Not just a Crime Minister, but a dumb Crime Minister

If you’re going to set someone up to take the fall for your crime, you should choose a source not obviously connected to you to present the fabrication. (emphasis mine)

Mr. Sona has told former co-workers he learned from the Sun News Network that he was being fingered by Conservative sources in connection with the phony calls. Friends say the ex-aide was sitting in his office in late February when Sun News broke a story that Tories had tied him to “a robo-calling scandal.”   The Sun News Network was the first media outlet to link Mr. Sona to the controversy. 

Anonymous Conservatives have repeatedly fingered Michael Sona, singling out him alone among a group of workers on the campaign of Guelph candidate Matty Burke, but a source says Sona had no reason to believe Elections Canada was interested in him until he was named by unidentified senior Tories in a report on Sun News Network the day the story broke.

 ...Sona wasn’t even a person of interest to Elections Canada until he was cited in media reports, according to the source. Al Mathews, the former RCMP inspector leading the probe, did not speak to Sona until after the 23-year-old left Adams’ office.

...As recently as Monday night, Conservative sources were pushing Sona in connection to the Guelph robocalls. A CTV News report cited unnamed Conservatives saying Sona had owned up to the calls amid reports that the investigation had traced an Internet Protocol address used by “Poutine” to a home in Guelph, Ontario.

You should make your scapegoat someone who has the abilities needed to commit your crime.

A source close the investigation said Tuesday that it seems unlikely that a 23-year-old, acting alone, would have been able to pull off the fairly complicated “Pierre Poutine” caper, recording a bilingual, legitimate-sounding message purportedly from Elections Canada, setting up a screen of two false identities using a prepaid cellphone and credit card, and expertly covering his electronic tracks.

And you should make sure that the poor schmuck you are setting up had opportunity to commit your vile crime -

The Conservatives keep track of supporters and other voters through a massive database called the constituency information management system (CIMS), which was created and expanded under Stephen Harper’s leadership of the party. Access to CIMS is controlled through personal accounts with passwords. One person familiar with the local Guelph campaign estimated that perhaps 10 to 15 people working there had personal CIMS accounts. “Everything is logged,” a Conservative source said. 

Someone familiar with the investigation said that CIMS records indicate Michael Sona, then-communications director to candidate Marty Burke, never used his CIMS account to draw down lists of voters during the campaign. 

Scum Sun Media and CTV News should be forced to reveal the names of the “unidentified senior Tories” who pointed their fingers at Sona.  

Toews cries and threatens a guy who legally tweeted truths about Mr. Family Values and is forcing him to go before a committee.  “Senior Tories” make up lies about a guy that put his life in a downward spiral, Sun Media pushes the lies, and they get paid.

He's been everywhere, man, he's been everywhere

For 30 days Julian Fantino held his tongue, campaigning as the Conservative candidate in the suburban Toronto riding of Vaughan

Actually, harper tied your tongue in a knot, fantino.  But go on...

He had vowed to take the high road during his campaign

Yeah, so high it was outside Earth’s atmosphere...

At 68 years of age, Mr. Fantino now finds himself a rookie MP and will be sitting in the Commons across from the likes of Justin Trudeau, Michael Ignatieff and the rest of the Liberal crew who, he says, made his life miserable.

Boo-fucking hoo...

Cue in the tough guy -

He asserts the Liberals were “desperate” but that he would rather have “faced dangerous people with loaded guns than some of the nonsense” during the campaign.

Because he’s manly, no doubt. 

But he has been taking notes from the CON playbook -

“ I call it the Hitler Theory. You tell a lie often enough you hope that some people will believe it."

(Repeat after me: evul coalition, eul coalition, evul coalition...I believe in me and reject the fearmongering and risky Michael Ignatieff coalition)
(Warning - some people may find the lyrics offensive - but appropriate)

(50% faster than original version) 
“I’ve been as many as 21 days in the witness box in court, being cross-examined by the best lawyers in town. There is no peek-a-boo. ... It was a character assassination.”

So fucking what.

I think O.J. Simpson has you beat.

“You know what, here’s me with 42 years of working night shifts and facing people with loaded guns and dealing with murderers and rapists ... and I get a lecture from a newbie. C’mon.”

So fucking what.

You’re on Parliament’s turf now and yes, the House has become a free-for-all shame but on the Hill, dodging a bullet is a metaphor and you have yet to learn new skills.  Not going to run into a whole lot of murderers and rapists there.

Fantino, on the Hill, you are the newbie.

You seem so stuck on your past career that I doubt you will be open to learning the skills necessary to take on experienced politicians.

You CONs like slogans.  Try this one:

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Women everywhere must be swooning

Thanks for showing us what manliness entails in your world, Flanagan.

Tom Flanagan, a Canadian political science professor and former chief of staff to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, says Wikileaks creator Julian Assange should be killed - and he wants President Obama to order the assassination.

'I think Assange should be assassinated, actually. (laughs) I think Obama should put out a contract or use a drone or something.'  The CBC news host confronted him, saying incredulously, 'that's pretty harsh stuff'.  Flanagan replied:

'Well, I'm feeling pretty manly today…

Trying to get someone else to commit murder for you makes you feel manly.  Well now we know.

Seems this whole vicarious tough guy thing is typical of CONs as well – 

Priorities

I heard someone on CBC news this morning say it would be better for the climate change conference in Mexico if Canada stayed away from the table.  Didn't catch who said it, but I get their meaning.

They haven't just been investing in $56,000 advertisements and op-ed pieces. The governments of Canada and Alberta are also engaged in something much more insidious: a concerted effort to weaken climate policies in other countries, with the aim of ensuring that no impediments exist to Canada’s filthy tar sands.

Well, our current government has only so much money, you know.  Fiscally conservative, and all that.

A Canadian climate-change research foundation is celebrating its 10th anniversary, but has already begun winding down its operations after failing to get new funding from the Harper government.   The budget crunch at the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences comes on the heels of revelations that the government is leasing out the Amundsen, a coast guard icebreaker equipped to monitor climate change in the North, to a pair of fossil-fuel companies for oil exploration in the region.

What? More cahoots going on?

Better get on that, Pat.    After all,

"There's a rumour that's gaining traction, the Bloc have struck a deal with Stephen Harper," NDP MP Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, Man.) told The Hill Times. "They'll be their dancing partner until 2012."

Well, if rumours are to be treated like fact, then there will be some partner swapping and cutting in going on.

(McVety) has accused the federal Conservatives of helping to fast-track an NDP bill that would extend human-rights protection to people who identify themselves as belonging to the sex they were not assigned by biology. 

The most surprising aspect of private member’s Bill C-398, Mr. McVety said, is the apparent willingness of the Conservatives, who fought against same-sex marriage as recently as 2006, to allow it to pass unimpeded through the House of Commons...“They rushed it through. I can’t divulge the person, but we have word from someone in the government who said there was a deal made with the NDP,” Mr. McVety said.

I think we need a Bill banning cahooting.  And a glossary of terms to explain to readers the difference between rumour and fact.  And politicians who don't toss both around as though they are interchangeable.  And a pony.  And a flying pig...

If both rumours are true and both the pot and kettle have been in cahoots with the Master Strategist, it's understandable that especially in a minority government deals have to be made or few Bills will pass.  These deals should be done in the open however, so we can know if our elected reps are acting responsibly on our behalf or just whoring themselves off by selling off on professed party stances for the political gain of their party.

Besides, if I suddenly had a lobotomy and was going to cahoot with the CONs, I'd want witnesses.  Lots and lots of witnesses.  And a contract signed in blood.  With the most horrifying of curses attached should the contract be violated.  And titanium body armor, extra thick in the back.

So...Harper & Co.’s #1 priority is the economy...

Sure.  That’s what they are saying, right?

Except...

Today, at the time I checked it, National News Watch carried 2 articles related to the government and the economy.  It also carried...17 articles on the gun registry.  Some of those were opinion pieces, but many were prompted directly by the CONs actions and statements on the registry:

Harper and three of his cabinet members will interrupt UN visit

Harper vows gun registry will be scrapped some day

Tories turn Google against rural MPs in gun-registry feud

MacKay blasts long-gun registry

 Tories won't give up on gun registry

Baird slams 'Toronto elites' over gun registry

Seriously.  If you were in charge of running the country, would the gun registry be anywhere near the top of your to-do list?  Would it even make the top ten?  The top twenty?

How about this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or this or this, or this?

Yeah, scrapping that registry is real important shit.  Should save lives.  Make our lifestyle so much better.  Raise our standard of living.  Build a safer world.  Go miles forward in fighting poverty.  Reduce racism.  Provide jobs.  Improve health care.  Assure better education to all.

...well, maybe not.

But it will make a small percentage of gun owners happy and will put some of their money in the CONs coffers.

Certainly worth the effort and expense.  Certainly more important than everything else.