Constitutional Monarchy: The Stephen Harper Edition

I'm not even dully surprised at the grotesque wankery of Canada's Conservative Government.

We don't have "democracy" the way the rest of the world has it. Our head of state is the Queen of England, our Senate is appointed, not elected. At one time Mr. S. Harper made much of this, promising an elected one, which I personally don't want for reasons I've mentioned here before. He also has expressed a dislike for the monarchy.

A year ago, threatened by a move to establish a coalition government that would have represented the 60-odd-percent of Canadians who are currently shut out of Bushland North, Stephen Harper, demonstrating a quick-change in principles ummatched except in every other thing he's done, ran for the umbrella of the monarchy he previously deplored.

He asked the Governor-General to protect his failed government by shutting down, or "proroguing" Parliament for three months. And for no known reason she acceeded.

At the time, his excuse was that Parliament wasn't functioning. Which it wasn't, because he'd ordered his winged monkeys not to co-operate when working on Parliamentary committees.

This year, he ordered his people to do this again, especially in regard to the Afghan detainee investigation. He's in contempt of Parliament, and should be under indictment for such.

Now the news says that he's asking the GG to prorogue again.

The only thing worse, if she once again bends Canadian democracy over the table for him, will be the conservative wankersphere orgasming all over itself at Harper's "statesmanship."

Is it any wonder that half the electorate stayed home last election?

I hope the GG tells him to go ₤µ©λ himself with a rasp.

Pre-publication update: The CBC reports that the PMO is announcing proroguement has been achieved.

If there were a god I'd ask him/her/it to damn these lousy bastards to hell. As it is, I'm stopping just short of expressing a public wish for a competent assassin. Let me be clear: I don't actually want Harper assassinated. But I do think about wishing for it.

What democracy remained in this country just died.

This Is News? #94

Caribou Barbie has blackened her running mate's name.

Uh, didn't she do that pretty much as soon she joined the campaign? Not that he wasn't making a fine job of it on his own, but he needed someone to ensure that there was something in his platform for crazy, gun-loving, Bible-thumping, white people who weren't male, too.

Do You Think the National Post Could Use an Editor?

Canada's National Post, whose "Full Comment" section would make fine budgie-cage liner did it but exist in print, has been allowed by a bankruptcy court to shuffle under a different corporate umbrella and has thus survived the death of its parent.

Oddly, this has not improved the quality of its content, save that John Baglow has apparently decided he enjoys bear-baiting sufficiently to allow the NP to reuse his blog posts. I believe he feels this will promote discussion.

While I must admit the comments there are considably smarter than the NP average, I feel this is because the standard is improved by the presence of actual thinking commenters, not common elsewhere. Witness the savaging John Moore, the sole critical thinker writing in the NP until Baglow came along, receives on this post.

However, they've clearly cut back on actual editors and actual journalism. The wrong is tremendous and the irony could shoe a racetrack.

First, the Senate didn't "weaken" the bill. They affirmed the rights of individuals. I'm personally in favour of Bill C-6 because it'll trounce some of the woo-practitioners unless they can prove that their bark, roots, herbs, or magic can actually DO something. But I never wanted inspectors to be able to raid homes without a warrant.

Secondly, a paper that staunchly defends the Federal Government's right to evade torture accusations claims that reaffirming the need for a warrant "weakens" legislation. It is to laugh, hollowly.

Third: Here's the accompanying picture.



This, on the other hand, is Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, an Inuk and one of the few Conservative Ministers I've had any respect at all for.

Clearly, all brown people DO in fact look alike to them.

Matt Taibbi: Now Known as "Dances With Nuts"

From an article entitled "Jesus Made Me Puke":

By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to "be rational" or "set aside your religion" about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you've made a journey like this — once you've gone this far — you are beyond suggestible. It's not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that's the issue. It's that once you've gotten to this place, you've left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you're thinking with muscles, not neurons.

Another Threat to Marriage

Doubtless the right wingers will want to campaign against this one as well.

Pathetic.

Harper Blue-Sweaters Arts Gala: Big Whoop

I won't repost the video. Harper plays and sings "With a Little Help From My Friends." A song written by people he would naturally consider a bunch of socialist hippie drug users.

The reaction from Tory supporters translates into "Isn't he the cutest thing?"

People dwelling in the real world interpret it thus: In an effort to make himself look like a better facsimile of a human, Harper somehow persuaded his wife Laureen to let him onto the stage with Yo-Yo Ma (whom the Largely Irrelevant Post writer John Ivison describes as "an up-and-coming cellist." Thankfully the Post may soon be closing, allowing Ivison to catch up on developments in classical music since the Renaissance).

Okay, fine. Whatever, Steve.

Mrs. Harper skipped the gala last year after her husband, placeholder Steve, claimed that

"I think when ordinary working people . . . see a gala of a bunch of people at a rich gala all subsidized by taxpayers claiming their subsidies aren't high enough . . . I'm not sure that's something that resonates..."

Of course, it's different when Conservatives don their tuxes for a night out.

He sure plays purty. He's a much better pianist than a PM. Maybe a career change is in order? I'm more than happy to help him on his way to his first album.

Conservatism: The View's Great With Your Head Up Your Collective

I'm honestly wondering whether Conservatism isn't merely a political viewpoint, but a psychotic disconnect.

Case in point: Our own Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is blaming Canada for the recent imposition of visa requirements on Mexicans, which you may recall was a summer surprise from his government.

That is, asked to explain his government's actions, Harper goes for the "It's not my fault--The country I'm trying to rule over just likes brown people too much!" defence. No surprise there, really.

Gutless, brainless, unconscionable ... And speaking of that:

I'm still glad I don't live in the United States. Because apparently Republicans have no idea what the term "discourse" means.

Invited to have a town-hall debate on health care reform, they respond with a) death threats, b) invitations to bring guns to said meetings and be violent, oh, and c) faking their own beatings. More on the Passion of Kenneth Gladney here.

The distortion and lying by shills for the Repugnicans reached its peak with Sarah "Moose Head" Palin's nutty claim that under the Obama proposal some sort of bureaucratic health board would pronounce on the fitness of her offspring to live

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Well I can understand why Palin would be worried about a panel with the power of life or death judging the usefulness to society of the mentally deficient. But even if such a panel were convened, they'd surely have enough humanity to spare her: culling mental defectives in the Palin family would likely leave no-one to care for poor Trig, who has Down Syndrome.

Your Republican Party: Fighting for the rights of the common folk to remain ignorant, fearful, exploited, and ill. Huzzah!

--And god damn them to hell.

In my own province, the BC "Liberals"--who are Conservatives (It'd take too long to explain--Here's the Wikipedia) are mulling over cutting some six thousand surgeries in Vancouver, and also closing a third of Vancouver emergency rooms during the Olympics.

The reason is that the Liberal government told the health authority to suck it up and refused to even negotiate funding a $200 million shortfall in budget because all spare money is earmarked for the Olympics--which is also why we're getting a "Harmonized Sales Tax"--which isn't a tax grab, apparently, but purely co-incidentally adds taxes to items previously spared them.

What's most disturbing about this non-tax-grab is the cynicism behind it. The Campbell Liberals campaigned specifically on a promise of "no new taxes" after adding a 2¢ "carbon" tax on every litre of gas. Note: I support the gas tax. Consumer-level carbon taxes are pretty much the only way to make significant change. However instead of the money going to green initiatives, the goverment plugs it into general revenue to bolster their abysmal budget figures.

Bear in mind that all health changes instituted in the past fifteen years have been from the BC Liberal Conservative party. So if the health authority is scrod--and I believe it is--the people to blame are fairly easy to spot.

You may remember the Olympics--the ones that are some 100% or something over budget and climbing? Turns out that the BC Liberals based part of that budget on the willingness of employers to pay their employees to work at the Olympics instead of, well, at work--Like, y'know, at their businesses.

For some reason that doesn't seem to be working out. So the BC government is going to second its own employees--that is, civil servants from the force that the first Campbell government slashed to its barely-functional bones--to do the Olympic jobs instead of, y'know, providing government services.

Oh, and that's on top of the massive incentive program already offered to BC government employees who volunteer at the Olympics--they actually get paid to take paid leave.

The Olympic security budget is $900 mil, up from an estimate of $180 million--I think they assumed Superman would be available, so the shortfall is understandable. But Superman is likely to be covering for the cops who are also being drafted into the Olympics' service. Courts will be all-but-closed for most of February in BC.

Conservatives just don't connect with reality anymore. They've earned their tme in the wilderness and should just go away and let the adults handle things until therapists find a cure.

Safety Catch .22

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.

~From Joseph Heller's 1961 novel

Just today we receive the announcement that several idiots who filmed themselves illegally shooting flightless baby ducks from their truck and making humourous comments such as "Mama's dead, don't need that one anymore," have been caught.

I have avoided commenting at the various threads on the health club shooting beyond saying that the shooter (may his name be rapidly forgotten) was a zeta-male loser with a grudge and a gun. The part I'm avoiding is the obvious bit about the NRA's unofficial creed: "Guns don't kill people--People with guns kill people!"

The point is that it's fairly clear that many people who get themselves a gun are precisely the sort of people whom no-one would want to have one.

So I propose a simple policy: I call it "Safety Catch-.22"

Since the desire to have a gun often seems to indicate the unsuitability of the applicant, anyone who applies in their own name to own a firearm will be immediately disqualified from doing so.

However, in the interest of fairness and all other requirements met, a license may be granted to anyone who can persuade another person to apply in his or her name.

I mean, think about it. People who know multiple murderers often say "Yeah--he creeped me out." Do you think anyone who knew the gym shooter, or the Columbine kids, would have signed off on getting them guns?

A friend mentioned, by pure happenstance yesterday, that one of the Columbine shooters' "girlfriend" acquired one of the weapons they used. I'd just like to say, "Have a nice life you dopey troll," and to suggest that perhaps the person making the application in your name should have to be a total stranger to you.

The Best Statement I've Yet Heard on Climate Change

"And the very same people who told you that weapons of mass destruction were real are telling you that climate change is not."

Indeed.

One should consider one's sources. They were wrong about the economy, about the Iraq misadventure, and about so many other things ... Why would anyone trust them on anything at all?

From this video, found on Pharyngula.

The Healthcare "Debate"?

Let me declare my biases:

I'm Canadian

I was born to parents whose own parents didn't have "socialized health care" and who regarded it as one of the finest achievements of civilization

The Canadian health care system helped, at the very least, to save my life on at least one occasion.

So I'm mad when I see the system so mischaracterized by the forces who want to continue screwing US citizens out of their money. Because that's what private-for-profit health "care" does: It rations health care. The very thing it accuses "government-run" or "bureaucratic" or "socialized" health care of.

Because economics is all about scarcity. The scarcer something is, the higher a premiuim it may command on the open market. Healthy people just aren't good "health consumers."

It is reckoned that the US pirate-for-profit system costs several billion dollars in lost productivity each year, not counting the $46 bn in direct costs. Yet there are outfits out there who are frantically trying to avoid the Obama health care debate by going to their "consumers" and trying to defend their (the consumers') right to go bankrupt for cancer treatment, their right to pay premiums and have coverage denied anyway, and their right to go entirely without any form of health care. And, purely co-incidentally I'm sure, these organizations end up defending their right to profit off the sick and healthy alike, through fear.

The US system simply doesn't make sense in a civilized world. Of course, a civilized world would have to be one in which profit might occasionally have to take a back seat to charity, mercy, forbearance. Which doesn't suit insurance companies at all. After all, it takes an especially twisty kind of thinking to take the wrong end of a bet on whether or not you will die, and still make money on the deal.

The Calgary Herald has today an excellent, simple editorial outlining the fractured thinking going on behind the drive to preserve health as something people who produce nothing and contribute nothing good to the economy should continue making a profit on (I'm speaking specifically of HMOs. Insurance itself is useful, and a vital financial instrument that has to be in place for any kind of market-based economy to thrive).

Oh, and to any US Avid Fans: If you hear anything from a Doctor Brian Day, ignore it. He's a rotten lousy shill for the health insurance industry. Because up here in "Marxist" Canada, where "rationed" healthcare dictates who gets what, we allow people to see private quacks out of their own pockets if they like. And we allow said quacks to set up clinics so that they can go about the business of gouging money out of the healthy.

In Canada, doctors are in private practice. But the patient is shielded from predation by drug companies, "health management" companies, and doctors who're so terrified of liability that they send you for unnecessary tests.

The US can't do it like Canada, exactly. There are too many entrenched interests, too long a history, and possibly too decentralized a government (Although we've steadily been devolving responsibility to the provinces--and it's been a bit of a disaster).

Now, no system will ever cover everything (there's that scarcity again). But it seems to me that while government provided systems usually have to justify refusing care, all an insurance company has to say is "Sorry--we don't cover that." It's on record: Companies have routinely sent "deny-first" letters to clients hoping they'll simply give up and go away.

But the US has a chance to step out and show the world. Perhaps a blended private-public system like many of the Scandanavian countries would do it?

Like the old commercials say: "Two flavour great--No debate!"

In any case, if they really want an easy way to jump-start the economy, the first thing to do is to get everyone some form of basic health coverage.

More Conservative Economic Genius

Not content with having deliberately and with malicious, venial, stupidity aforethought spiked the Canadian nuclear medicine industry, increased wait times four-fold or so, and bankrupted the country unto at least 2014, my Conservative government decided to announce yet another delightful "What-the-₤µ©λ-are-you-playing-at-you-@$$#013s?" moment this week.

Because once you've done such a wonderful number on the economy already, why not top the $#17 sundae with a rancid cherry and kneecap the tourist industry?

Tourism is a huge part of Canada's economy. People like to come and see things like pristine lakes, airy mountains, and green trees, often because many of these people come from places where such are in short supply, often due to a history of short-sighted, near-criminal, cripplingly stupid and often conservative governments; Like ours.

So during a recession, when the industry has already taken a number of kicks to the collective crotch (new US passport requirements, "staycations", et al.), the smart thing to do is:

A) Demote a minister who funded a gay pride parade for $400K (in complete accordance with her mandate and economic sense) which contributes million$ to the Greater Toronto Area.

B) Introduce new, more stringent travel requirements such as, oh I dunno, how 'bout a visa requirment for Czechs and Mexicans? Preferably without prior notice, so that no-one can prepare for the new rules.

If you're an idiot, and a Conservative Party Minister (but I repeat myself), you do both.

The article says that Mexico was the number-one refugee claimant nation. But if Mr. Harper hadn't chosen to allow staffing levels to fall through attrition, or at least had hired replacement workers on a one-for-one basis, at Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the backlog wouldn't have been a problem.

Besides, the Cons ₤µ©λed over ALL immigrants a year or two back by rewriting the rules so that if your claim simply doesn't make it off the pile, you have to go to the foot of the queue and start again.

(Unless you're a doctor. Then we'll poach you from some third-world hellhole that desperately needs you, and put you to work in the grossly understaffed world of public transportation at minimum wage, but hey--You'll be living in the greatest ... Well, the secon- ... Um ... Hang on a mo' ... the, ah yes, seventeeth greatest country in the world!)

The changes also made it possible to jump the queue. Whatever the faults of the old system, it was at least fair. But of course "fairness" is one of those words the Conservative party has to grab a dictionary on hearing, along with "compassion" and "empathy".

There is really nothing more to say than "When the hell are you going to pull the ₤µ©λing trigger Mr. Ignatieff? Would tomorrow work for you? 'Cos I'm busy today, but I could spare the time to vote these turkeys off while I wait for my local hospital to scrounge up some isotopes so I can rejoin the wait list for a test or two.

We are living under the single stupidest, single worst, uniquely damaging government of Canada in the history of the country. Only Mulroney could ever have claimed to have ₤µ©λed us over more and worse. And he was a Conservative too.

Co-incidence? I think not.

I hate these clowns and their bankrupt pathalogy of an ideology more every day. I hope Harper ends his days in a refrigerator box. Or possibly as a 230-lb Native inmate's prison bitch.

Is there one thing, a single thing, ANYthing, they've managed to do right?

Note for Conservative Party members and other humour-challenged persons. I don't REALLY want Harper to end his days in an appliance box, nor as a big-ass prison inmate's girlfriend (unless he wants to be--Prison can apparently do that to some guys, and I think there's a good chance he and Muldoon might end up there). A simple slow fade into the ignominy he deserves and the designation of "Worst. PM. Thus. Far" will suffice (I'd say "Worst. PM. Evar", but the unfortunate possibility that another Conservative government might get in before he dies still exists, however remote).

This is what Liberals and other thinking types call "hyperbole". Do feel free to look it up, won't you?

A Pattern Emerges

Stephen Harper is not, in the words of Don Corleone, "A man of respect." He fires experts rather than acknowledge their competence, muzzles his own ministers, takes the cheapest of cheap shots, fires off attack ads to "save Canadians" from the threat of another election even when a)no threat of an election exists and b) it's hardly a threat to anyone but him. He's known to be contemptuous of others' ideas and opinions, and only by being close as an oyster has he thus far avoided looking like the nasty, unsympathetic, stringy-souled wretch he is.

In recent weeks, two incidents have occurred which throw a bit of light on the character of the hapless and uncomfortable man currently holding the national rudder.

First was Stephen Harper's crackergate. Catholics were scandalized to observe Mister Harper, at a state funeral for former Governor-General Romeo LeBlanc, caught on video apparently taking a communion wafer (about 0:30) and failing to consume it.



Now this wouldn't be a problem if Harper was not himself an evangelical Protestant Christian, who should reasonably be expected to understand about sacred cows. But moreover, he's the Prime Minister of a country that still divides fairly sharply along the Catholic/Protestant divide.

Harper's spokesperson complicated matters by absolutely insisting that his boss swallowed the cracker. Which certainly doesn't appear to happen in the few seconds during which Harper is obscured by the priest.

As an atheist, and one who expressed some concern over a prior incident, I'm of two minds here:

First: It's a cracker, basically. The priest raising the alarm on this one probably isn't very busy otherwise.

Second, however: This guy's the PM. He's supposed to know better--In fact I'd bet he can hardly have avoided knowing better. It seems disrespectful at a very fundamental level. He could have waved off the priest. I sometimes attend church with my family and never take communion.

Perhaps he thought that slipping it into his pocket was better than being seen by the nation's Catholics refusing to accept it?

But my belief is that it's just part of his disrespect for anyone who isn't him.

Last April, Harper made my country a laughing stock by turning up late for photos at a conference. In fact the first picture at the last G13 (the G8 plus the G5) meeting didn't include him at all.

He repeated the stunt last week, after just about everyone at the G8 meeting criticized him for also being absent on climate change. Canada, under the "leadership" of the Harper Tories, has shamefully neglected, avoided, and ducked its environmental responsibilities.

It's all of a piece: There are the bold and barefaced lies about our environmental policies being sufficient (Harper's plan includes no penalties for excess pollution, resists any scheme to actually, you know, limit greenhouse gas emissions, and is allegedly supposed to produce results starting in 2050--which politically speaking is as close to "never" as dammit).

There's the consistent lack of consideration and respect for other world leaders--Let me rephrase that: "for world leaders".

And the apparent disrespect for Catholic traditions. If you don't share that particular superstition it is surely harmless and innocuous to not take the wafer.

Harper, in terms of establishing meaningful human, international, and intergovernmental relationships, is a washout. Why? Because, it seems, he just doesn't respect anyone who isn't him. Of course, I could simply have called him a Conservative. In Canada these days it seems that that's the shorthand.

Addendum:
I have noticed that where Webster Cook's transgression, and PZ Myers' deliberate desecration of the Host produced death threats and howls of outrage at the "hate crime", particularly from those on the Harperite side of the ideological chasm, the PM's absention of a Host appears to have drawn much milder criticism. I'd like to believe that it's because we're Canadian, and we recognize that, in itself, this is a nothing incident.

As part of Harper's pattern of disrespect, it seems to be more significant.

Does that Budget Report Come With Assless Chaps?

Conservatives are well known for a sort of voyeuristic prurience when it comes to sex. Now it turns out that this is their economic policy too:

For example, it's well known that while decrying sex and all things sexually positive, the "family values" types tend to enjoy their lesiure time at adultery, borderline pederasty, prostitution, anonymous gay encounters, and similar purportedly lib'rul pursuits. While especially true in the US, there is much such in Canada as well. Then they like to pretend it just ain't so.

In Canada, with regard to the economy, the Conservative Government is behaving exactly like a 17-year-old boy with a purity ring* trying to talk his likewise be-ringed girlfriend into a little back-door action.

Canada to Young Stephen Harper:
"I don't know ... I mean, it looks like it might be uncomfortable."

Young Stephen Harper to Canada:
"Oh come on, honey ... It's really not that big. In fact it doesn't even exist."

Canda:
"You're wrong--I can see it, and it looks scary."

SH: "What ... This ol' thing? Naw, it's just a little bump. You'll even enjoy it."

C: "But I'm afraid it's going to hurt!"

SH: "Well it might hurt, just a little, going in. But you'll enjoy it--it's a wonderful opportunity. Hell, in 2012 it'll be nothing but fantastic."

C: "Look, we need a little lubrication at least."

SH: "No we don't!"

C: "Are you nuts? Look at the size of that thing. It's big enough to wreck General Motors!"

SH: "Oh, okay, if you insist. Crybaby."

C: "OW! Sweet Jesus! It's big, really big, and it hurts! You never told me it'd be this bad."

SH: "Well, uh ... I didn't know. Yeah, that's it ..."

Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer: "Um, Master Harper ... You knew. You clearly knew. But you've been lying about it for at least a year. Sorry, sir, it's my job to call bullshit on you."

SH: Uh, okay. I lied then, but I wasn't really lying ... and if I was it was Ignatieff's fault, or the Previous Liberal Government's ...

Und so weiter.



Note:
*A purity ring is a ring, often inscribed with the name "Jesus" which is supposed to indicate a comittment to chastity until marriage. In fact, at least fifty percent of such "pledged" virgins fall by the wayside, possibly not including the ones who get married out of desperation and divorce later, and particularly not including the ones who eat/blow each other and have anal sex to "preserve" their virginity. As Dan Savage says: "I've been prserving the $#17 out of my boyfriend's virginity for 14 years now!"

In fact, as I see it, purity rings should be a reliable indicator of a teenage girl who's into Saddlebacking. Which is why Christian Conservatives love them, I guess.

Update: I tried to find the video, but it's "Restricted for people in your region". One comedian commented on the topic of a 16-year-old who wanted to wear her virginity bling in school:
"I say if she wants to wear a ring that signifies that she's not having sex--Let her get married like everyone else!"

They Have Become What They Refused to Deny

In the wake of two murders comitted by right-wing whackjobs over the past two weeks, the response from Conservatives has been to say "Well, they weren't really Conservatives." They also weren't true Scotsmen.

Some folks made so bold as to describe the man who attacked the Holocaust Museum in Washington as "left-wing," deliberately and with malice aforethought confusing National Socialism with Socialism. The confusion is easy to understand: First, both are equally evil in the eyes of conservatives; Second, the people making said accusations are sadly stupid.

But conservatives will not long be able to continue using their own version of the "lone gunman" theory. Because these actions don't take place in a vacuum. Between the silent dog whistles of talk radio and the plain old silence of Conservative leaders, the right wing has been complicit, if not actively conniving, in acts of murder.

Don't believe me? Take a look at Paul Krugman's column here. Not enough for you that a Nobel-winning economist can connect the dots? Then look at this op-ed from Frank Rich.

But we've all seen this stuff before. Any one of us has found Conservative blogs, articles, and the like which, while frowning down their noses at the violence and mayhem that the politics of the right seem to inspire, don't quite manage to disavow any of it.

Case in point, Bill O'Reilly--one of the globe's nastier denizens--who categorically continues to deny any responsibility for enabling the murder of Dr. Tiller. This despite carrying on a bully pulpit campaign against Tiller and his practice: providing late-term abortions (which are always medically necessary on the fewer-than-three-percent-of-all-abortions occasions when they are required).

But they're all like this. In the face of the most vituperative accusations against US president Obama, every level of Republican leadership has remained silent. The most any of them has ever said boils down to "Well I don't agree with what he did but you have to admit he had a point ..."

And in their refusal to deny, and their enthusiasm for, these things, they come to own them.

The shocking thing is that not even the most-highly placed of Conservative leaders seem to be making the fiery disavowals that should be made to separate the so-called "lone whackos" from "mainstream conservatives." And why? Because there is so little difference.

This is why I no longer describe myself as a conservative. Because when I hear that word I no longer know whether the person using it to refer to themselves means "I support free trade" or "I passively condone murder."

And in such circumstances it's certainly best to be clear.

The Right Wing: Screwing Itself Into Irrelevance, Part Two

None Dare Call it "Coalition"

Oh is this ever going to be awkward

Anyone remember a time when a few other parties were talking about forming a union of parties to wrest the wheel of government from the singularly incapable pack of rethreaded loose screws currently steering our country into the $#17ter? And what did the Right Wing call it? Ah yes: "TREASON". That was the word they screamed shrilly from their blogtops.

What did the PM say about that effort? Ah yes:

"My friends, such an illegitimate government would be a catastrophe, for our democracy, our unity and our economy, especially at a time of global instability."

~Stephen Harper, back in the days when Coalition was a bad word.

There was talk of making common cause with "socialists" and "separatists". And now? Well I guess they're all about teh compromise, eh? A kinder, gentler sort of dictatorship. Presumably this was what they had in mind when Harper FIRST proposed such a joining.

Harper's switched positions more times than twin hookers on $5-a-shag night in a logging camp. It boils down to one thing: Stephen Harper stands for Stephen Harper, and what Stephen Harper stands for is whatever will keep Stephen Harper in power.

He sold whatever Conservative credentials he had (and he hadn't many--most of his claims of "Conservatism" were just an unrelenting love for the Reform Party's dumber positions) with the budget, in which the "Conservative" (whose friggin' thesis concluded that governments should never try to spend their way out of a recession) decided to blow the money he hadn't already tossed down the boghole in order to keep power, knowing that a majority of his opponents required at least a symbolic sop to the nationwide fear of the recession he helped spend us into.

So now conservatives hate him too. And since he didn't have a hope in hell of a majority, it's likely his bum'll be polishing a rocking chair ere long.

The NDP can't support him and maintain any credibility when they used to crap on the Liberals for voting cynically to support the government rather than trigger an election. The Bloc Quebecois runs the risk of the same if they support the guy they were willing to sign up with the Liberals to help defeat last fall.

So Mr. Harper, I direct your attention to the south, to the US, where the Republican party is crumbling like Dracula in the sunlight. Look to your future, sir. You certainly haven't been looking to the country's.

However, I'd like to put the Liberal Party and NDP on notice: We are, we must be, better than this. Better than the fear, better than the loathing of that which is different, better than the fear of change, better than fear of the future. Start showing some goddam vision, please. Quit trying to imitate the Conservatives just because they didn't suck enough to get voted out last time.

I want a party with vision, and perhaps when we come back after this messag I'll tell you what that means.

Meantime, here's an unrelated commercial. And why not? We all have to spend ourselves stupid to help this economy, right?

The Right Wing: Screwing Itself Into Irrelevance: Part One

Correction:
As Joshua has pointed out in the comments, I've oviously misunderstood Mr. Graham's remarks. He clearly is advocating some level of accomodation. That said, it changes my perception very little.

This is from today's New York Times. The US Republican party is engaged in a struggle between those who, y'know, work in the real world and know what the word "compromise" means and those who feel that Der Party is not sufficiently ideologically pure, like Michael Reagan (the Gipper's kid--Not as bright as daddy was but not far behind either):

“It’s interesting that people say the right has taken over the Republican Party — but no one can say what we’ve done,” Mr. Reagan said. “We’ve been closeted for the last eight years; it’s time for the right to come out of the closet.”

No, Mikey. Your party spent the past eight years $#!7ting on other people's countries, playing the politics of $#17ting-your-pants, slavishly leading the country into the economic hole it finds itself in today, legalizing doestic espionage, enthusiastically repudiating the Constitution, legalizing and embracing torture, laying claim to executive privilege unknown to most despots, and otherwise completely ₤µ©λing up the country and your fellow citizens.

The country knows exactly what's happened to your party, sir: It's become Rush Limbaugh's bitch. Like a teen hooker in the Dominican Republic.

Witness also Senator Graham:

Mr. Graham scoffed at the notion that the party was suffering because it was not conservative enough.

“Do you really believe that we lost 18-to-34-year-olds by 19 percent, or we lost Hispanic voters, because we are not conservative enough?” he said. “No. This is a ridiculous line of thought. The truth is we lost young people because our Republican brand is tainted.”

You lost Hispanics because you're raving, foaming, anti-immigrant racists, and you lost the young because your ideas froze solid back in the Goldwater days and never thawed, even to simply keep up with history. But that's okay. Eventually, if Senator Graham and Mike Reagan have their way, the moderates will all become Democrats and the party will regain what they appear to think is its true identity.

It's time for the right to crawl back under its rock and sit out the next three decades or so while the grown-ups get on with repairing the damage. If Specter stays a Democrat (and although I'm inherently suspicious of floor-crossers I've generally liked him), and Franken finally gets the Minnesota senate seat he won (in other words if Norm Coleman stops being a douchebag--Sorry, that's like asking a snake to stop being a reptile), then the Senate belongs to the Democratic Party.

Conservatives in Canada should keep this in mind. But it's likely to be awkward under a Prime Minister Harper, who uses "compromise" as a metaphor for "₤µ©λ you".

Oh, is it ever going to be awkward. Next post.

Iraq war 'diversion' from Afghanistan: Harper

Yes indeed, sir.

And sir, had you been Prime Minister in 2003, how many people would we have in Iraq fighting that particular "diversion"? And how many would have died?

Here's what you said at the time that "diversion" began to get rolling--or rather, what John Howard said. I presume you were both faxed the same speech from Mr. Bush's office?



Never mind sir, we know you supported the war in your own words. You're on record in numerous places and at numerous times denouncing the Liberal government of the day for failing to stand by our American allies by invading a nation that hadn't done anything to deserve invasion. North Korea and Iran were a bigger threat--though no bigger than China (Oh, but Conservatives like China. It's where the shiny $#17 in Wal-Mart comes from).

Politics doesn't make me bitter and twisted. Politicians do. And Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada are unquestionably some of the worst of the lot. Judas goats without moral compass, every rotten mother's child of 'em.

I'll bet he still considers global warming "a socialist plot."

Second-Best Damn Thing I've Read Today

Besides the Post column referenced below.

From World-O-Crap, written of seventies Christ-power flick The Cross and the Switchblade.

Erik [Estrada] stares at Pat [Boone] with what we imagine is the same look you’d give a man standing next to you in an elevator if he suddenly set his own pants on fire and began to juggle fetal pigs.

Which is why WOC is going into the sidebar. If I ever get the template revamp done.

But I have other priorities right this minute, helping design a website, tidying up the Metropit, painting stage sets ...

How the hell did I ever get anything done while I was employed?

The Post: The Great Right of the Excessive Right-Wing

I've often said that the journalism in the National Post--Canada's major right-wing rag and proud standard bearer for the Asper group--is quite good, it's the opinions and editorials that should be printed on thin, soft paper and left in outhouses for the apropriate purpose.

On the subject of Gary Goodyear, Canada's apparently-creationist of a science minister, the first person out the gate was Jonathan Kay, who shot his ignorance into the air like somthing from a porn movie, calling it "The Globe & Mail's appalling front-page smear on religion."

Today one shining editorial rose out of the mire. "Ignorance is not a civil right" says John Moore.

Alas, the Post's more usual stance was more accurately reflected in David (Death to Palestine) Asper's "editorial" entitled "The liberal war on faith."

The difference is that Mr. Moore is not being deliberately and willfully stupid about what being science minister in this country means.

I have said this before, but it bears repeating. No matter what Mr. Goodyear's personal beliefs are, any science minister should have had an answer for that question prepped and ready the moment he received the portfolio.

Failing to have one suggests either incompetence in his portfolio or an ideological devotion to religion over science that should scare the willies out of anyone in research, medicine, or education. The Minister must communicate with the public on science issues. Or at least that's the sort of thing ministers used to do until the ideologically hidebound and pathalogically secretive Conservatives were defaulted into power as a caretaker government.

Alas, Moore appears to be the Post's token Lib'rul. But for one shining moment, he lifted the discourse on the Editorial page beyond the normal pro-Conservative puffery and fulmination.

It is a moment Canada should treasure, the more so because they are so rare. At least among the Asper group of papers.

Somewhere Out There is a Tripe-Head With a Sense of Humour

Someone subscribed Metro to the American Family Association and Onenewsnow email newsletters.

The AFA is the pearl-clutching, pants-wetting bunch who are terrified that Pepsi is "promoting" teh gay. They're so afraid of the word "gay" that a while back a headline referring to track athlete Tyson Gay was autocorrected to read "Homosexual Eases into 100 Final ..."

Onenewsnow (portending some rather better news later, one assumes) is their mouthpiece, self-described as a "Conservative" news agency. However, in this context "Conservative" is spelt "Christian."

I also got a personal begging letter from Donald Wildmon, the crazy man who leads the AFA.

It's a shame they aren't paper publications instead of electro-spam. When it comes to toilet roll I prefer to cut out the middleperson.