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

harper is a liar

Really.  He didn’t miss-speak, he didn’t make a mistake.  He lied.  (emphasis mine)

November 11, 2010: "I think if we can continue a smaller mission that involves just training, I think frankly that presents minimal risks to Canada, but it helps us to ensure that the gains that we've made," Harper said.

But then, Master Corporal Byron Greff and 16 others working with the NATO training mission were killed on Saturday in a suicide bomb attack in Kabul.  Byron Greff was young, well-liked, and recently became a father.  Steve had to bull-shit his way around last year’s fluffing off of risks.   Can't really go on about "minimal risks" when grieving family and friends don't consider their personal loss minimal.

So...Ministry of Truth time... 

October 30, 2011: “Any mission in Afghanistan involves significant risk. … Any presence in Afghanistan, as I know from my own travel there, is fraught with risk, so there will remain risk to our defence personnel.” – harper

Did he realize he was wrong?  Had he been unaware of how dangerous training missions can be?  Not according to what he now says - 

Harper insisted Sunday his position on the mission's risks hasn't changed. "I think, actually to the contrary, I've always been clear: There are still risks involved in this mission," he said.

Last year, he tried to downplay the dangers real live human beings – our troops - would be exposed to with the training mission so that the extension would not have to be put to a vote.

“As the Minister of National Defence, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and others have said, we are looking at a non-combat mission that will occur. It will be a training mission that will occur in classrooms behind the wire in bases. – harper, nov. 2010

Sounds pretty safe, doesn’t it?  Classroom, behind the wire...students probably bring them apples.

Ina briefing to a recent parliamentary committee, Brigadier-General Craig King said Kabul is “extremely violent” and a “high-risk” location for the Canadian trainers. His testimony came on the heels of an attack on the U.S. embassy and nearby NATO base that lasted 20 hours and in which seven people were killed and 19 wounded by insurgents.

Greff was stationed around operations in Kabul and two other cities.

harper lied.  He can't be trusted.  He'll say whatever he thinks will keep him up in the polls.  And sad to see, 30% of Canadians  buy his bull-shit.

Asked to judge the leaders on trust, competence and vision for the country, 30.4 per cent of respondents said Mr. Harper was the most trustworthy leader, compared to 16.3 per cent for Mr. Rae and 11.2 per cent for Ms. Turmel.

The master strategist is loosing ground in one area, though:

Although, Mr. Harper is well ahead of his opponents on this front, the Nanos numbers show his score has dropped significantly since last month when 36.8 per cent said he had the best vision for Canada.  He is now at 28.9%.

Gee.  Could it be his lack of environmental policies, or his failure to forward human rights issues, or his stay the course drone, or his focus on things like the long gun registry and long form census rather than on poverty, jobs, health and safety?

Maybe it's just that people are tired of his helmet hair.  Not many seem to be reading past headlines.

Oh look! Harper lied!

Months before the Conservative government dismissed talk of a perimeter security accord with the United States as hearsay, senior officials were quietly discussing a draft of the border agreement...Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama signed an agreement in February that could lead to a formal North American security perimeter.

(image)
The CONs lie.  All the time.  As I said before, that contempt for Parliament and for Canadians is the main issue during this election because nothing else that comes out of any CPC MP's mouth can be trusted.

Wow. Just wow.

h/t Galloping Beaver

Can we please, please, please vote these guys out?  Seriously, Canada, we are at risk of suffering such a blow to our self-esteem we may never recover.  This is what passes for leadership?

Canada's auditor general has rebuked the Conservatives for recycling an unrelated quote by her about a previous Liberal government's security spending in a parliamentary report on the costs of the G8/G20 summits in Ontario last summer, CBC News has learned.

...The report quoted the auditor general as saying: “We found that the processes and controls around that were very good, and that the monies were spent as they were intended to be spent.”

Fraser said the Conservatives inserted an 2010 comment she made during a CBC News interview on security spending by a previous Liberal government after the Sept. 11 attacks a decade ago.

Forget self-esteem.  We are in the realm of Orwell.   "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future." - 1984

What don't 1/3rd of Canadians get?

The new Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey suggests Stephen Harper's party stands at 40 per cent, 12 points ahead of the Liberals, heading into the first of two televised leaders' debates.

Well, at least that doesn't include the leak from the AG's report on the G8, and it shows that the Liberals are still gaining in Ontario and the Atlantic provinces.  Those gains could easily translate to seats whereas gains CPC makes in the prairies won't really add to more for them. 

Still, with the pick-your-scandal-of-the-day hitting harper & co. day after day, it's disturbing that 1/3rd of Canadian voters still think that the CONs are the way to go.

Will this latest sign of contempt for Canadians and process make a difference?  (emphasis mine)

The Conservative election campaign is scrambling to deal with the fallout of a bombshell draft report from the Auditor-General rife with concern about pork-barrel largesse, dubious spending and misinforming Parliament...And it suggests the process by which the funding was approved may have been illegal.

That sentence alone should make anyone  not directly on the pork-barrel con-express want to go out and vote for any party that can get rid of harper.  


Pork-barrel largesse: don't care about Canada or average Canadians, want only to stuff themselves and theirs on taxpayers' dollars - all of our dollars


Dubious spending:  not good value for money; waste; not well invested on behalf of Canadians; possibly shady dealings


Misinforming Parliament:  Lying, guys.  That's lying.  If they lie to Parliament, they are lying to us.  And that is at the heart of why the harper government fell, and that should be the big issue in this election.


If the government lies and hides its financial dealings, its justifications for its spending, cuts, and policies, if it lies about its actions, if it hides reports and lies about them, then it doesn't matter what they promise in an election.  It doesn't matter what they tell you when they are in power.  Nice promises and pleasant verbal reports are easy to come up with if you don't intend to back them up with proof.

Harper's bunch fell because they refused to produce figures relating to what their crime projects would cost.  They have lied and lied about the cost of the F-35.  Now we find out they lied about the G-8 expenses.


May have been illegal:  does anyone really have to say why it would be very bad to elect a group that uses our tax dollars to engage in illegal activity?


This election, whether Canadians realize it or not, is very  much about contempt and all it embraces. 

Conservatives: in it for themselves

Impolitical writes about the poor optics of giving political aides in ministerial offices  nice bonuses, pay increases to match public servants (whose wages they constantly deride), and generous severance pay if they find themselves out of work.

 

This at a time when harper is constantly going on about cutting the fat in the federal government and TBD holds meetings with Catherine Swift of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business on how to cut public servants’ pay and benefits.

Of at least equal concern is something else the article brings up:

But ministers will have a little more money to play with since the government has decreed that their offices should no longer have to foot the bill for international travel by ministers, their staff and parliamentary secretaries. Those costs will now be absorbed by government departments instead.

Harper has cut departmental budgets, plans to make more cuts to them, but is shoving that horrendous cost onto them. 

Now the Ministers can make it look like they are spending little on travel and lay the blame onto departments, claiming this was all something the department required.  We know Ministers like to hide such costs. 

   

It is naive to believe that Ministers will not abuse this new policy.  Many trips made by MPs are used for partisan reasons with only the weakest of justification linking it to their role as Minister.

So once again, as expenses are transferred to federal departments, how does harper propose to make cuts to them?

When Ivison of the Nat-Post talks about CON spin...

...you know the reality is as obvious as an industrial washing machine so out of control even brain-fried druggies passed out in the laundromat sit up and take notice.

The Conservatives will spend $10-billion less in the coming year than they did in 2010-11 — the first time in a decade any Canadian government has planned to reduce expenditure, according to Stockwell Day.
 
...What Mr. Day neglected to say is that as much as $7-billion of the planned savings come from the sun setting on stimulus spending. A further $8-billion comes from reduced spending on things like public debt charges ($3.4-billion down because of lower interest rates), Employment Insurance (down $2.6-billion as the economy recovers), and harmonized sales tax compensation.  The real question for the Conservatives, is why aren’t they planning to spend billions of fewer taxpayers’ dollars in the next financial year?

Well, because harper has: increased his cabinet by creating positions to reward blind loyalty, resulting in the largest cabinet in Canadian history; has spent more on tax payer funded partisan promo ads than any other government in Canadian history; has spent more on polls, more on personal security, more on bribing ridings...

He also plans on building prisons we don't need, sole-sourcing the F-35s, building a luxurious spy training centre, building a glass dome on the Hill, building a Harper bunker where he can play Morgan Freeman playing Col. Abraham Curtis...

He intends to increase budgets for security and public safety ,  Correctional Services ,Canadian Border Services Agency , the RCMP,  and Canadian Air Transport Security Authority.

There will be some cuts.  Guess where.  Come on!  You can do it!  Here's a hint: he won an award for it in 2010, the Collossal Fossil Award.

That's right!  He will cut Environment and resource based programs with 2/3rds of the cuts coming from programs related to climate change!

harper plans on cutting 1 billion from NR programs including the Clean Energy Agenda, the Pulp and Paper Green Transformational program and the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund.

Dorky Day did not waste a chance to show his junior-high enthusiasm and maturity by insulting our intelligence and making a joke of a very serious announcement.

The announcement was made in an Ottawa fitness club called Lean and Fit — apparently an attempt to persuade us that this is a government with six-pack abs and no fat left to trim.

riiiiight....

So, brief summary of the Main Estimates:  money goes to agencies whose employees can legally kill human beings now and in the future, and money is cut from those agencies trying to make a safe, sustainable environment for us and for generations to come.

Seriously.  Anyone who still thinks CONs are fiscally conservative need to go find their surgeon and ask for their lobotomized chunk of brain back.

So...why are we there?

the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a well-connected Washington DC think tank, released a report on Afghanistan titled, Responsible Transition. The report lays out a strategy for the United States to lessen its investment in Afghanistan while still securing America’s interests in the region.

Remind me, 'cause I don't see a damn thing about democracy, or women and children in that.

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.

We don’t report news, we make it...up!

Looks like Fox Fiction North is going to keep many bloggers and journalists busy exposing their lies and ideological maneuvering.  Too bad.  Those of us who understand that knowing the truth is essential to shaping policy would really rather be helping Canada and the world move ahead in whatever way we can.

         (terrific FNN photo by Alison)

Meanwhile, we have this daily distraction to deal with because the lies cannot go unchallenged.  Although Fox Fiction reads like the National Enquirer and holds the same disrespect for truth, it can actually cause harm to a great many people because it is interested in more than selling papers.  It seeks to change our beliefs, laws, and government.

So pathetically inept and laughable are its main ad men that most of us can’t help but use humour to counter their ridiculous spins and lies, but we need to make it very clear that our opposition isn’t simply to the korn-kob hilarity of the corporation that eats away at audience’s intellect and encourages their baser natures like a cheezie talk show feeding us the worst of humanity day after day as entertainment.

Fox Fiction backs a political ideology and narrow, corporate interests.  Where it fails in truth and convincing arguments, it hopes to conquer through massive exposure so that the lie is heard so often, people stop questioning.  It doesn’t report news, it decides what ideological product it wants to push, then fashions stories with that in mind.

It is little more than a huge marketing agency using all of its resources to convince us to buy a very harmful product.

That’s why it is important to keep countering and exposing Kory & Co’s lies.  Allison shows us another one where Kory brazenly claims Fox Fiction never applied for the A license.  Wow.  Makes you want to shake your head violently because you begin to doubt if he and his kind actually exist or are leftover, ghostly emanations of some long gone universe that couldn’t hold itself together because it make no fucking sense.

What I found funny and more than a little scary was this quote from Serge Sasseville, Quebecor's VP of corporate affairs (highlights mine):

"We'll get exactly what we're asking for at the end of the day.  We'll ask the CRTC exactly the same conditions we've been asking with a Category 1, and we're pretty confident we'll get it. You can ask for a must-offer even for other categories. It's only labeling. You can call a cat a dog but at the end of the day it's still a cat."

Cats that aren’t dogs:

"We are not nor have we ever asked for mandatory carriage of this station where Canadians would have to be obliged to pay.”

Stephane Dion is not a leader.

Ignatieff: just visiting.

The gun registry is useless.

Canadians don’t want the long form census.

Crime has gone up.

"Canadians are going to face a pretty stark choice. The next election will be a choice between a Parliament with a majority made up of a Liberal-NDP-Bloc Québécois coalition, or it will be a stable majority for our Conservative government." - Harper

While Fox Fiction knows that at the end of the day, cats are still cats no matter how often you try to label them as dogs, they want us to purchase those very dogs by convincing us that they are cats.  Just like they want us to believe a marketing company is really a news outlet.

*no disrespect to dogs, here.  I love the little guys.  Which is why I don't want them passed off as cats.