Sure, but can we build it before it strikes twelve?

Margaret Atwood thinks Canada needs to set up a dictat-o-meter.

Similar to the famous clock that counted down the seconds to nuclear Armageddon, this clock would grade how close Canada creeps toward a dictatorship...

Because we’re just about there.

We had very early indicators of where harper was headed when he did not appoint a deputy prime minister. 

One oddly common trait among dictatorships: The dictator almost never has a named successor. Most democracies have something like a vice president, to take over if the president dies. Dictators don't want their opponents to know who would succeed them.

Since becoming PM, harper has wasted no time in establishing a totalitarian, dictatorship type of control.  Dictatorships limit freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of opposition political parties, independence of courts, free and regular elections.

Since harper took power, he has been focused on one thing - getting all of it, with no chance of effective opposition.

He has been replacing key people in the public service, the courts, the military, and oversight agencies.

He has limited access to information.

He has divided the country, causing us to fight each other rather than his undermining of democracy.

He has encouraged an us-and-them mentality between police forces and the public, and the military and the public, causing a shift from serve and protect the public to viewing the public as the enemy, potential criminals who rather than be protected must be constrained.

He has limited freedom of speech by treating peaceful protesters as criminals, harassing and smearing people who speak out, punishing civil servants who speak the truth.

The more time he has to erode systems which are meant to protect our rights, the more difficult it will be to reverse that damage. 

If we think harper thumbs his nose at our laws, rights, and Parliamentary system now, give him a little more time and not all of our shock and anger will be of avail because we’ll have no effective way of expressing it.  Not through protests, not through our vote which will become useless, not through our rights which will have been so altered that they will be weapons to control us rather than protect us.

We have to get this guy out.  Now.

Where three of Harper’s whores take on a senior woman…

…and lose.

Well, in fairness, that senior woman is Margaret Atwood.

Taylor writes better than most blindly partisan CPC supporters which is why he is viewed by many left-of-CON bloggers with contempt.  He knows enough about bad rhetoric to identify it when it suits his purpose but engages in himself quite liberally when he is trying to endorse a Harper & Co. lie or attack anyone left-of-Steve & Steve.

Well, through twitter sparring with Atwood, I think he drew more ridicule than contempt.  Regardless of how one feels about Atwood’s perspectives, they really need to acknowledge her mastery of language and her respect for her audience  – she doesn’t use cheap rhetorical tricks to fool people into thinking she’s right.

So it really isn’t a fair fight when a CON-whore like Taylor goes up against a master writer like Atwood.  She not only out-classes him in skill and knowledge, but she’s not playing the whore like Taylor who offers lies and fantasies in order to please his John (or Steve, in this case).  Truth has a better chance than forced arguments.

Speaking of prostitution, it’s disappointing to see Akin engaged in that trade as well.

Atwood said her objection isn't to Sun TV News, but that it would be paid for from cable fees and that the "CRTC chair should be arms' length, not Harper tool."

David Akin, Sun Media's Ottawa bureau chief, tweeted back that he thought Atwood was "smarter than that." "So disappointing you'd put your name to anti-free speech movement," Akin wrote.

"Free speech does not mean under-the-carpet deals that would force people to pay for Fox out of cable fees," Atwood responded. 

Anti-free speech movement?  And conveniently ignoring Atwood’s statement that her reason for signing was due to concerns about political interference?  Really, David, I thought you were smarter than that.

Another Harper whore tries to hook the lady, but she easily evades him:

@brianlilley: Any chance you are up for an interview on the petition today? M.sez: Tx but I am not the originator.You should interview them

(Atwood, however,  did grant the Globe and mail an interview.  I guess she doesn’t mind real journalists)

What Atwood said:

“Of course Fox & Co. can set up a channel or whatever they want to do, if it's legal etc.,” she told The Globe and Mail in an email. “But it shouldn't happen this way. It's like the head-of-census affair – gov't direct meddling in affairs that are supposed to be arm's length – so do what they say or they fire you.  “It's part of the ‘I make the rules around here,’ Harper-is-a-king thing,” she wrote...

Ms. Atwood's concern is not with the network’s proposed agenda. Instead, she’s worried about potential interference by the Harper government.  “Some people signing the petition object to the expected content. I object to the process,” she told The Globe. “It's the [prime ministerial] pressure on yet another civil servant that bothers me. These folks are supposed to be working for the taxpayer, not the PM.”

Like many Tories, Mr. Taylor also takes issue with the government funding of the CBC. As such, he asked Ms. Atwood: “Is the CBC and its compulsory funding essential to ‘free speech’ or against it in your view?”

But the author held her own, firing back with a quip about Munir Sheikh, who resigned as head of Statistics Canada over the government’s changes to the census.  “Naughty Stephen,” she said. “We're not talking about the CBC but about the coercion of an arm's length person, like Census head.”

Akin and Taylor - very, very small men, telling whatever lie comes to mind to deceive the public in order to trick them into buying a crappy product. 

I’ll close with one of my favourite Margaret Atwood quotes:

"Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results."
— Margaret Atwood (Surfacing)