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.

Mandatory Poilievre

Pirate Fish says:  Listen to Dominic!

“They'll have to tear up their talking points because they've just been demolished,” Liberal MP Dominic LeBlanc said Tuesday.

That would be these talking points:

Poilievre: Mr. Speaker, this is a five-year-old accounting dispute.  Fortunately, the Federal Court has ruled in favour of the Conservative Party and against Elections Canada.  (Hansard, Feb. 28, 2011)

and it would be due to this:

A civil court victory the Conservative Party has touted as vindication against charges of election wrongdoing has been unanimously overturned by the Federal Court of Appeal. The ruling confirms Elections Canada's interpretation of electoral spending laws and says it was reasonable for the electoral watchdog to reject the way the Conservative Party reported national advertising expenses for the 2006 election.

I predict the next CON approach to answering charges by not answering will be to shift their attack from Elections Canada and attack those damn, interfering courts Kenney is always going on about.  There they go doing their job again, damn legal eagles.  They are such sticklers for law and order, getting tough on illegal activities.

Once more - why are we there?

What’s been missing from the discussions about our post-2011 role is the reality that not only will Canada be training an army under the command of one of the most corrupt governments on the planet, but also that it is a government ridden with warlords and held together only by military support and money from the West. This is not a government with independent staying power.

In all likelihood, the exit of Western troops in 2014 will precipitate a countrywide civil war that will see the Afghan army fractured into militias controlled by warlords battling for roads, opium fields, mineral resources and cities, while the Taliban attempt to take over the country or disintegrate into violent, squabbling factions.

The United States and NATO have been providing the Afghan army with world-class weaponry: assault rifles, grenade launchers, machine-guns and armoured vehicles. With the weapons, and tactical training to date by Canadians and other NATO troops, the national army is an increasingly formidable force, though plagued by desertion, poor discipline and drug abuse.

Canada’s future training of these well-armed Afghan troops will ratchet up the torque on a war machine that appears destined to blow apart.

If we were actually doing something to help establish a government chosen by the people of Afghanistan for the people of Afghanistan and offering aid which would directly encourage the establishment and maintenance of a society concerned about human rights and a fair system for all, that would justify some Canadian presence there, but training troops to fight under a corrupt government that will fragment into a bunch of corrupt groups further ripping the country apart and killing civilians in their bid for power...what the hell are we doing that for? We can't afford the dollar cost of this war, and the cost in lives is beyond measure, certainly not justified.

This is not a criticism of our troops, but of our own corrupt, dishonest government and its utter disregard for the lives of its own soldiers.

harper  and BFF

Kids know that "do as I say, not as I do" is a poor teaching method

This was inevitable, considering our government's contracting practices are scandal-ridden here in Canada -

Western governments that call Afghanistan a hotbed of corruption ought to mind the old maxim about glass houses and throwing stones, the mayor of Kandahar city suggests in a stern letter to Ottawa that accuses Canadian officials of playing fast and loose with taxpayer dollars.  In a letter to Canada's ambassador earlier this month, Ghulam Hayder Hamidi complained that Ottawa's contracting practices are contributing to the culture of malfeasance in Afghanistan. He also expressed similar concerns about the United States and Britain.

   "Your prime minister, (U.S.) President (Barack) Obama and the prime minister of England are complaining that we didn't clean the corruption in Afghanistan (and) they will stop helping," Hamidi said in a recent interview with The Canadian Press.  "Who is doing the corruption? You are doing the corruption."

I expect they feel the same way when we lecture them on torture, cheating during elections, and the use of child soldiers.

Putting Wikileaks to work: Canada's presence in Afghanistan

It's not just gossip, as some would like us to believe in their efforts to trivialize Wikileaks.
 
And while Assange and Wikileaks are stories in and of themselves, they would create not a ripple if Wikileaks did not produce anything that could shake up governments.
 
So, time to look at what's coming out, what floats to the surface as a result, and what that information means.
 
An August 2009 report from Kabul complains that President Hamid Karzai and his attorney general “allowed dangerous individuals to go free or re-enter the battlefield without ever facing an Afghan court.”
 
So let me get this.  Our soldiers face death and maiming capturing insurgents to help Karzai keep power and instill democracy, then Karzai lets them go, as long as they grease his palm, the insurgents go back to the battlefield where our troops face danger again, catch some of them again, hand them over to Karzai who makes more money by letting them go back to the battlefield...


So why are we sending our own to fight in Afghanistan?  Karzai must love it.
 
"We must be prepared for confrontation with Karzai on this issue, he said, or risk losing credibility among our own population if we go along with a rigged election. He argued that a new generation of Afghans is working to run for Parliament and they are watching to see if the electoral changes will happen. 'We can't be seen to collude with it,' (Canadian ambassador Crosbie) said.
 
Right.  Canadians may start questioning why we send our soldiers to face death propping up a corrupt government, a government that stomps all over the democratic process Canadians are told our own are being sent there to instill and defend.


And if enough Canadians kick up a fuss, harper will have to, I don't know, extend the mission anyway, count on the Liberals to back him, and have both parties say that really, a vote isn't needed.  Could happen.

"given what we now know, is there any way that the Karzai regime can be our partner in any Afghan policy that you can support?"
 
Diplomat Perter Galbraith: "the problem is not whether the goals are right or not, it is that they are unachievable because the policy, the military surge depends on having an Afghan government that can provide honest administration and win the loyalty of the Afghan people."

Galbraith goes on to say that this isn't possible because the Afghan government is so corrupt.  He's been saying that for quite awhile, and Hillary Clinton denigrated him, pretty much calling him a liar.  That was until Wikileaks came out with documents that supported all Galbraith had said.
 

So time to really call every politician on the bull-shit about being there for democracy, being there for the women and children.  Propping up a supremely corrupt government that is willing to send our troops out to capture insurgents only to face them again while Karzai gets rich, propping up a government that undermines democracy, propping up a government that doesn't care about stability for its people - these are not things our soldiers should be sent to face death for.

Bring them home now.

Quit lying to us.

Thanks, Wikileaks.

Oh, just let the fucker crumble

so we can build from scratch a system that isn't so eroded and corrupt that whatever facelift you provide won't give it integrity.

Sheila Fraser says, of Parliament Hill: Some of the systems are getting to the point of failure

Oh...she's talking about the buildings.

 (h/t Bruce)

oops...wrong building, right soul. 

“more Catholic than the Pope”

Unfortunate word choice for a defense, that.


The Liberals produced paperwork showing that BMCI Consulting Inc. has won more than 50 contracts with the Conservative government, and did two sensitive security investigations for the government — one on the Maxime Bernier affair, the other on a leak of information from the Canadian consulate in Chicago that damaged the Democratic leadership campaign of Barrack Obama.

Ottawa lawyer, businessman and former Conservative candidate Patrick Glemaud, who works for BMCI, is Jaffer’s business partner in Green Power Generation Corporation.

...He said the principals at BMCI are “more Catholic than the Pope,” and he didn’t use Conservative connections to land contracts for them.

The Pope. Well, then. The Liberals may be onto something.

Update: Glemaud (he of the more-catholic-than-the-Pope agency) is not having a good day:

On Tuesday, Jaffer’s business partner, former Conservative candidate Patrick Glemaud, told The Chronicle Herald that he and Jaffer did not lobby the government or try to win funding for projects.

He is contradicted by Jean, the parliamentary secretary to Transport Minister John Baird, who has been sorting through projects for the government’s $1 billion Green Infrastructure Fund. Jean says he rejected three projects proposed by Green Power Generation Corp., the firm owned by Glemaud and Jaffer...“I’ve got the paperwork right in front of me,” he said.

Neither Glemaud nor Jaffer were registered as lobbyists, nor did they report their meeting with Jean.  That puts them in violation of the lobbying act.

Harper seems ready to serve both conservatives up.  That pretty much tells us Guergis will not be taken back into the fold.  Steve gets rid of a troublesome MP and comes out looking like Mr. Do-Right.