Friday night ode to stevie, petey, julian, and rona: lies & liars

oh, hell - the whole damn party for backing the BS.  Here's for the lot of you lying scumbags as you settle in this Good Friday to remember how your god gave his only begotten son to save you from your sins - sins such as lying to the great detriment of those you are sworn to serve.  You may be off the hook in your mythical afterlife, but here, reality rules.

Big thanks to Den Tandt for using the “L” word.  And drawing back stevie’s fig leaf for all to see what kind of a man he really is.  For those who didn’t know what’s been obvious to many of us for years.

UK politics, but very appropriate to current Canadian politics

They're all missing critical parts.

The CONs are vile.  No brains, no heart.

Near the end of question period Thursday in the House of Commons, a Conservative backbencher stood up to talk about the final passage of Bill C-19, the bill that would end the long-gun registry, and channelled civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King Jr.

John Williamson, in a ridiculous display of really bad, over-the-top showmanship cried out  “Free at last, free at last, law-abiding Canadians are finally free at last” in praise of the death of the long gun registry.  He stole the gist of the line from Martin Luther King Jr's famous I have a dream speech.  Williamson delivered this obscenity one day after the anniversary of King's murder - by a fucking sniper.

There is seriously something very dysfunctional with people like that who cannot see how their words and actions violate the very principles behind the words they steal.

And the story of CON stupidity and vileness continues - 

The federal government is backing down from proposed strict new ammunition regulations after receiving complaints from gun owners...The draft regulations, made public in March, included proposals that had ammunition being locked up and added severe new restrictions on the quantity of ammunition someone could own and store.

Terrific.  Now those law-abidin', hard wurkin' canadiuns can leave as much ammo as they want kicking around the house where little Johnny and little Mary (raised in a home where guns are promoted) have free access.  And criminals looking for a weapon can now not only break into just about any home in CONstituencies and avail themselves of an unregistered weapon, they can get their ammo there as well, load on the spot, and shoot the law abidin', hard workin' canadiun if he or a family member comes home suddenly.   Then the thief, well armed, can go on and raid more homes and stockpile more unregistered weapons.  But that's ok, because some yahoo with immediate access to ammo can blow his fucking head off and become a hero.

Gotta give in to those complaints by gun owners.  After all, little Johnny and little Mary can't vote.  And they aren't fetuses.

The ever oblivious Vic seems to have neglected to read yet another piece of proposed legislation he is responsible for - and of course, blames bureaucrats:

 

"Those regulations were brought to my attention a day or two ago," said Public Safety Minister Vic Toews on Thursday. "That was a discussion I think was mainly inside the bureaucracy, and I just reiterate that is not regulations that will proceed as proposed."

I know Vic is quite busy trying to track down dangerous terrorists who publish public information, but he really should read the shit he's trying to pass.  It's looking like the CONs make Bills and Acts up as they go along based on pressure from their rabid base and big money stakeholders.

Which is, of course, exactly what they do.

Stupidity causes global warming

The Harper government's decision to kill its own environmental advisory board could result in a government hearing little else but its own voice on climate change, says a former director of Environment Canada's meterological and climate research branch.

That’d be the voice of people like Peter Worthington.

Worthington, that old, white, failed conservative candidate must have simply decided when he graduated from Carleton U.  in the fifties that there simply was nothing more to learn.  Any new research, any recent world events, any post-50s facts are just...fads.  Or the lies of communists.
How else can one explain his response to Elizabeth May objecting to the fact that the 2012 federal budget doesn’t even mention climate change:
(emphasis mine)

One might ask why on earth the budget would mention climate change? There is nothing you, I, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair, or even Elizabeth May herself can do about climate change.  Climate change is going to happen, we just don’t know to what extent.

And why is it such a threat to our future? We will adapt to it, whatever it is, and even if no one fully understands it, we still have to live with it. Climate is always changing.  Thank goodness we no longer stress “global warming,” and now call it “climate change.” (WTF?)

If Canada were to abandon the Keystone pipeline, ceased trying to extract oil from the earth, eliminated oil tankers, forbade SUVs, outlawed cigarettes and allowed only whole wheat bread, it wouldn’t stop the climate from changing if the climate continued to want to change.

Peter...where to start...

The climate doesn’t want to change.  It doesn’t not want to change.  It simply changes as a result of forces around it, and one of those forces is the impact of human beings spewing crap into a closed system – the Earth system.

“Climate change is going to happen, we just don’t know to what extent... We will adapt to it, whatever it is...”  Well, no.  That’s the fallacy of the ignorant who mock science yet blindly believe “they” – those scientists – will come up with a solution.  If we keep warming the planet at the rate we are, there will come a point at which the devastations caused by the warming will occur so rapidly and with such frequency and ferocity that we will not have the time or resources to “adapt” our entire species to the new and unstable environment.

Worthington goes on to say that because the climate is changing anyway (because it wants to), that we should focus on what’s really important -  “tap the continent’s oil reserves...exploit our resources. Period.”

If a fire is threatening to spread, a few people trying to control it will have no success if others are avidly feeding it as fast as they can.  The fire will reach a point where it will destroy even those feeding it.  It doesn’t want to.  It can’t help it though, because that’s the science at work.

“Thank goodness we no longer stress “global warming,” and now call it “climate change.”” First, WTF gives him relief in that?  Next - Worthington is a journalist?  He doesn’t know that those terms mean two different things?

"Without the national round table, they can go wherever they like for advice, and sometimes that may mean they go after the people who are going to give them the answer they expect to get," said John Stone, a former Environment Canada employee who has worked with the agency.  "I can imagine very easily that the vacuum will be filled with organizations and interests which are more inclined to deny climate change, sow doubt about climate change and hence, hold back progress," said Mr. Stone, who is currently an adjunct professor with Carleton University's geography and environmental studies department.

“Hold back progress...”  There’s the problem.  To the harpers and worthingtons of this world, progress is only linked to economic development, and protecting our planet and life on it just doesn’t turn a quick enough buck.  What they fail to realize in their monumental ignorance, what even a young child can understand is that you can’t make money if you use up the means to make it, and you sure as hell can’t spend it if you’re dead.

The not very lean but very mean budget

Far and Wide calls it the Vendetta Budget.  Yes, it is that, with cuts to Elections Canada, wiping out the Katimavik program, butchering the CBC, and now we hear starving the Information Commissioner who "is currently in the midst of a comprehensive review of alleged interference with access to information requests by political staffers, a self-initiated inquiry that followed her investigation into similar allegations against Sebastien Tognieri, a former aide to then-Industry Minister Christian Paradis, but soon mushroomed to include other departments, including Foreign Affairs and PCO. "

It is also a mean budget.

Jim Flaherty axed the National Council of Welfare in Thursday’s budget.  The independent, federally-appointed body was created by an act of Parliament in 1969 to advise the minster of human resources on poverty in Canada.  But since the Harper government was elected in 2006, it has ignored the council’s research and advice on how to address growing income disparity across the country, activists say.

“Many non-governmental organizations . . . provide quality independent advice and research on poverty-related issues,” said Alyson Queen (spokesperson for Human Resources Minister Diane Finley).

Sure, but they don't report regularly to a federal department and they don't work for the public.  The CONs blend their meanness and vendetta tactics in cancelling The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy and claiming that "it can now get this advice from the Internet and stakeholders."

Right. Advice from the Internet.


In both cases, harper saves himself the trouble of hiding embarrassing - but accurate reports that clearly point out his policies are dangerous and costly.  He then gets to pick whatever "advice" suits him and present it as credible.  Hell, he can even make up his own advice.

No wonder he wants to silence all independent agencies that produce impartial reports for the public.

“So, I guess we don’t want to know anything about poverty or how to solve it,” said NDP MP Olivia Chow (Trinity—Spadina).  “Without the information, no one will be able to report on how many people this Conservative government is leaving behind,” she added. “It’s called out of sight and out of mind. And don’t get in the way.”

But pay your taxes.  Oh yes.  That they will track.  And your online activities.  And whether or not you are one of those dangerous Canadians that forced the harpercons to create the Building Resilience Against Terrorism strategy which seeks to protect law abidin' hard workin' Canadiuns from “low-level violence by domestic-based groups remains a reality in Canada… revolving around the promotion of various causes such as animal rights, white supremacy, environmentalism, and anti-capitalism.”

And all this, for the 1%