Spin Media

Peter Worthington of Spin Media tells us "Majority in PM's reach: Harper has enhanced Canada's prestige and deserves his reward."

Wow.  His reward?  Is that what this is all about?  Giving harper what he wants?

As for Worthington's justification, more right wing insanity grounded in an alternate universe where reality isn't even a suggestion:

Stephen Harper may not be Mr. Fun-and-Games, but he’s a good manager, is honest, has enhanced the prestige of Canada and deserves a majority.

No reasons given for the deserves a majority line, but lets look briefly at the other claims.

Good manager: biggest deficit ever; can't face questions; holds back critical information; lost confidence of the House several times; government found in contempt of Parliament; prorogued twice to dodge consequences of his own actions...

Honest: lied about income trusts; lied about not appointing pals to the Senate; lied about his own coalition plans; lies about crime rates; plagiarizes speeches and ads; lied about security perimeter talks...

Enhanced prestige of Canada: ridiculous, embarrassing number of fossil awards; failed to gain seat on UN Security council; massive fail on AIDS funding; took a partisan stance on Israel; failed to support aboriginals internationally; failed to support the fight against the use of child soldiers...

But steve deserves a majority.  Because he says so.  And because he'll throw a tantrum and stall any progress in Parliament if he doesn't get his way.  Again.

Mostly competent?

Massive fail at seeing the coming of a recession.

Unable to face media and Canadians in open forums.

Fails to gain UN security seat.

Winner of colossal fossil award repeatedly.

Biggest deficit ever.

Most partisan appointments to Senate ever - despite criticizing such appointments.

Hires a convicted criminal for his inner office and grants him security clearance.

His Minister leaves secret files laying around where people with criminal ties have access to them.

First Canadian government to be found in contempt of Parliament - ever.

So insecure while in power he had to run attack ads on the opposition non-stop even between elections.

Unable to face the consequences of his own poor actions, he prorogued Parliament twice.

Cut international aid to Africa, gutted women's rights, cut green programs, denied climate change, appointed creationist as Minister of Science and Technology, lies repeatedly about how Canadian legislation and the Constitution work...

But then, some people really can't see reality when it's biting them in the ass.

and there it is...at 33 minutes...linguistic fatigue

harper's french sucks.  Not just his accent, a good debater can plow through despite that.  But linguistic fatigue sets in when the person lacks fluency and is translating in their heads, searching for words.

Stevo is stuttering more and more, getting frustrated because the words aren't coming easily.

Please, please say érection inutile again.

That little evil wish aside, I think it's downhill from here for harper.  He's obviously struggling, self-conscious, flustered.  And he looks pissed.

...9:57 pm  wrap up.

Harper told us we are tired of erections.

Whole thing - much livelier than last night, Gilles Duceppe on his turf, didn't have to defend anything, spoke with conviction.  NDP and Libs tried to convince listeners that they just love - LOVE QC and love the french language.  Harper struggling to look nonchalant but failing miserably, bland responses, quieter than last night, looked like he'd rather be bait in a bear trap than standing there.

I understand Layton wants to win more seats in QC but it's too bad he spent so much time attacking the Liberals  past and present.  So much for the left working at ousting harper before all else.

Winners, losers?  Interesting stuff, but I don't think this debate will influence many people except to reaffirm existing support for Duceppe.  It really was his show.

don't sweat the debate

Despite most journalist not understanding how to score debaters, people aren't likely to decide their vote on those.

There were many articles going on about how harper won simply because he didn't totally lose his shit during the debate last night and because he managed to squeeze some words out in response to critical questions. That he lied and lied, that he responded without actually answering the questions or giving any kind of supporting arguments seemed to mean nothing to most journalists.

Dan Gardner has an excellent piece, though.

Harper's preferred word was "bickering." That's how he described Parliamentary debate. It's all just bickering. (It wasn't only him, to be fair. Jack Layton used every clash between Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff as a chance to smile wryly and pose as the only adult in the playground.)  But what exactly is Parliament, and more specifically the House of Commons? It's the place where people chosen in ridings across the country gather to talk about the nation's business. Our representatives often disagree. Is this bickering?

Gardner says that less than half of Canadians are so clueless about Canadian governance that they actually think the people elect the prime minister. Rather than sweep away that ignorance, Harper makes use of it. Indeed, he fosters it in order to advance his immediate political interests.

Those of us who do understand the dangers harper poses to our democracy as he not only undermines it but attempts to set false beliefs in people concerning it can't possibly educate 50% of the population in three weeks.  That will have to wait until we have a Prime Minister who favours education and doesn't refer to educated people as elitists or imply that intellectual is a bad word.

However, people do respond to day after scandal ridden day, seeing the party that rode in on outrage and promises of accountability and transparency lie to us, steal from us, hide information from us, line their friends pockets with our money, and show appalling insensitivity to voters.

These new stories came up in the last two hours:

Conservatives quit over Vaughan health-care money - Two Conservatives have quit their own riding association in Vaughan north of Toronto, accusing incumbent candidate Julian Fantino and the Conservative government of handing $10 million in public dollars to a private non-profit group involved in a major health-care development.

Conservative candidate asks for ‘ethnic costumes’ for Harper photo op
A Conservative candidate in the GTA is at the centre of a growing controversy after his office asked multicultural groups in the riding if they would like to wear “ethnic costumes” to a photo op with Stephen Harper.

G8 legacy fund: boon or boondoggle?

As controversy continues to swirl around a $50-million "G8 Legacy Infrastructure Fund" that beautified a Conservative-held riding last year, the debate has centered on a key question: Was this spending typical of cases when Canada hosts international events, or was it a ploy to help Tory MP Tony Clement get re-elected?

Ignatieff has been taking some flack for spending too much time in the debate on the contempt issue and not enough on the Liberal platform.  I thought he did what was right , effective, and necessary.  The government was brought down over being in contempt.  We are in an election because the government was voted to be in contempt.  That is what this election should be about first of all.  Yes, each party must state what it will do with whatever power it gains, but let's not forget why harper and his party got the boot.  And they did get the boot.

Two thirds of Canadians through their elected reps fired him.  Said they don't trust him.  Said he has no respect for the very institutions established over many, many years of government to give a fair and accountable Parliament.  Accountable to us, the people.

Ignatieff drove that home over and over.  It's something that most Canadians could be made to understand even if it's on a simple level.  The two thirds of elected reps representing Canadians said they don't have confidence in harper and his party.  Ignatieff made this clear, and added the very good keeper lines:

“A majority? ... Majorities are things you earn when you earn the trust of Canadian people and you haven’t earned the trust of the Canadian people because you don’t trust the Canadian people.” 


Go to Far and Wide to see how people are shifting their support.  Steve V gives a terrific analysis of the recent polls, and while the shifts are rather cautious and a little slow, they are steady, show a definite trend, take place in areas of the country that make a difference in an election, and show that people are reacting to the repeated examples of contempt the harper government has been displaying daily.

Paraphrase this!

So Glen McGregor decimates Lilley’s absurd distortion of truth  and incredible leap of bad logic between two unrelated things. 

Don’t worry, Lilley.  There are other instances of shocking paraphrasing distortions you should probably report on with many, many unsubstantiated suggestions of unsavoury going ons.

Lilley, did you know that harper paraphrased an entire speech of Emperor Palpatine?

Emperor Palpatine was a very bad man and killed lots and lots of people.  Billions and billions.  And Palpatine was not a Canadian!!!!

Last night, during the debate, harper paraphrased one of the worst mass murderers on the planet, and probably a cannibal, to boot.  Harper kept saying, “that is simply not true.”  Do you know who said that?  Idi Amin.  When asked if he ate human flesh, he said “it’s not true.”  Which of course makes you wonder...

And Idi Amin was not a Canadian.  When he died, he was not a leader.  He died in a country where he was just visiting. 

It gets worse.  Idi Amin did not wear glasses.  But do you know who does? Harper.  He has square rimless glasses.  Do you know who else wore rimless glasses?  John Lennon!  And what is really suspicious about that is that Lennon’s glasses were round, not square yet harper sings Lennon tunes and even uses them for self-promotion.  But wait!  Worse yet to come.  Once, when Lennon – who was not a Canadian  was just visiting, he met with Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau and said nice things about him.  The same Pierre Elliot Trudeau who was once just visiting Cuba and met Fidel Castro.

Idi Amin once has some people sing a Scottish tune.  Emperor Palpatine was in a movie that had tunes.  John Lennon wrote tunes.  harper sings tunes. Neither Idi Amin, nor Palpatine, nor John Lennon, and especially not Fidel Catro were Canadians!  And every one of them just visited some place at some time.

So there you have it.  If harper wants to convince Canadians he’s in it for them and that he’s the steady hand at the helm, he should be more careful who he paraphrases.  

leader's debate, early G&M poll

Rolling Poll: So far, which leader has impressed you most in the leaders' debate?  (at 7:11)
Gilles Duceppe ( 2% ) 
Stephen Harper ( 25% )
Michael Ignatieff ( 61% )
Jack Layton ( 12% )

None posted after that, we'll see tomorrow.

The auditor general is doing her job.

As much as I would love to see her report on the G8 released right now, she is right according to procedure in place in holding it back.


NDP candidate David Christopherson is right.  On his vote to block the release:

"It wasn't about the content, it was about the integrity of the auditor general's work. These rules are in place for very good reasons," he said.

If we insist she breaks procedure in this case, the integrity of the office is affected and open to more breaches in the future. The CONs knew she wouldn't abuse her position or bend the rules.  That's why they were so quick to say the report should be released.  No risk, makes the lying cheats appear to care about transparency.

However, Milliken brings up this possibility:

House Speaker Peter Milliken says it’s up to Auditor General Sheila Fraser and the four party leaders to decide whether she may make public the final version.

That would be fine as long as this is written up as standard should such a situation occur again.

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.

See what happens when you piss off artists?

Especially artists with brains and hearts.

I would have preferred it however if the message stayed entirely on getting rid of harper rather than bashing the Bloc and telling people not to vote NDP.  He is campaigning for his mom (Liberal MP Joyce Murray), though, so it's understandable.

I'd love to see one like this pushing for strategic voting.

So what will Sun media's headlines be tomorrow?

The cards say...

"Poorly written."  Yes, yes, of course.  Doesn't take a Tarot deck to predict that.

"Super-partisan and dishonest."

Of course.  My 6 month old puppy could tell me that.

"Vile attacks well below the belt."

OK, seriously...

The cards tell me Fox News North Sun will say variations of: "The Liberal lead coalition attacks harper in a cowardly fashion, but the master strategist out-maneuvers them."

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?

cluckcluck-cluckedycluck...

Stephen Harper repeatedly refused Sunday to provide more details about where the Conservatives would cut to achieve the $4-billion in annual savings on program spending the party has promised to find.

"I think it's probably a bit unfair to bash somebody in the grave," - harper

Sure, but that hasn't stopped Mr. Petulance - in the course of the same event.

Harper goes on about "days of economic darkness" under Trudeau then fails to explain how he will come up with the billions required for his budget promises.

Ten years after his death, Trudeau is still a threat to harper the chicken.

Riiiiight.....

harper wants to create an Office of Religious Freedom.   (I)ts role would be: to monitor religious freedom around the world; to promote religious freedom as a key objective of Canadian foreign policy; and to advance policies and programs that support religious freedom.

Considering the political interference that occurred at Rights and Democracy, and considering that harper has vowed to defend Israel unconditionally, I seriously doubt that this will be anything more than an organization created to appeal to voters but will in fact defend and promote only those religions harper personally defends.

Harper government 3

"Now is not the time for instability, or for reckless, opportunistic experiments."

...and we need to stay the course.  (CPC site, on their platform)

Sure, let's not be reckless.

And hell, none of those opportunistic experiments please.

I'm all for staying this course over the next few weeks.

But we need to shift away from the CPC course of  -

contempt of Parliament :

"This is serious matter that goes to the heart of the House's undoubted role in holding the government to account," Milliken declared.

contempt for Canadians :

For all of its imperfections (and they are many), the only thing close to a democratic national body in Canada is the House of Commons. To be contemptuous of its members is to disdain those who elected them. Canadians get precious few chances to determine what their leaders do. When voters elected a minority government in 2008, they were signalling that they didn’t trust Stephen Harper’s Conservatives (or indeed any other party) to run the nation’s business single-handed.

Instead, they wanted the opposition parties to check government — to act as watchdogs, moderate its ideological excesses and keep it in line.  But throughout the life of this now-dead Parliament, Prime Minister Stephen Harper refused to accept the voters’ verdict. His decision to operate as if he controlled a majority of Commons seats may have been good short-term politics. But it contradicted both the spirit and reality of the very limited mandate voters had given him.

reckless spending :

“The needs of most Canadians are neglected due to reckless spending on Conservative pet projects,” (CCPA Alternative Federal Budget Coordinator David Macdonald) says. “Canadians should be warned: deep spending cuts that will affect the services they need are on the horizon. The government isn’t revealing where the pain is going to come.”

“This budget wastes our time and our money,” says CCPA Senior Economist Armine Yalnizyan. “The Harper government has yet again tabled a fiscal plan that doesn’t deal with the tough issues of the day. How will we deal with aging infrastructure and high youth unemployment, a shrinking workforce and uncertain pensions?  The government’s response seems to be that these are our problems, not theirs.”

Actually, my turn to apologize

I jumped all over Reilly and Ignatieff, didn't think things through, took something out of context and used tunnel vision.

Mandatory sentences aren't a good idea.  They assume all cases are the same, regardless of circumstances and the individuals involved.  That's what John Reilly was trying to say, and while he may not have been graceful with his words, it's still pretty obvious that's what he meant. 

Reilly had the courage to reaffirm his belief that mandatory prison sentences, even in the case of sexual assault, would not always serve the public in the best way possible.  Allison and Scotian explain this well in the comment section here.

Apology not accepted.

I realize that dumping a candidate this late during an election is something any leader would want to avoid, and I commend Ignatieff for having cut Andre Forbes over his racist comments, although a more rigid background check would have prevented his candidacy in the first place.  His words weren't a mistake.  They reflect his attitude and beliefs, an attitude and beliefs the Liberal party claims it condemns.

John Reilly, Liberal candidate for Wildrose also said some things that the Liberal party claims it condemns, but this time, Ignatieff forgives him and leaves him in place.  The man regrets it, Ignatieff tells us, and even tries to appeal to our sense of pity by saying that the former judge will have to live with the comments the rest of his life.

Oh?  And the consequences?  He still gets to run in the election.  I guess living with it won't be so bad after all.

Like Forbes' words, Reilly's reflect an attitude and beliefs.  In fact, even after apologizing, he said he made a political error but still believes not all sex offenders should be incarcerated.  He claims he used a clumsy example first time around.  OK, so what sexual offense crimes deserve a walk?

It doesn't matter if Reilly had a "long and distinguished career."  It doesn't matter if he made many good choices.  This one stance is not one a progressive party should give a pass on.  Sexual assault cannot be deemed anything else simply because the guy was young, or stupid, or helplessly turned on because the unconscious woman was naked.  That just gives would be rapists permission to abuse situations.