United States had invaded Afghanistan, with full justification, and was now a belligerent party in a war. On the day, at the time and, at the moment that Khadr allegedly threw a grenade which killed Sgt 1st Class Spears neither party had surrendered. Since Spears was not wearing the appropriate insignia nor acting specifically in a manner to enjoy protection under the Convention, he would be deemed to have been a hostile combatant.

Fourthly, since it was a battlefield, under the Convention, murder is extremely difficult to prove, if not impossible. One combatant killing another in combat is not murder. Both have the same hostile intent unless one side has clearly and unequivocally shown and demonstrated the act of surrender. An enemy which has been defeated in the field but which does not purposely give themselves into the hands of the enemy, without arms, remains a hostile enemy. It doesn't matter if the winning side thinks it's over. They haven't won until the vanquished declare themselves the loser by accepting their own surrender and then displaying recognized symbols to communicate their acceptance of defeat.

That never happened.

Omar Khadr, when captured, was a child soldier. It doesn't matter how he came to be there. It matters that he was one. His age today is irrelevant. At the time of his capture he was under 18. Additionaly, he was governed by his father who he was expected to obey.

Sixth, this is the tough stuff. Nothing is simple when it comes to repatriating a Canadian accused of a heinous crime. But you wanted power and now you're afraid to use the sovereignty of this country for fear of pissing off a regime which was as close to Hitler's Germany as we have ever come.

But we elect governments to handle the tough stuff. Instead, we have posse of clowns who shun the most difficult of issues in order to appease a US administration which no longer exists.

And to keep the racist, mouth-breathing morons which constitute their political base marginally happy between assaults on 24s of cheap beer.

The worst part is the part you have not yet gathered in.

The government of the United States of America has told the government of Canada that they are willing to release Omar Khadr to Canadian custody on Canadian soil. All that has to happen is that the Canadian government officially request repatriation. That's the only condition.

Think I'm making that up? Then ask them. I know it's a fact. The US, as a matter of saving face in four different directions, wants to rid themselves of Omar Khadr but they need to do it under the proper optics. All that needs to be done is to have the Harper government make a public request. No back-channels.

Think I'm wrong?

Ask them. Ask them, if the Canadian government made a formal request to the government of the United States for the repatriation of Omar Khadr would he be returned to his country of birth?

Because if that happened Khadr would be on his way to Canada, in custody, but at least where the rule of law still has some meaning.

So, why won' Lawrence Cannon do that?

Because the "conservative" voting base would go ape-shit.

And the Harper government doesn't do tough stuff. They're a pack of fluff merchants, racist to boot, and would rather fill their "pending" baskets instead of clearing their "out" trays.

I don't like Khadr anymore than the next person, but he's Canadian and should be dealt with here.

That's the tough stuff and it's something the Authoritarians in the Harper government have never been able to handle.

Cowards.

Whack!!!

Christopher Bird of the Osgood Hall Law School at York University dismantles the spurious allegations of the Canada Family Action Coalition against the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada and leaves them in a smoking heap on the ground at The Court.

It seems McVety and company aren't just being dishonest about their "degrees". They are misrepresenting the law and attempting to twist the established conventions of the Order of Canada.

And you "senior" media types are being taken for a ride.

Go read.

Mercy me, such foolish contrarianism

While Dave questioned the usefulness of Canadian Cynic's civility for truth challenge, arguing that we should not consider ourselves obliged to play nice with people who won't do likewise, I did, after much hemming and hawing, sign up, so I cannot give full play to range of colourful expressions I would like to use to describe Richard Peter Foster's collection of contrarian nonsense and flat out balderdash in the Financial Post recently, nor to describe Ms. McMillian's insistence that apples are oranges based on her own willful misinterpretation of the facts regarding the recent "Earth Hour." (Link goes to CC's critique, I will not send traffic to her site.)

As to Foster's foolishness, well, if you have a million scientists and 1, 999,997 of them are climate experts who say global warming is real and man-made and three who are say, Christopher Monckton or Tim Ball or some other charlatan or serial prevaricator bought and paid for by the petroleum industry, I think it is fair to say the science is settled. (Click the links to see a laundry list of the way and places such people have been discredited.) The jury is not out on climate change any more than it is out on whether the earth is flat, to say otherwise is simply false. If you still have any doubts, try any of these links offered here. Note to climate change deniers on the far right: Just because you hate Al Gore doesn't mean he's wrong about climate change.

Foster's statement that "Earth Hour" is somehow facistic leads me to wonder if he has been spending too much time reading Mr. Jonah Goldberg's recent unintentionally comic magnum opus. As has been pointed out elsewhere, how is an event that is strictly voluntary and does not involve appeals to notions of racial or cultural superiority or militant nationalism facistic?
Truly, Foster gives one pause when he erupts with such stupendous statements as this:

"Leo Burnet's chairman, Nigel Marsh, demonstrated his skill both in semantic perversion and moral obfuscation when he declared: "I'm an optimist about climate change. The human race eventually abolished slavery and gave women the vote. We eventually work it out."
Get the implication? "Deny" the dubious science or dangerous politics of anthropogenic climate change and you're the kind of person who would support slavery and keep women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen!"

A simple statement of optimism by Marsh, that people will eventually choose to do the right thing, brings an astounding outburst of defensiveness from Foster that just because he is out to lunch on climate change, doesn't mean he supports slavery or keeping women pregnant, shoeless and chained to stove. I might wonder aloud which part of the political spectrum it was that fought to continue slavery and deny women the vote and equal rights (Hint: not liberals) but that, gentle reader would be a less civil area of discourse.

Suffice to say that a shorter version of Foster's article written in a different time might go something like this:
"Anyone who thinks walking upright is a good idea is a fool. And this whole notion of banding together and sharing the work - nonsense! No one has proved that division of labour and cooperation results in more food and even if it did, what would we do with the extra time? Paint on the cave walls or learn to make fire? Bah, humbug!"

As to the aforementioned proprietress of Small Dead Animals (nope, I will not link to her site. Use Google if you must), I haven't really much to add to CC's analysis -- and by analysis I mean pointing and laughing -- of her contention that Earth Hour was a failure because she urged her regular readers to use as much energy as possible during the hour in question.

Her argument seems to be that because energy use in the set period did not go down, but merely did not increase as much as it does on an average day, she is somehow a winner and people who are in favour of saving energy and using less expensive fossil fuels are somehow losers. That is rather like saying that if you slam on the brakes while going 100 kph and your car doesn't suddenly go in reverse, but instead just slows down, your brakes are broken.

I think that is the kind of dishonesty that CC was talking about when he proposed this challenge.

As for the foolish contrarianism of people who went out of their way to use as much electricity as possible during Earth Hour, there have been numerous suggestions for declaring other days of activism during which you can feel free to "stick it to the Man" by doing the opposite. We over at the Woodshed (by which I mean me) are declaring tomorrow "International multicultural, gay rights, feminist, anti-global warming Don't-pour-hot-sauce-in-your-eyes Day" Do what you feel you must.

cross posted from you know where

Whoops, my bad: I mistakenly identified the author of the piece of tomfoolery in the Finanacial Post as Richard Foster, when in fact the man's name is Peter Foster. Sorry about that. Thanks to Pogge for catching my error. See, this is what you do when you make a mistake, you admit the mistake, correct it and move on. You do not insist that you are right in the face of all available evidence and declare victory. You do not insist that such empirical evidence is a plot by your political opponents. You do not pretend that such a mistake never occurred. Not that I'm accusing anyone...

More oops:Dad-diddly-durn burn it! I was sure I had typed "2 million scientists"

It's my day off... right?

Don't I wish.

I do have something to put out there with regards the Afghanistan mission but it might have to wait until this afternoon.

In the meantime, I see the Harperites are behaving in their usual bad form. First they insist that they want a compromise with the Liberals and then they proceed to smear them.

It's too bad the speaker didn't cut Peter Van Loan off at the knees. His performance in the House was out of order. Calling a member of parliament an enemy sympathizer, if the Speaker took the time to look it up, is a more heinous offence then calling another member a liar. Either way, Van Loan should have been ejected from the House until he apologized.

And yes, Peter Van Loan is a liar.

Busted!!

Peter MacKay knew the day after Canadian Forces in Afghanistan stopped transferring prisoners to Afghan custody.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay expressed Canada's outrage and dismay directly to Kandahar's governor within hours of diplomats discovering a clear case of prisoner abuse last fall.

[...]

Mr. MacKay was in Kandahar on Nov. 6 visiting troops when the Canadian army decided to halt the handover of captured Taliban fighters to Afghan authorities.

The fact that the government kept the decision secret has infuriated opposition MPs.

"He was there, he knew something," said Liberal defence critic Denis Coderre.

"Why didn't he tell us? Is it because he was told not to say anything by a Prime Minister's Office that is controlling everything?"

The news that a prisoner had been allegedly beaten unconscious using an electrical cable and a hose in the custody of Afghanistan's notorious intelligence service angered Mr. MacKay, said a senior Conservative, who spoke on background.

Mr. MacKay immediately demanded to speak to Governor Assadullah Khalid, whose responsibility includes all provincial detention facilities.

The Defence Minister told the governor, a former Northern Alliance commander whose hatred of the Taliban is legend on the streets of Kandahar, that the abuse was "absolutely unacceptable."

Well now, that would be a good thing. It's the proper way to deal with the issue. He might have even scored a few brownie-points if he'd come back to Canada and given Parliament the details.

But he didn't do that, did he?

Instead, MacKay lied to Parliament.

That's all three of them: Harper, MacKay and Buckler.

Liars.

The New York Times goes outside the box...

And the publishers may well be right out of their minds.

Consider this:

Still, the simple truth is that a great democracy like ours deserves a first-rate newspaper of record. And the New York Times isn't it.

So, one would think that the New York Times would steer itself clear of the person who wrote that. Surely, if, for example, you were on record as having said that, publicly, there would be no reason for you to expect to be given the slightest consideration for employment at the New York Times.

Apparently, that isn't the case.

A day after the Huffington Post first reported it, The New York Times has announced that it has indeed hired conservative pundit, and Fox News analyst, Bill Kristol, as a new regular op-ed columnist.

Liberal bloggers had been up in arms over the move. Kristol said, in an interview with Politico.com, it gave him some pleasure to see their "heads explode." Kristol was perhaps the most influential pundit of all in promoting the U.S. invasion of Iraq and has strongly defended the move ever since.

Times' editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal defended the move. Rosenthal told Politico.com shortly after the official announcement Saturday that he fails to understand “this weird fear of opposing views....We have views on our op-ed page that are as hawkish or more so than Bill....

“The idea that The New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual — and somehow that’s a bad thing,” Rosenthal added. “How intolerant is that?”

Well, for one thing, suggesting that Kristol is serious, respected or intellectual raises questions about Rosenthal's ability to reason. It has little to do with intolerance.

Kristol is a spoiled, self-praising frat-boy with a long record of being wrong on just about everything, and with a willingness to waste lives on foolish and dangerous endeavours providing he doesn't personally have to get his hands dirty. He treats the deaths of American service personnel as mere currency to finance a failed political ideology and he treats the hundreds of thousands of deaths of civilians world-wide as little more than fertilizer for a field of Republican dreams.

He is an elitist of the worst kind who views himself as infallible. When he is proved wrong, as has happened countless times, he simply shrugs it off and crawls back into his comfortable hole, safe and protected from the carnage he helped create. No apologies; no admission of failure.

Couple all that with the inherent dishonesty of the individual. After Bush's second inaugural address in 2005, Kristol lavished praise on Bush's speech and the direction it took. He spoke on FOX political programs and wrote in his Weekly Standard that Bush's speech was "sophisticated and nuanced". That speech has now been widely panned as nothing less than a signal to expand American hegemony and a PNAC pipe-dream which failed to address anything close to reality. The Bush Doctrine. What Kristol did not tell anyone, while he was heaping praise on the prose, is that he himself helped write it.

The planning of Bush's second inaugural address began a few days after the Nov. 2 election with the president telling advisers he wanted a speech about "freedom" and "liberty." That led to the broadly ambitious speech that has ignited a vigorous debate. The process included consultation with a number of outside experts, Kristol among them.

One meeting, arranged by Peter Wehner, director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, included military historian Victor Davis Hanson, columnist Charles Krauthammer and Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis, according to one Republican close to the White House. White House senior adviser Karl Rove attended, according to one source, but mostly listened to what became a lively exchange over U.S. policy and the fight for liberty.

Expanding on Kristol's elitism is his belief in an American aristocracy; a conservative American aristocracy. For all his rhetorical spouting of the Bush Doctrine of spreading democracy, he is quite happy to see democratic rights diminish on his own soil. Further, he believes the conservative ruling class should be exempt from the consequences of their actions, even if members of that class have blatantly ignored the law.

He screamed loud and hard that Scooter Libby, found guilty of obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame "outing" investigation, should be pardoned and went so far as to state that Libby should not have been charged at all. What he was publicly demanding is that someone who held a position of public trust should be exempt from criminal prosecution and punishment because of his rank within the ruling class. He demanded that Libby be immediately pardoned - by the person who was Libby's boss - based on the premise that Libby had been prosecuted by someone who was not of the conservative ruling class and who's low rank should not have permitted him to investigate the matter in the first place.

And now is the time for it. If the president does intend to pardon Libby, there is no reason to wait. The president will learn nothing important about the case during the appeals process that he doesn't already know. He told an interviewer Wednesday, "I'm pretty much going to stay out of it" until the case has run its course. Why? There's no good reason now for him "to stay out of it." This whole prosecution happened only because of a desire by Bush's agents--the attorney general and the deputy attorney general--to "stay out of it" in late 2003, which led to the appointment of Fitzgerald as an unaccountable special prosecutor.

This is the kind of individual the New York Times editorial page editor, Andy Rosenthal, believes will provide a "conservative" viewpoint: A dishonest, self-admiring imperialist wrapped in an overwhelming sense of entitlement.

And the acceptance of the position by Kristol himself is a demonstration of his principles. Clearly, he has none. After saying this:

The Times is irredeemable. The question is whether a new newspaper of record will replace it.

Why would he even consider taking a position on that same newspaper?

Easy.

The New York Times has just engaged the services of a whore.

The only question now is how much Kristol's blow-job is going to cost.

In which a virulent wingnut ....

Holds himself out as an example by proving this to be true while referring to this post.

Marginalized Action Dinosaur (MAD for short) seems to have a comprehension problem. In the post he refers to, the issue was whether the Harper minority government has the authority to change the operation of the Canadian Wheat Board by cabinet order. There was, as any intelligent reader can see, nothing indicating a position "for" or "against" the existence of the CWB. The point was that Harper and his minister of agriculture are required to conduct this democracy in a democratic fashion. Thus, if they wish to change a Canadian statute, in this case the Canadian Wheat Board Act, it requires legislation passed by Parliament.

Clearly, MAD doesn't get that. In his post under the category "commies" he wrote:

So you can create the wheat board by an order in council. But when all the farmers vote to get rid of their temporary war measure and another order in council is passed thats unlawful.

Umm... no. The Canadian Wheat Board was actually created in 1935 by an act of Parliament.

The temporary war measure MAD refers to was actually The Board of Grain Supervisors established by the Canadian government during The Great War for the 1917-18 and 1918-19 crop years. After the war, the government created the first Canadian Wheat Board to market the 1919-20 crop.

In 1920 the Canadian Wheat Board was disbanded by the government. Period. Except that western farmers actually liked the concept.

The CWB of 1919-20, like the BGS before it, was seen as an extraordinary measure by both the federal government and its political supporters in the Canadian grain trade, one that it was felt could not be justified as a permanent marketing arrangement under peacetime conditions, so it was disbanded in 1920 after one year's operation. However, in this one year the concept had gained widespread support among farmers and farm organizations throughout Western Canada. These organizations opposed the abandonment of the CWB in 1920 and began immediately to press the government to re-establish it. When the government refused to do this, farmers took action of their own and created "Wheat Pools" in each of the three Prairie provinces in 1923. The Pools also set up their own jointly owned Central Selling Agency for wheat and their system of payments for wheat deliveries was similar to that established under the 1919-20 Wheat Board.

Uh oh. Farmers doing their own "pool" marketing. And the government refused to participate.

The Pools operated well for several years, but the federal government was once again forced to intervene in grain marketing after the collapse of international wheat prices in 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. Wheat market prices fell to such low levels that the Wheat Pools could no longer hope to recover from the market what they had paid out in initial payments for the harvest of 1929, and were facing bankruptcy. From 1930 onward, the federal government had to step in and provide the bankers of the Wheat Pools with a federal guarantee on their loans to the Wheat Pools, and had to guarantee the Pools' initial payments to farmers. In this situation, it decided to put its own representative in place as the general manager of the Central Selling Agency.

In MAD's world, this simply would not happen. He's a Reformer. The farmers would have been allowed to go bankrupt... causing a ripple effect that would have left Canadians eating tree bark.

Still, the federal government wanted to avoid being involved.

In the early 1930s the federal government still hoped that its involvement in grain marketing would be temporary and that it would be able to extricate itself from this in time and return all grain marketing activities to the private sector.

But the Depression was still strong and the farmers actually wanted a single-desk marketing agency.

When it became clear by 1935, however, that its involvement was going to be longer-term than originally envisaged, it decided to formalize that involvement and enact the Canadian Wheat Board Act, which was signed into law on July 5, 1935. As with the 1919 Wheat Board, any losses incurred by the new CWB on its operations were to be absorbed by the federal government and any profits were to be returned to producers who delivered wheat to the CWB.

So, MAD's assertion that the CWB is a temporary wartime measure is a blatant falsehood. That or he's lazy and doesn't bother looking things up.

Take your pick.

And if you're wondering about the title of his blog, this should explain it.

I know. It puts self-pity on a whole new level.

It's not a puzzle. It's a trait.

Stageleft has made another excellent observation and finds the consistent propagandizing by right-wingers something of a puzzle. (You must read the examples)

I used to find this kind of thing genuinely confusing. But the answer, of course, is simple. These folks are simply propagandists. They have no interest in “truth” or “accuracy”. Facts are tools, not the foundation of an argument, to be selectively deployed as raw material for propaganda and ignored when inconvenient.

But then we were handed the evidence in two US elections. The ascendancy of George W. Bush to the presidency of the United States had nothing to do with reasoned debate or facts or accuracy. It had everything to do with cherry-picking information and weaving misrepresented data into what amounted to a continuing campaign to smear opponents and anyone who did not blindly accept everything Bush stood for.

That is why when, in Canada, Harper's brand of conservativism took over the right-wing of Canadian politics rational people started to get nervous. This was not the old form of fiscal conservative which made up the bulk of Canada's conservative parties of the past. This was a group of movement conservatives and an amalgam that we had not previously experienced in this country.

The writers and propagandists that Stage Left finds puzzling represent the coming together of two significantly dissimilar groups which, despite their differences, shared a common goal which they could not achieve on their own: The socially conservative "religious right" and amoral authoritarian politicians who found participative democracy an impediment to rule - and their own comfort and enrichment.

Their common goal? Political power.

At first glance the "religious right" might appear to be a bad fit with the politically ambitious. Not so.

Christian dominionists have always sought political power. They once possessed it, but as human rights and progressive government took hold, the place fundamentalist Christian dominance once held over the people was eventually replaced by democracy and, something no fundamentalist Christian accepts, political and religious dissent.

The "religious right", a group which inherently submitted to authority, found in the amoral political establishment a kinship. The amoral politicians, on the other hand, found a body of votes by simply offering to "share" power if they received the support of the "religious right".

Further, the politicians saw an advantage in garnering, if not the affection, then at least the positive response of the "religious right" - this was a large block of people who were given to accept the dictates of who ever held power, without question. In fact, the authoritarian nature of fundamentalist churches would work well in containing any dissent for whatever undemocratic policies the politicians were likely to pursue, regardless of how immoral they may be.

While the politicians shared none of the religious "faith" of those with whom they formed a political bond, they simply had to provide them access to domestic social policy while the politicians pursued their own interests and provided the same guarantee that the "religious right" demanded of all leaders - protection from outside forces. Enemies, foreign and domestic, could be defined as anyone the "religious right" viewed as a threat to the pursuit of their faith and the expansion of their power.

The politicians, out to serve their own purposes, had but to present the illusion of a threat and then promise to do everything to protect their followers from it. It didn't matter if there was, in fact, a real threat. The politicians simply had to create one, or expand on something otherwise insignificant and then promise to provide protection. In short, if they had to resort to lying to maintain the support of their "religious" followers, that would serve their purposes handily.

Of course, the amoral politicians in government had a failing. Far from adhering to the "pure" lifestyles dictated by the churches of their followers, these people, steeped in an overwhelming sense of personal entitlement, regularly stepped over a moral line even secular humanists found objectionable. Luckily for the politicians however, the constituency which brought them to power had provided a convenient and virtually painless safety valve: confession and repentance.
Those politicians caught up in, for example, a sex scandal, had simply to "go public", shed the appropriate tears, ask for "God's" help (on national television), declare themselves cleansed of the "devil" that had possessed them, accept the forgiveness of the fundamentalist Christians who supported them and go back to their comfortable lifestyle. Being a protector, it followed, brought a lot of pressure.

The politicians were, of course, lying. Why? Because it worked. Far from having to explain themselves or vanish in disgrace, they were assured that the lie would be accepted. What made them so certain? Because the leaders of the churches of the "religious right" were also a pack of liars. Every single one of them who had claimed to have had a conversation with "God" was a liar. It was in the best interest of the church leaders to convince their followers that the errant politician was indeed being truthful. There was, after all, more at stake than, say, banging some intern; there was power.

The easy way to convince the followers? The intern was a manipulative whore who had led the now repentant politician down the path of "evil". To the followers of the "religious right" that more than made up for the sin, not because it made any particular sense or was even close to the truth, but because those in authority said it was true and one simply did not question authority. The only factual data was that there was sex involved. The rest was molded around that piece of data to fit a convenient and comfortable belief.

To both the "religious right" and the amoral political crowd, lying works for them. They don't engage in argument or debate. They enter a situation with a preconceived view and then either pick the facts that fit to support that view or, if the facts refute their belief, ignore them altogether.

If you want to read more on this there is no place better than the research of Bob Altemeyer and his 2006 book, The Authoritarians. The whole book is available online and is downloadable at no charge. Every word is worth the read.

I'll leave you with an excerpt from one of Bob's notes to chapter two. It highlights an incident which may help explain what I was saying. On August 22, 2006, The Winnipeg Free Press contained a story:

My local newspaper recently carried a story about a woman in a nearby city who wrote a letter to the editor criticizing the mayor and city council. She said the present council lacked initiative and acted too often in the interest of “boys with money and toys.” A few days later the pastor of the Pentecostal church she attends wrote her, saying her letter was an embarrassment because good Christians do not publicly criticize their leaders. He told her to find another church if she was not going to change her ways.

So yes, they lie. Because it's a trait. And those who do not possess the trait are ostracized.

Of course they're lying. The evidence is in Iran.

The main theme surrounding Bush and the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran seems to centre on whether Bush (and company) are lying about when they came into possession of the information contained in the NIE or whether they, and Bush in particular, are just stupid.

Joe Scarborough, hardly a Republican detractor, ripped into Bush this morning making that same assertion. Bush is either lying or he's stupid.

From the comments on this post yesterday the immediate consensus seems to be that Bush is both stupid and a liar. Certainly Bush seems quite willing to appear stupid rather than admit that, despite his escalating rhetoric, he was aware that Iran's nuclear program had long ago been halted.

Josh Marshall picked up the "tell" in Bush's 17 October press conference, where Bush changes the imperative from stopping Iran's weapons development to preventing Iran from possessing the knowledge to develop nuclear weapons. That provided a means of cover.

Cheney too, was manipulating the rhetoric. In his 21 October speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy this line is also a "tell":

And now, of course, we have the inescapable reality of Iran's nuclear program; a program they claim is strictly for energy purposes, but which they have worked hard to conceal; a program carried out in complete defiance of the international community and resolutions of the U.N. Security Council. Iran is pursuing technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons.

He didn't say it was being used. Why? Because Cheney was in full possession of the facts. The inconvenient truth for Cheney, who was leading the charge to bomb Iran, was that Tehran was not developing nuclear weapons - just that they could . The same could be said for Boliva, Ghana or Jamaica for all the weight it carried.

However, there is another piece of evidence which proves Bush and Cheney are lying about when they were aware of the contents of the NIE, and that is in Iran itself.

The 2005 NIE on Iran stated with high confidence that Iran was engaged in a nuclear program to enrich uranium to build a bomb. With that estimate in hand, Cheney had everything he needed to formulate and execute a bombing campaign. Given his disdain for world opinion of his policies, he might well have proceeded except for one thing. The March 2005 presidential commission on Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction issued a scathing assessment of the way intelligence and raw data was refined to form conclusions. The 2005 NIE, put together by many of the same people who had produced the highly flawed NIE on Iraq's WMD, was placed under review. This time there were new people working on the case.

But Cheney still had that 2005 NIE and an overwhelming desire to bomb Iran. (That goes back to the 1979 hostage-taking.) With that NIE and enough of an obvious push-back by Iran on facility inspections, Cheney could have had Bush order a naval air strike by late 2006 or early 2007. Certainly, the required naval strike forces had been assembled in the Persian Gulf in preparation for just that kind of attack.

Two things got in the way.

Iraq went off the rails and required much more attention. The insurgency was taking the lives of US troops at an unacceptable level. In order to combat the insurgency a troop escalation would be necessary and it would have been impossible to sell an Iraq-fatigued American public on the idea of increasing forces and operational tempo in Iraq plus a whole new theatre of operations in Iran. So, Cheney was forced to accept that Iraq would have to be dealt with first. The only bright side, from his point of view, was that Iran could be used as a point of blame for the insurgency in Iraq, whether Tehran had anything to do with it or not.

The second thing was the review of the 2005 NIE. By 2006, the initial assessments would have been available and, at the very least, the emphasis of at least some of the sixteen intelligence agencies working on the new NIE would have indicated a different direction - Iran's nuclear program had been halted.

Here's where Iran provides the evidence that Bush and Cheney, despite their rhetoric, knew well before last Wednesday Iran had halted their nuclear program and are lying about it now. It wasn't seven days ago they learned of it. It was more like seven months or even seventeen months. Because if they had not known the true high confidence estimate Iran would already have smoking holes in the ground.

If the progress on the draft 2007 NIE had not been generating new and very different information Cheney would have felt confident to instruct Bush to order the carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf to proceed with an air assault.

The new NIE however, prevented Cheney from acting. If he attacked Iran, based on the 2005 NIE and the information in the new NIE was made public after the fact, it would be Iraq all over again. It quite possibly could have sparked a revolt at home as the American public watched a second betrayal of their trust and a second act of leading them into a war based on lies.

If Bush and Cheney had not known some considerable time ago what was contained or going to be contained in the 2007 NIE, Iran would already have a landscape pocked with bomb craters.

That's why the rhetoric in Bush's 17 October press conference and Cheney's 21 October speech contain parlance such as "knowledge necessary to produce nuclear weapons" and "could be used to produce nuclear weapons".

Well aware that Iran poses no immediate threat, Bush and Cheney are trying to lower the bar and make "potential" a reason for a pre-emptive strike on Iran.

So, the landscape of Iran is how we know both of them are lying about how long ago they knew Tehran had halted its nuclear program. If they hadn't known, Iran would have a few more scars today.

And, yes, Bush remains stupid along with being a liar.