Stupid, stupid Harperite Conservative moron

#Cdnpoli -

This is utter bullshit. Not because the idea is wrong-headed ...

The Harper government is throwing its weight behind a private members' bill that would give police the power to arrest anyone hiding their identity during a riot or unlawful assembly.

Conservative backbencher Blake Richards is proposing penalties of up to five years in prison or a fine of up to $5,000 for protesters who wear a mask or disguise.

... but because the offence already exists in the Criminal Code section 351(2) and carries a maximum period of imprisonment of ten years.

Which makes Blake Richards an idiot or another blind Harperista Law 'n' Order punishment freak who is unable to read. (You don't have settle for just one of the two).

As James Morton asks, doesn't anyone read the Criminal Code?

And the voters of the Alberta riding of Wild Rose should be asking why their Harperite pal is so soft on crime since he proposes to reduce the existing maximum penalty by 50 percent.

I wield my scimitar through the fields of dragon dung

And Preston Manning, because Latin doesn't seem to be his strong suit, makes up words to go with his gut-gripping fiction.

We Canadians have many virtues, but we also have our faults. One of the most worrisome is our growing tendency to substitute discussion for action on key public issues such as health-care reform, productivity improvement and energy policy. 

We increasingly seem to think that a major issue is being “dealt with” when someone writes a paper, article, report or book about it. Further “progress” is then measured by the extent to which the paper, article, report or book has been peer-reviewed, conferenced, editorialized, blogged and tweeted, with the original discussants linked in and befriended by an ever-growing number of fellow discussants via the Internet.

Which Manning finds objectionable. Better to employ the Conservative modus operandi by not bothering to gather facts, study anything or read statistics before rushing headlong into the ideological abyss.

But who’s going to do something about what’s being discussed or proposed? Where’s the acceptance of responsibility to act on what has been proposed and discussed? Where’s the implementation plan and to-do list that translates interest, concern and discussion into actions that achieve results?

Good point. Clearly we're not getting it out of Harper. He and his herd of hillbillies ignore all of that in search of their conservative utopia.

Take health-care reform.

(If you didn't know this was coming you haven't been keeping much of an eye on the Manning conservative puppy-mill).

The federal government’s willingness to provide “no strings attached” health-care transfers to the provinces ought to open the door to systemic innovation. But, as yet, no province has produced an action plan equivalent to what Saskatchewan developed in the 1960s to lay the foundations of the current system, nor has any coalition of health-care reformers emerged in any province to move public opinion onto health-care reform ground such that the politicians will follow. On health-care reform, it’s still talk, talk, talk and no action.  

Now there's a different way of viewing events. Flaherty, a refugee from the Mike Harris disaster, shows up in Victoria on the pretext of entering negotiations (that would be action by the way) and blindsides provincial premiers with a no-discussion dictum and you wonder why they're still reeling.

I’m amazed when even some of my private-enterprise friends and acquaintances take the Leave It to Beaver approach. We give ringing speeches on the virtues of private enterprise and letting the markets solve problems, free of heavy-handed government intervention. Yet, when a challenge such as improving productivity or devising a Canadian energy strategy arises, far too often the reports we present to governments consist primarily of pleas for the government to do this or that. 

That's because your free-enterprise friends, or more correctly your corporate donors, are little more than welfare queens. But maybe you're right. Clearly cutting their corporate income tax didn't get them off their collective asses.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s a place for discussing the great issues of the day.

You just said there wasn't. But I'm getting an idea.

Canada itself was born out of a conference of colonial politicians held in Charlottetown in 1864. But when it ended, the Fathers of Confederation went out and did something. They drafted a constitution, united the colonial economies, bought Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Co. and built the longest railway in the world. They translated discussion into action on a magnificent scale. 

Wow! Just like that! One day a bunch of politicians just got out of bed, realized there was no snow on the ground and created a country. That would be amazing if it was even the slightest bit true.

Blow away the Manning vacuum and you see that it took the better part of several decades of turmoil and discussion before the Charlottetown conference ever happened. It may be different where you went to school, but I seem to recall from high-school that most of this idea of establishing a Dominion started with the 1837 - 1838 Rebellions. And let's not forget the fact that William Lyon Mackenzie proclaimed a republic in Upper Canada a short time before Robert Nelson did the same thing in Lower Canada. Britain didn't even grant the combined colonies of Canada responsible government until 1848 because a corrupt minority of conservative leaders refused to acquiesce to the will of the people.

In short, Preston, it took a series of evolutionary reforms for Canada to be born. Unlike your chia pet version of national creation the actual road to nationhood took well over 40 years of debate, discussion and insurrection to reach what happened in Charlottetown.

I mentioned that I was getting an idea that could easily be put into action. Let's re-categorize one-sided political boot camps like yours and remove the not-for-profit tax status. Let's see what happens when you've got to pay full freight and your donors don't get a tax receipt.

Excrementum.Verveces tui similes pro ientaculo mihi appositi sunt.

Doris keeps going back to those European welfare states for the answer...

I hadn't realized that he said this - again:

``We've also looked at the fact that with the high degree of sophistication and integration of computerization and data these days, do you need to go through that whole process at all?'' he said at a news conference Tuesday.

``Countries like Norway, Denmark, have dispensed with this type of information-gathering years ago,'' he added.

Yes, indeed, wouldn't the closet nazis in Harper's enterprise like to employ integrated computerized data harvesting on absolutely everything you do.

The systems Day is referring to are the National Population Register in Norway and The Civil Registration System in Denmark. Under law, every citizen, from birth, and every resident of those countries is required to submit data which includes considerably more information than is gathered in the census.

In short, the government knows everything about you, at all times and, in the case of Denmark, will release that information to creditors on request. And, of course, residents who don't report things promptly and accurately, (like moving to a new address), can be fined or sent to jail.

Norway has had a few problems securing the information. Ohhh... identity theft!

Really. Is that where "Jet Ski" Day wants to go?

"Million" "Moran" March

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Damn! That stuff tastes awful...

Having just returned from.... where the hell was I?

Oh yeah! Canadian Forces Base... (the location isn't important).

Funny how, for almost the past four decades, in two armed services, in two different governments, the protection of classified material has not changed. (Must be a NATO thing.)

As LuLu pointed out, there are certain specific requirements when transporting, transmitting and receiving classified documents, SECRET being a security classification of some signficance.

I would add to LuLu's accurate description to include the fact that the outside of the inner envelope requires a government approved security tape on the flap opening. The stuff is tough to open with a pair of sharp scissors and has a disgusting taste with an aroma not unlike an unwashed horse. (I know, I know... it's all in the glue).

Further, as CTV is reporting that Lisa Raitt or some "aide" left a file in which some pages were marked SECRET, then something is wrong. In any publication, regardless of the number of pages, if one page is classified SECRET then the whole publication is marked SECRET... on the outside cover, top and bottom, front and back. The cover page is also marked SECRET, top and bottom.

Not that the thing had any reason to be at CTV in the first place, but if it's not marked the way in which I described, somebody for whom Raitt is responsible has an abysmally poor security awareness. If it was marked correctly then only an idiot would leave it laying around.

I too know my stuff. I teach it.

Gary Goodyear - Flat earther

Perhaps people who reject scientific fact shouldn't hold a position of minister of state for science and technology.

Canada's science minister, the man at the centre of the controversy over federal funding cuts to researchers, won't say if he believes in evolution.

"I'm not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate," Gary Goodyear, the federal Minister of State for Science and Technology, said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.

Un huh. Brian Alters sums up Goodyear's answer nicely.

Evolution is a scientific fact, Dr. Alters said, and the foundation of modern biology, genetics and paleontology. It is taught at universities and accepted by many of the world's major religions, he said.

"It is the same as asking the gentleman, 'Do you believe the world is flat?' and he doesn't answer on religious grounds," said Dr. Alters. "Or gravity, or plate tectonics, or that the Earth goes around the sun."

The scary part is that Harper's cabinet is full of them.

Now go read Impolitical.

You'd think Iran would at least send Bush a "Thank You" card

If you take read of the various bits and pieces at the PNAC site you may come to notice a missing thread amongst the so-called research - a lack of reference to history. This group, which served as the foundry for the Bush administration's disastrous foreign policy, is largely responsible for ignoring the realities of the regions they promote as targets for American invasion and eventual domination.

The picture which forms from reading the very short list of PNAC publications is very clear: the centerpiece think-tank of the American neo-conservative movement, aside from possessing a fanatical desire to control the world, has not studied the people, the politics or the cultures of places like Iraq, Iran, Syria etc. with anything close to a reasonable historical depth.

In short, PNAC, along with most other conservative think-tanks and virtually all "movement conservatives", view the residents of the Middle-East as stupid, uneducated, hot-tempered and emotionally wed to medieval religious beliefs and tribalism.

In adopting this shallow perception of the people of the Middle-East, the community of conservative foreign policy experts, including those actually serving in the Bush administration, assume a position blessed of rational thinking against an irrational population; a population easily conquered and dominated by simply offering something more appealing than the religious and tribal control that neo-cons presume to be the prevailing factors in the lives of Middle-Eastern populations.

By ignoring the histories of the peoples of the Middle-East, by failing to acknowledge the political depth of those countries and by disparaging populations which they have not studied, the current American political leadership (and its advisory bodies) have overlooked centuries of astute political acumen, adept military strategy, well-educated populations and a long record of out-thinking and out-maneuvering an opponent.

While Bush drags his sword across the cobblestones with statements like this: “For all those who ask whether the fight in Iraq is worth it, imagine an Iraq where militia groups backed by Iran control large parts of the country,” he, and his supporters and promoters, don't see that they have already been had. They have given Iran something Iran could not accomplish against an Arab Saddam.

Peter Galbraith:

When US forces ousted Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, the Badr organisation infiltrated the south from Iran. In the months that followed, the US-run Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) appointed Badr leaders to key positions in Iraq’s army and police.

At the same time the CPA appointed party officials from the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) to be governors and serve on governorate councils throughout southern Iraq. SCIRI was founded at Ayatollah Khomeini’s direction in Tehran in 1982. Badr is the militia associated with it.

In the January 2005 elections, SCIRI became the most important component of Iraq’s ruling Shi’ite coalition. In exchange for not taking the prime minister’s slot, it won the right to name key ministers, including the minister of the interior. From that ministry, SCIRI placed Badr militiamen throughout Iraq’s national police.

In short, Bush has from the first facilitated the very event that he warned would be a disastrous consequence of a US withdrawal from Iraq: the takeover of a large part of the country by an Iranian-backed militia.

Iran was engaged in a horrific war with Iraq for eight years in an attempt to gain control of the Shi'ite populated lands across the border established by the 1639 Treaty of Qasr-i Shirin. They couldn't do it, in large part because the Reagan administration provided material support to Saddam to prevent Iran gaining control of large parts of Iraq.

The United States cannot now undo Bush’s strategic gift to Iran. But, importantly, the most pro-Iranian Shi’ite political party is the one least hostile to the United States.

In the battle now under way between SCIRI (recently renamed the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, or SIIC) and al-Sadr for control of southern Iraq and of the central government in Baghdad, the United States and Iran are on the same side.

The United States has good reason to worry about Iran’s activities in Iraq. But, contrary to the Bush administration’s allegations, Iran does not oppose Iraq’s new political order. In fact, it is the chief beneficiary of the US-induced changes in Iraq since 2003.

Of all the unintended consequences of the Iraq war, Iran’s strategic victory is the most far-reaching, as the history of the region illustrates.

[...]

The 2003 US invasion of Iraq accomplished what Khomeini’s army could not. Today, Shi’ite-controlled lands extend to the borders of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Iran and its Iraqi allies control the Middle East’s third and second largest oil reserves. Iran’s influence now extends to the borders of the Saudi province that holds the world’s largest oil reserves.

If that doesn't highlight the incompetence, lack of forward thinking and a failure to acknowledge the shrewd strategic thinking employed against him by what his advisers call an irrational theocracy, Bush has allowed this semi-educated crowd to lead him into a corner surrounded by paint that will never dry.

With so much of the US military tied up in Iraq, the Iranians do not believe that America has the resources to attack them and then deal with the consequences. They know that a US attack would have little support in America and none internationally. Not even the British would go along. So Bush’s warnings count for little with Tehran. As long as the Iranians believe the United States has no military option, they have limited incentives to reach an agreement, especially with the Europeans.

Halting Iran’s nuclear programme is also incompatible with Bush’s other long-term objective: changing its regime. Iran is highly unlikely to agree to a nuclear solution while America is trying to overthrow its government. Furthermore, airstrikes might destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities but they would rally popular support for the regime and give it a further pretext to crack down on the opposition. The rest of the world would condemn the attacks and there would likely be a virulent antiUS reaction in the Islamic world. In retaliation, Iran could wreak havoc by withholding oil from the global market and by closing the Gulf shipping lanes.

Faced with choosing between the United States or an Iran under attack, Iraq’s government may not choose its liberator. Even if the Iraqi government did not openly cooperate with the Iranians, pro-Iranian elements in the US-armed military and police would almost certainly facilitate attacks on US troops by pro-Iranian Iraqi militia or Iranian infiltrators.

A bunch of short-sighted, self-absorbed, egotistical rich-kids pump out a moronic, inarticulate, "C-average" frat-boy who expounds upon the virtues of his mediocrities, has a history of failure, bad business sense and string of poor personal life decisions and present him as a world leader.

So, who are the tribal, stupid and uneducated ones now?

And, who will take this idiot?

As Bush heads off to the G8 Summit with his Canadian lapdog in tow, the world starts to bubble up with opinion as to the questionable level of influence Bush actually wields. Suffice to say that Europe will pay little attention to the rambling of Bush's only supporter, Canadian prime minister Steve Harper.

No. The world will be watching Bush to see what kind of ass he makes of himself. A comprehensive foreign policy failure, Bush has already attracted attention and Rolf Wenkel demonstrates the arguments Europe will use to hack him up.

To put it bluntly: The washed-up inhabitant of the White House hasn't learned a thing. This time, too, his ideas are far behind those of the German G8 presidency -- and of the international community to set a decisive course against the threatening climate catastrophe. [...] Bush appears to be blind. He's blind to the 13 US states that combined their efforts in a climate protection initiative. He's blind to the innumerable US cities that have long been ignoring the brakesman in the White House. He's blind to companies like General Electric or General Motors that want to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 60 to 80 percent. Who still takes this man seriously?

The killer line, however, is a demonstration of how the world, outside his infinitesimal following in the United States and his petulant Canadian cheerleader, actually view Bush.

... a provincial politician from Texas, who has long imagined he knows something about world politics.

The G8 Summit will end in failure. There will be no agreement because the United States is represented at the table by a complete moron.

Hat Tip Cookie Jill

The Devil made me do it!

A male comedian dressed up like a woman saying "the devil made me do it" in a comedy routine is funny.


A fundamentalist Christian teenage mother using it to defend her teenage would-be preacher's attempt to roast their toddler alive-- ehhh, not so much.


More progressive parenting in Jebusland:




Woman blames devil, not husband for burning daughter in microwave


May 20, 2007, 12:45PM
© 2007 The Associated Press


GALVESTON, Texas — A woman blames the devil and not her husband for severely burning their infant daughter after the 2-month-old was put in a microwave, a Houston television station reported.
Eva Marie Mauldin said Satan compelled her 19-year-old husband, Joshua Royce Mauldin, to microwave their daughter May 10 because the devil disapproved of Joshua's efforts to become a preacher.
"Satan saw my husband as a threat. Satan attacked him because he saw (Joshua) as a threat," Eva Mauldin told Houston television station KHOU-TV.
A Galveston County grand jury indicted Joshua Mauldin last week on child injury charges after hearing evidence that he placed his daughter in a motel microwave for 10 to 20 seconds. The infant, Ana Marie, remains hospitalized. She suffered burns on the left side of her face and to her left hand, police said.
Eva Marie Mauldin, the girl's 20-year-old mother, told the television station that her husband is "not the monster people are making him out to be."


(cross posted from the Woodshed)

And he's killed fewer people than Charlie Manson

Note to Conrad Black: If you want to stay out of jail, you may not want to compare yourself to the only man ever driven from the White House for his criminality.

The Money Quote:

His book, Richard Nixon: The Invincible Quest, is largely an attempt at rehabilitating the president brought down by Watergate. Had it not been for his "legal and ethical shortcomings," he writes, Nixon would now be ranked alongside Reagan andFDR as one of America's greatest presidents.

Yeah, and aside from that brief bit of unpleasantness in front of the Book Depository, the future Mrs. Onasis quite enjoyed the drive through Dallas. On what basis can Nixon be considered a great president? His prolongation of the Vietnam war? His secret and illegal wars against Cambodia and Laos? His backing of Pinochet's coup in Chile? His backing of Indonesia's bloody invasion of Timor?

"Oh, but he went to China!" the conservatives always say. He was hardly the first to recognize that the communist regime there formed a legitimate government -- and it only happened 30 years after they had chased Chang-kai Shek off the mainland.

Yes, he ended the draft and started the EPA, but that hardly makes up for using the constitution as toilet paper.

And let's be clear: Reagan was a disaster as president. He tripled the national debt, sparked the homeless problem by emptying the mental hospitals, was a union-buster, sold arms to Saddam Hussien, gave the religious right the undue influence in U.S. politics that it weilds to this day, got rid of the FCC's fairness doctrine thereby allowing evil, lying bags of pus like Rush Limbaugh to abuse the public airwaves, contributed to international tensions and instability by heating up the cold war until it threatened to turn hot, ignored AIDS until it reached epidemic proportions and made George Bush his vice president, thus leading to the coronation of the current dolt in the White House.

And all that is in addition to the crimes he commited gassing students as Gov. of California, rushing to eagerly name names for Joesph McCarthy and making the Bonzo movies.

That Black believes Nixon and Reagan were great presidents on par with FDR tells you all you need to know about his lunatic, aristocratic Tory view of history, but if you need other reasons to dislike him look let us judge him by his actions and his words rather than his reputation as a ruthless robber baron who gutted the Canadian newspaper industry.

He also responds to the repeated attempts by the prosecution to portray him not just as a thief but prone to an over-the-top lifestyle. "It is a total fraud that I lived with any particular extravagance," he complains. "I had certain ideas about how the chairman of a big newspaper should behave. So I tried to conform to that. But I was not a vulgar person."

Contrast that with:

They also allege Black used shareholder money to partly fund a US$54,114 birthday party for his wife at La Grenouille, an upscale New York restaurant, and charged shareholders when he took the company's jet on a personal vacation to the South Pacific island of Bora Bora.

Nothing over the top about that at all, nor his $9,000 gardening bill, although many people live on less than $200,000 a month

While he admits that there have been some "scary moments", he goes on to insist:
"The game is won. I'm on an inexorable march to victory."

That is going to look so good after Lady Babs has one of the servants embroider it on a sampler for his lordship to hang in his cell.

Addendum
Commenter John M. Miller correctly points out that Ford and not Nixon was the president during the invasion of East Timor. However, I would argue that as Ford and Kissinger were both Nixon appointees, Nixon still bears some degree of responsibility for what happened on their watch. The same goes for ending the draft - it was Ford that signed the papers in 1975, but the original groundwork had already been laid by Nixon, who ended active conscription in 1973.

There is one other nail that should be driven into Nixon's coffin; He brought Donald Rumsfeld (whom he admiringly called a "ruthless little bastard") into the executive branch, and thus Dick Cheney, both of whom clearly took to heart the boss's arguments about executive privilege and the right of the president to do anything he wants.

(crossposted to The Woodshed)

Rescuing Stockwell Day's comedy from the memory hole

It appears Stockwell Day has had his blog expunged. Everything he wrote since becoming a cabinet minister suddenly disappeared.

That's bad.

Another problem is that when his columns appear in the Pentiction Western News, they too eventually fall into the abyss.

What to do, what to do? Apparently Stockwell, (or members of his political staff), are worried that Stockie's mouth (pen) could generate some embarrassment during, say, a future election campaign. So... they just delete everything they know doesn't represent the mindset of a majority of Canadians.

Except, Stockwell (and staff), Teh Internets aren't really a series of tubes. No, no, no. They're more like a bunch of dump trucks. You put stuff in, it moves, you try to toss it into a landfill, we dig it up and keep it!

Those of us who have a minor amount of knowledge know how to dig into an archive, even if you delete something, and save it. Why, did you know that Google caches almost everything that's ever been on a website or a blog?

So... we rescued a few of Stockwell's bestest columns and blog posts. They now reside in the concrete vault of The Galloping Beaver's Memory Hole. They will forever be available so that all may enjoy the written comedy of one of Canada's most memorable politicians.

Clicking on the picture gets you a little gift.