About that media speculation over steve relaxing, spontaneously turning into something akin to human

I’d say giving every single Canadian an unabashed fuck you before the House even sits, and not having the courtesy of announcing it personally should pretty much slap all of you incredibly stupid people upside the head.

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In the party where liars and criminals are elevated, why not losers?  Even two-time losers?

Stephen Harper wasted no time in bringing back three defeated candidates, appointing former Quebec cabinet minister Josée Verner to the Senate and reappointing Larry Smith and Fabian Manning.

Smith and Fabian - you remember?  Those two harper appointed senators who used their time as senators to prep for their MP campaigns, quit the senate to run, then were rejected by voters?

Can you think of a more unapologetic screw you to all of us?

Can anyone seriously still doubt that steve has absolutely no sense of ethics?

This is what we face for the next four years.  Longer, much longer if the press in particular keeps treating him like a mildly disobedient golden child, gently chiding him while bragging to all who will listen just how terrific and oh so special he is. 

Oh...and you journalists who want to make amends by keeping tabs?  Kind of need access to the guy you all endorsed for that.

Minutes after he finished answering questions from reporters about his cabinet shuffle, the Prime Minister’s Office sent out a release announcing the three appointments. So Mr. Harper did not have to address the issue in public.

I am anxiously waiting to hear about steve’s plans for senate reform.  Really.  Just so excited.

Busty Hookers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now that I have your attention (apologies to readers who are not into such titillating headlines), on to something far more serious than the ick factor of a 66 year old criminal running a scam to pay his favourite 22 year old hooker and keep her all to himself.

Via the Hill Times, March 21, 2011, Michael McBane, national coordinator of the Canadian Health Coalition in Ottawa informs and warns us of yet another attack by harper on our democracy:

The Harper government has given the unelected Senate the mandate to conduct a second mandatory review of the 2004 Health Accord. The previous review was conducted by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health in 2008. The move bypasses the House of Commons, where the Harper government is in a minority, to a Senate committee where the Conservatives are now in a majority. This is one more in a growing list of anti-democratic actions by the Harper government.

Hearings started on March 10 in the Senate Committee on Science, Technology and Social Affairs. Already, organizations that support a strong leadership role of the federal government in health care, including the Canadian Health Coalition, have been told they will not be allowed to appear and give testimony.

The message for Canadians is clear: The Harper government not only holds Parliament in contempt, it also seems to view Canadians who strongly support public health care with contempt as well. This does not bode well for the future of medicare.

On the eve of negotiations for renewal of the Health Accord in 2014, members of the Harper government and the Conservative Party have floated trial balloons hinting at cuts to health care transfers. One prominent caucus member has even called for a termination of all federal health care transfers.

Even as Canadians consistently list health care as one of their top concerns, harper gives them the finger and not only ignores previous reviews, but bars those in favour of a strong, national health care program from giving testimony.

Reminds me of a disc jockey who hated Metallica, wanted it banned from his program, and held a vote allowing only women over 50 to vote  (Happy to say even that limited audience voted to keep Metallica).

Denying testimony from those who don’t kow-tow to his ideology is bad in itself, but by-passing the House of Commons violates our democratic system in which citizens can give voice through their elected representatives.

Steve is doing what he always accused the Liberals of doing even though that party never abused their majority in the Senate in such fashion - he is using the Senate to make changes to our legislation that he knows would not fly through our democratic system.

This is not a clever master strategist.  This is not a great chess player.  This is a man who doesn’t give a damn about the very people he is supposed to serve -  a man so convinced that the only opinions and will that matter are his own -  that he has continuously stomped on and undermined the very democratic process set in place to protect a government of the people for the people.

This latest attack on democracy should be all over the front pages on nationals.  CPC support comes largely from older, retired people.  People who tend to rely on national health care more than younger Canadians.  It should be on the front pages for all of us.

Maybe if some busty hooker were to get up and wage a public information campaign, we might get people to pay attention to how their own government is giving them the finger while hacking away at their rights.

Creative Politics 101

harper is fast-tracking Senate reform.  None of that Parliament debate and lengthy passing of a Bill for him!  No!  He's workin' hard!  Gettin' the job done!

And he's going to make at least one of his appointed Senators work hard, having expanded the role of the Senate to include springboarding and funding for federal candidates.

Over a month ago, harper tried to recruit Larry Smith as a candidate for the next federal election in the Lac-Saint-Louis riding.  A month after turning that down, Smith accepts the appointment as Senator, and the very next day announces he will run as a federal candidate after all.

It's pretty obvious what went on in his talks with harper.  Around the time harper approached Smith, he suddenly resigns as president of the Alouettes.  People were puzzled since there had been no hint from Smith that he had been planning to quit, and no hint that he had been pursuing another career.

Can anyone really believe he'd drop a successful career with nothing on the horizon?  Of course not.  But running against Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia will be expensive and Smith needs to develop a political profile there.

harper tried this once already with Mike Fortier, who as we recall, actually opened an office in the riding he planned to run in, using it to promote himself, MP style.

Now Smith gets to do the same:  promote himself politically - on our dollar -  in the riding he will run in.  As his focus is on running in the next election, he will be doing little more as an actual Senator than collecting a nice big paycheck - also our dollar - as he uses his appointment to prep and self-promote so that harper can perhaps win a Quebec seat. 

The seat means a lot to harper, so he wants to use every advantage he can to win it.  He's counting largely on Smith's high profile among sports fans, and riding president Marc Damant announced the CONs intend to spend  the full amount under federal election laws. 

And harper has managed to boost that spending amount considerably by allowing Smith to use his ridiculously short Senate appointment to promote himself as part of his pre-election campaing. 

Using the Senate for such purposes degrades it even further, as difficult as it might be to conceive how harper could have made it a bigger travesty than he already has.

And it is yet another way the CONs can cheat election rules.

Complete contempt for Canadians

That's what harper keeps showing, over and over.

Two more Senators appointed.  During the holiday break.  Partisan as always.  Unelected.  One was rejected by voters.  Qualified?  At least one isn't.

The good Rev. Don Meredith -

He replaced Mark Warner as candidate for Toronto Centre after the CPC decided that despite Warner winning the nomination, he wasn’t the right stuff for the CONs.

What they wanted was someone like Meredith: social conservative, volunteer Senior Pastor at the Pentecostal Praise Centre, tough on crime, tough on sex for fun, tough on sex without proper legal documents, tough on gays, tough on same sex marriage, and tough on people who have the audacity to have bed bug infestations.  

And he really, really qualifies for harper’s promises of an elected Senate by having lost the 2008 by-election - coming fourth - in Toronto Centre.

Yet wingnuts are cheering in comment sections about how now, finally, we can have Senate reform.

WTF?????????

Now we have another ignorant politician who is so vapid he thinks bedbugs are the result of poor hygiene and that homosexuality is a choice.  Another who believes that laws should be shaped by inspiration we get from mythical beings.

Update: in his own words, h/t Alison

Larry Smith is qualified by CON standards because Larry does sports.  And Larry once toyed with the idea of running for the leadership of the CPC in 2004.  And Larry lives in Quebec.

So Larry, the talk goes, is qualified by harper standards to hold a cabinet post as yet another unelected, unaccountable guy making decisions concerning public funds and legislation.  Like Mike Fortier did.  Badly.

The CONs are not denying it out-right but are using that coyness we all love them for - there are no plans for him to join the Conservative cabinet, a Conservative official says. 

Uh-huh.  And harper will never ever appoint unelected people to the Senate because it’s so undemocratic.

Thugs in the shadows

In the town I came from, there was a man who wanted to buy a corner gas station from another fellow. The gas station owner wouldn't sell it, not for any money, and not after many threats.

Eventually, he did sell it for far less than what it was worth. Too bad, because he probably could have used the money since he ended up in a wheelchair, put there by thugs sent to force him to sell.

Mr. Money flattens the station and turns the whole corner into a family fun centre. Even though many people in the town knew what had happened, the place was always busy and the man still walks around that town as though he isn't a brutal criminal.

I thought of that story yesterday after we found out how harper sent word to the conservative senators to kill Bill C-311 without debate
.
Harper couldn't get his way through proper channels of legislation, so he got his pretend senators - who we can see are really his bag-boys, leg-breakers, hit-men, errand-boys to do the job. Loyal to their Big Boss, they didn't let the fact that they are there for all Canadians - and paid by taxpayers as well - give them even a momentary pause, but followed orders.

Harper promissed to reform the Senate. He has. It is now a highly paid group of people, half of which have no power being overrun as they are by harper's thugs. The thugs hide in the shadows of the Senate chambers and rules presenting the illusion of legitimacy but are nothing more than illegitimate muscle for harper who gets to pretend his hands are clean.

There are what - 52 conservative senators? Fifty-two people who are where they are because our democracy paved the way for them. Fifty-two people who in one act, undermined that same democracy. Men and women, who are supposed to be so exemplary that they can represent us and act on the interests of all Canadians but who instead take our money and give us a big fuck you.

What they have done by enabling harper is neuter the votes of elected opposition reps in the House which is what harper wanted. And even if the Liberals get in with a minority in the future, the unelected conservative senate can kill Bills.

Worse than useless senate. Worse because it doesn't just sit there and do noting, it is now a compliant, ass-licking extension of the PMO. Paid for by us to make our voices even less influential.

The Senate as a soapbox.

Paid for by us.

Meet one of Canada’s newest senators — Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu.
 
The Sherbrooke, Que., native who went on from the tragic murder of his daughter to become one of Canada’s best known advocates for the rights of victims and their families says he plans to use his new job to fight for victims rights and to crack down on the criminals who prey on them.

Boisvenu said he has specific things he wants to achieve in terms of justice and victims rights. At the end of four years he plans to assess his progress and if he has achieved what he came to Ottawa to do, he’ll quit.

Many Senators have their area of interest, an issue they push for relentlessly.  Dallaire fights for human rights, especially the rights of people affected by war; Oliver fights for visible minorities (although I’ve noticed he can be quite silent when his views are not in agreement with those of the conservative government); Ringuette fights for the right of all Canadians to apply for government jobs regardless of where they live in Canada...

But those Senators never claim to be there solely for those issues.

Any Senator will likely bring certain goals to the Senate and will have a point of view already in place.  But by saying he’ll quit once he achieves his preconceived goals on crime and justice, Boisvenu is saying two things - even without debate in the Senate, he has made up his mind what he wants to push for, and that is his sole purpose for serving as a Senator.

The Senate should not be anyone’s personal soapbox, paid for by taxpayers.  Senators must address each issue with a willingness to debate and consider other information and arguments, and they must be as committed to all issues presented for debate and vote.

So, heard the one about the un-elected, Conservative Senate?

LeBreton, un-elected senator bitching about un-elected Liberal Senators thinks “we couldn't continue on as a government having our whole agenda and all of our policies driven by a group of unelected people from two governments ago."

That’s the justification she offers for Stevo’s plans to elect five new senators next month.  As an appointee of over two governments ago, I guess we can pretty much discount what the un-elected Marjory says.  You know, not democratic and all.

Senator Cowan isn’t too worried -    The Conservatives -- and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson in particular -- are fond of blaming the so-called unelected, unaccountable Liberaldominated Senate for "gutting" bills from the House of Commons. But next month that will change.

   "It will be the unelected, unaccountable Conservative-dominated Senate and the expectations, particularly beyond Mr. Harper's office, will be that all he has to do is snap his fingers and the unelected, unaccountable majority in the Senate will do what he says when he wants it done," Cowan said with a wry smile. "Well, that isn't going to happen."

He doesn’t believe that all CONsens will fold so easily to Harper’s will.  He may be right.  Some are the old PCs and may not want to be seen as his shoe-shine boys.  Some may even give a damn about that whole sober second thought thing, and the welfare of Canadians.  Some may care about how they will be remembered.  Harper doesn’t have the same leverage with Senators as he does with his MPs.  They generally don’t have decades of political advancement ahead of them.

Any bets as to whether the new bunch will include a general?