Are they fucking serious? Doug Finley?

Misleading robocalls in an Ontario town are an isolated case, says the man who ran the Conservative Party's 2006 and 2008 election campaigns.  Doug Finley, who advised the Conservatives on the 2011 election and sits as a Conservative senator, says the case of the strange calls has been blown out of proportion.

Unbelievable. Mind blowing.

The guy who was charged and plead guilty to illegal campaign advertising tactics in the 2006 campaign is not only labeled as "top Tory" in this CBC article, but is taking the front to comment very publicly on this most recent - and very serious instance of election fraud on the part of the CONs.

So we are supposed to accept blatant lies from a convicted election fraudster?  What in Cthulhu's infinite universe would make the CONs think any sane person will take Finley's words as truth?

"There hasn’t [been] so far, as far as I can determine, one single issue of voter suppression — not one" - Finley

Here's what an honest, non-partisan man who understands the scheme has to say:

Former chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley said he has never encountered a vote suppression scheme on the scale of the one alleged in Guelph.


And Elections Canada agrees that the robo calls and live calls consist of voter suppression, as does the Sith Estate.

The Conservatives use a company called Responsive Marketing Group, Finley said, not Racknine, the call centre through which the Guelph robocalls were placed. RMG does live calls only, he said.

Blatant in your face bull-shit. (emphasis mine)


Guelph voters with call display reported seeing its number – 450-760-7746 – show up when they received the robo-calls misdirecting them to an exceptionally busy polling station.
In reality, the automated calls originated from RackNine in Alberta. Elections Canada alleges, however, that a tactic known as “spoofing” was used to instead make it seem as if they were coming from this 450-area code cellphone.

 "To me it would appear it’s very isolated. If Guelph is where it is, it’s where it is." - Finley

What can I say, Doug, except that you areeither incredibly stupid and oblivious to the biggest story of the year, or you are a lying sack of shit who is so narcissistic that you think everyone will just deny all evidence to the contrary and believe you because you are Doug Finley.

What has been coming out proves, yes proves that this attempt to suppress voters and alter election results illegally was not an isolated incident.

I guess any CONs like Michael Chong are unwilling to risk their credibility by attempting to defend this crime.  Maybe they are quietly grouping in secret, planning how they will carve out a real CPC party once the worst of the mouthpieces do themselves in and take the party down with them.

But Finley?  Really?

Davey Jones never stole my heart

 

Davy Jones

30 December 1945 – 29 February 2012

Never got into The Monkees, wasn't a member of the Davey Jones fan club, but they were iconic of the times: find a market, make a product, package it and sell.  I always thought of them as a pretend band meant to appeal to children pretending to be rock n' roll teens.  Good marketing, clean family appeal.  And Davy always seemed like a nice, nice guy, very conscious of the impact he could have on his fans.



By the time they came along, young as I was I had already been listening to this guy, thanks to my very cool big brother:



Sorry, Davey.  I went with the bad boy.  Sleep easy, though.

Worth a thousand words

the brilliant Alison

Beyond any arguments or spin

The Conservative Party does not need to look into "robocalls" made during the last federal election any further, Defence Minister Peter MacKay says.  "It's certainly not something our party condones."  But he told CBC News in New Glasgow, N.S., that he believes the calls directing people to wrong or non-existent polling places were isolated incidents.

Isolated, co-ordinated, funded, well connected incidents in which the perpertrators had access not only to call centres and robo services, but to voters’ lists and could sign off on the expense to the party.

I’m sure the CONs don’t have to look further into this because they know what went on.  It’s the rest of Canada that needs to have the truth brought out.

Ibbitson and Nanos think harper – and that means the Harper party – can survive this if he manages to avoid being directly linked to this very serious scandal.  I disagree.  Look what Adscam did to Paul Martin and the Liberals even when he chose to have his party investigated by an impartial body.  Martin was not found to be involved, but the taint of corruption clung to the entire party.

This may be the one harper can’t shake.  It goes beyond what even the most cynical people excuse of politicians: lining their pockets, favouring pals, abusing public funds.  This hits our sense of what is fair.  We don’t like cheaters.  They leave a really bad taste in our mouth.  We never really trust them after that.  And this goes beyond cheating.  It is the same criminal behavior corrupt governments in other countries engage in to impose their self-serving will on those they are supposed to represent.  Hell, we send observers to such countries to monitor their elections so that they don’t engage in voter suppression.  We send our troops to other countries to fight regimes that practice such corruption.

Pat Martin sees why this could be the scandal Canadians won’t ignore:

“The number of indiscretions has reached critical mass but the difference between this issue and previous indiscretions is that it’s so easy to understand. This is an issue of basic fairness. The in and out scandal was a complicated financial transaction that takes awhile to explain. This one, you know, any school kid could understand. It’s wrong to lie to people for your own self interest. It sullies our democracy. It speaks to a conspiracy to defraud.”

Lawrence Martin also sees the growing “number of indiscretions” as a major problem underlying harper’s and the CONs’ ability to come out of this one relatively unharmed. 
He gives a good list,  Worth the read, to remind us, since there have been so many.

Using Del Mastro and Airshow as spokespersons on this doesn’t help, either.  Del Mastro always carries that bully, oily sheen that naturally causes many to feel the snake oil salesman/repo man has been sent to deal with customers, and Petey?  He can barely cope with the barge of accusations directed at him.  Having someone who is more and more viewed as a liar and an elitist who uses public servants to attempt to sully the reputation of his critics is hardly someone who is credible in saying there’s nothing to see here, folks, we’re just ever so honest and ethical.

The biggest thing harper has going for him is time.  With a majority, he can hope that the economy tanks so much, people will forget about corrupt election practices, but that’ll only work if Canadians keep believing, against all evidence, that the CONs are the best ones to get us out of the mess.  And I don’t think that lie will hold much longer.

Or harper can distract us with another war, but with the economy as it is, will that really work to his benefit?  Again, I doubt it.  Failure in Afghanistan will be even more apparent over the next few years as all Canada has sacrificed in lives and money is shown to have accomplished little long term. 

And there’s the CONs themselves who simply won’t use that time to their advantage.  They have proven in this past year that a majority has snapped the collar on their arrogance and they seem to think they are above all laws.  That simply can’t hold when the rest of Canadians face job cuts, tax increases, threats to benefits and OAS, cuts to services.
You can’t build a stone mansion on a makeshift, wooden foundation.

Holy Corrupt Government, Batman!

Damn!  What a couple of weeks!  Even some stevie fans are starting to grumble.

Let’s drag the cesspool and take a look:

Bill C-30 and Towes’ raves

Vikileaks

#TellViEeverything

Bill C-10 continues to make no sense

Seniors can go fuck themselves 'cause they're jut a useless burden and why the hell should we give them money they paid into retirement?

Nicholson wants to bring in the wild, wild west

Airshow MacKay ignores the Public Service Act – again – and uses DND as his personal shit throwing monkey

From fake lakes to fake immigrants and the resurgence of fake Elections Canada calls

Chris Paradis hands out favours to buddies at our expense while putting many people out of work

Tony-sides-with angels-clement is still a monumental moron

Flaherty lies one way then lies the other (or he’s using that broken crystal ball again)

Brian Lilley tries to justify his existence while avoiding top stories that could make Vic and Pete cry and force young CONbots to sing to steve outside his Sussex home and pathetically revives an old story, writing pretty much the same error riddled thing three days in a row.  (because, you know, French people and visible minorities are a whole lot much more scarier than a government that muzzles public servants and scientists, seeks to spy on us at will, denies our very democracy by fixing elections)

And Beloved Leader?  Well none of it is his fault, of course.  Probably Michael Sona just got carried away.

And Parliament wasn’t even sitting this week.  I have a feeling more than a few CONsorts will be putting in serious overtime this weekend.

Canada was involved with Arab Spring!!!

Too bad we were on the wrong side.

Canadian arms companies were given free rein last year as the federal government tripled the amount of military weapons and ammunition licensed for export to foreign countries to more than $12 billion.

The largest benefactor at $4 billion was Saudi Arabia, which is believed to have used Canadian-made armoured vehicles to help put down antigovernment protests in neighbouring Bahrain during the early days of the Arab Spring…the total in government-approved arms export licences for Saudi Arabia was more than 100 times the $35 million approved in 2010.

…More than 30 protesters were killed, hundreds wounded and nearly 3,000 arrested in the joint Saudi-Bahraini crackdown, which was largely ignored by Canada and other Western states because of Bahrain's strategic relationship with the U.S.

I’m still not feeling great, but this brought tears to my eyes so it was either write or get no sleep.  What the hell is Canada becoming?  Big bucks in keeping those war machines going, and harper is working very hard at convincing Canadians that there are people out there who are out to get us.

Blood money into the pockets of military suppliers and a population footing the bill as they meekly comply in mindless fear of the boogymen stevie invents.

Just one song for that: