The Road Ahead

I've had this blog for, holy shit, nine years.

In its earliest days it was mostly ranting about PC Premier Ralph Klein's unrelenting war on the public sector in general and healthcare in the specific.  He went from being a nominal liberal to a hard right partisan against anything that smacked of cooperation or the public good.  In the end his all out assault on medicare ended up contributing to his tumble from power as rural conservatives thought about how Klein's proposed two tier healthcare system would drain small town doctors to the more lucrative practices in the city - and turned on him.

This was significant, in a way the seeds of tonight were laid when the doctrinaire movement conservative market ideology of right wing economists, Shotgun blog commentators and Fraser Institute leadership cadets like Ezra Levant and Danielle Smith ran aground on pragmatic Albertan fondness for decent public healthcare.

After Klein the open assault on healthcare in Alberta became the slow motion death of a thousand cuts, delistings, organizations and reorganizations.  If you were trying to manufacture consent to slowly chip away at public healthcare by degrading it to the point people let you privatize it - you would run it pretty much the way the Tories have.  Fixing healthcare and rebuilding the relationship with healthcare workers will be high on everybody's list. 

Alberta has the most anti-worker labour laws in Canada - a lot of current Alberta labour law is ultimately not even enforceable when looked at through the lens of recent Supreme Court decisions.  Expect major changes, including the removal on the absolute ban on farm workers even being able to join a union.

Education.  Students are an important part of the NDP coalition, I think we can expect education funding and tuition to be on this government's radar.  Higher education is becoming a luxury accessible only to the rich and that contradicts NDP egalitarianism directly.

The environment.  The NDP wouldn't have to pass one new law to change this file dramatically.  Just enforcing existing environmental regulations  and  laws would drastically challenge the free ride elite polluters have enjoyed.  Look for incentives to encourage projects like ENMAX's Shepard Energy Centre gas powered power plant.  Coal is cheap but dirty and breaking our reliance on it would go a long way towards rehabilitating Alberta's environmental image.  The only wrinkle maybe the fracking and ground water threat shale gas poses.

The number one issue, the one the NDP can probably find a lot of common ground with the Wildrose on, is the democratic deficit.  As Rachel said in her victory speech, for too long the agenda and conversation of this province was a red rope affair, the elites decided and the rest of us were used to our concerns being ignored.  Entrenched, unethical partnerships like the one the Stettler PC establishment had with local government are repeated all over this province, right down to one party's control over the levers of the democratic process itself and there is a crying need to have years of cronyism, and close party/state fusions  swept away.  The Progressive Conservatives have a secretive slush fund of a kind that is illegal for every party in Alberta, except them.  That's emblematic of an attitude of entitlement and authority PCs believed was their's by right. 

Hercules had an easier job cleaning the Augean Stables.

And make no mistake, the sabotage starts tomorrow if not sooner.

Entrenched forces in industry, labour and media will be attacking from every angle, political and economic success will be steadily redefined to exclude anything the NDP accomplish.  Red scare rhetoric will, if anything, get worse.

Keep your powder dry.

Brace Yourself

The Flowering of Progressive Alberta

#abvote

Canada's Texas.   The prairie bible belt.  The queer hating, union busting, healthcare privatizing redneck with a copy of Atlas Shrugged home of the Canadian Conservative movement.

Stereotypes that have never represented anything more than the most superficial understanding of this province.

North America's most successful socialist movement was founded in Calgary in 1932 when the CCF, later to be known as the NDP held their founding convention here.  Over the years Alberta has frequently flirted with socialism, both directly through the NDP and the early days of the United Farmers of Alberta's dozen years in power and through the mirror crack'd version of Social Credit.  Today's NDP has morphed into a center left good government party and the Alberta version in particular is a very pragmatic and centrist party, but socialism wasn't always a bad word in Alberta.

Social Credit was on its last legs in 1971 and people forget the Progressive Conservative insurgency of Peter Lougheed really was a somewhat progressive alternative.  They swept away embarrassing Social Credit weirdness like the forced sterilization of 'defectives' that was still going on in 1971 and DOUBLED oil royalties.

Lougheed's pragmatic mix of conservatism and progressiveness and flashy battles with the federal government and oil corporations made him a superstar and the Tories have coasted on his reign ever since while abandoning all his best ideas.

The NDP have been the official opposition multiple times in Alberta and many still believe only the untimely death of popular NDP leader Grant Notley kept them from becoming the government in 1986.

His daughter is now poised to become Premier according to poll after poll, but even if she doesn't Progressive Alberta is out of the bottle now and showing off our magic.

Alberta will never be the same

Calgary Sun: Even the NDP would be better than the PCs!

#abvote

"The dynasty deserves to fall. Regardless of whether Alberta swings left or right, the province will be in better hands."

VOTE!

#abvote

 Alberta Progressives, 

The right wingers, the dedicated small 'c' conservatives, the people who think going on strike should be grounds for firing, the people who know better than to say out loud certain things, but who still hate gays and immigrants and public workers and YOU and know the dog whistles to look for, the people who make you sad and mad and ashamed when you think of them running our province or being catered to....

They are going to vote. They are intensely, incandescently motivated to vote now that it really does look like Canada's conservative heartland is about to be delivered up to the socialist hordes, they will be more likely to vote than in any election in YEARS in this province. They desperately want to cancel out YOUR vote.

And they still might. Riding a wave election must be like surfing a tidal wave and wiping out at the last minute is more than possible.

If you think your vote doesn't matter IT DOES, in 2004 the election of MLA Thomas Lukaszuk came down to a half dozen appeals and THREE votes. That kind of knife's edge could be repeated in any riding in this province right now.

VOTE!

And donate to the NDP, the Conservatives are reaping  last minute panic donations from Corporate Alberta. Don't let the PCs saturation ad buy their way out of their hole without the NDP being able to fight back.

Did somebody spike my coffee?

The mind boggles.....

Wave of Mutilation

And now we will get a solid week of frantic red scare fear mongering.

Dark mutterings about socialism, fictional versions of the NDP governments of BC and Saskatchewan... Last night a well known right wing blogger implied on twitter that an NDP government would make it illegal to own a phone.

Yes, really.

Its all based on the assumption that Albertans are idiots.  That we can't see that NDP 'socialism' is more the subject of one of the CBC's historical heritage minutes than any element of modern NDP policy.

Rachel Notley is the sensible, cautious leader of a moderate left of center good government party.  There was enormous push back to early PC campaign efforts to portray her as extreme, enough so that they hurriedly dropped it.  Expect it to return because the stink of desperation from Tory central suggests that if anything, their internal polling is even worse for them than what the public is seeing.

Fear and loathing and lies are all this tired, corrupt decaying government has left.  Choose hope and truth instead.

Rachel Notley Owned the Night

The story at the #abvotes Leadership debate was of Jim Prentice making the biggest tactical error of a career full of them.

He spent the night building up Alberta's already popular NDP leader into an unquestioned legitimate contender to the highest office in the province.  At every opportunity, repeatedly and ostentatiously he turned his back on Liberal leader David Swann and Wild Rose leader Brian Jean.  The intent was to diminish them both with a priority on blunting the Wild Rose (Though both assisted mightily in promoting their irrelevance, Swan with his cadaverous, ghost at the wedding stage presence, a tired old man who knows what vote he had has fled to the NDP and Jean with his wide vacant eyes and child's haircut, for all the world Opie from the Andy Griffith Show as played by William H. Macey, mindlessly droning his single message anti-tax right wing orthodoxy.) and that it most certainly did, but if Prentice thought it was safe to promote Rachel Notley based on the assumption she can't win in the country he may have miscalculated badly, we will know in a little more than a week.

The spectacularly condescending and pompous "I know the math is difficult" gaffe is going to do more damage than people think - possibly fatal damage.

I think the credibility he afforded Rachel Notley, combined with his own unlikable, insufferable prick demeanour and her sunny but no nonsense professional presentation sent a lot of on the fence voters Notley's way.

The economy is the most important consideration. Except when it isn't.

It's interesting, how all conservatives, such as Alberta's governing PCs,  firmly oppose higher corporate taxes because of nebulous, highly debatable and entirely theoretical negative economic impacts. 

But anti-gay laws with real, unambiguous, no doubt about it, BIG MONEY negative economic consequences? Well hey, who cares if Salesforce, a company that invested 2 and a half BILLION dollars in Indiana last year says they are now firmly cutting ties with the state over its anti-gay legislation? Who cares if GenCon, the largest gaming convention in North America is making plans to move their annual convention out of Indiana to the tune over 50 million dollars being pulled out of the state's economy EVERY YEAR? So what if the NCAA is seriously re-evaluating any plans to host future events in the state which could add up to hundreds of millions of dollars in economic impact.

Add in potential losses in the millions from the tourist industry, jobs from the tech industry and the huge economic loss caused by an exodus of Gay Indianans and the only question remaining is just how many billions of dollars this new law will cost the state of Indiana's economy.

The entirely theoretical risk to jobs and economic growth cited as a reason to never even consider making corporations pay a fairer share of the tax burden is turned on its head with the argument that treating gays like shit is more important than the devastating effect it will have on the state's economy. 

It's almost as if it was never a good faith argument and Republican Governor Pence is happily abandoning it until the next time someone suggests 'Hey maybe our budget problems could be helped by making corporations pay a higher share?' at which point it will be swiftly resurrected.

New Rule

I propose a new rule: if a government passes a law that is overturned by the courts for blatantly violating the constitution the costs of promulgating and defending that law should be paid out of the governing party's coffers. Why should the rest of us be on the hook for millions of dollars in partisan political theater?

Today, the House of Commons passed Bill C-2, the Respect for Communities Act. Pretty title, but like so much Conservative legislation, the meaning of the title, like the bill, is cruelly ironic.
What the Respect for Communities Act does is effectively block the establishment of new supervised injection facilities like Insite. The bill could make it much harder for Insite to stay open, and it effectively prevents a similar health service from opening in any other Canadian city.
Insite arose as a community response to epidemic-levels of HIV and Hepatitis C infections and overdose deaths in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. A decade of research shows that Insite saves lives, and those of us close to the ground understand the central role Insite plays in the tapestry of specialized healthcare the most vulnerable Canadians need.
Despite the evidence, the site has not operated without controversy. When the last federal Conservative government refused to grant an exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) that would allow Insite to keep its doors open, our community took the fight to protect Insite all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. It was only through the judicial branch that this life-saving site was able to stay open.  

This new legislation will face the same fate so much of the government's attempts at legislation of being overturned by the courts - at great expense to the rest of us.  They KNOW this.  They are already preparing their judicial activism rants.

How much of our money is this government wasting on political theater and legislation they know will be overturned?

The art of exclusion

Public 'art' at the Convention Center C-Train station in Calgary.  Not art designed to communicate or foster understanding, its only goal is exclusion. 

It's an anti-homeless measure like pretty decorative doorstop spikes designed to keep away the shivering souls who would sleep on top of the grates for the warmth.

Sometimes I fucking despise this city.

You haff your papers?

Maher Arar just announced on Twitter that the US government's No Fly list is now being applied domestically IN CANADA.

If you are on a foreign government's shit list you just lost the right of travel within your own country.

Do we Albertans ever get tired of being bent over and Punked you ask? (Spoiler: "Thank you sir, may I have another?")

The PCs finally face a tiny piece of reality and start talking about revenue, but since they are dedicated servants of the elite the goal of any new revenue generation will be to have it fall mainly, if possible COMPLETELY on the middle class and the poor.

Cut spending, hike taxes, find a climate-change policy, reform health care, control public-sector pay— Premier Jim Prentice’s core agenda sure sounds familiar. 

That’s because so much of it was ex-Premier Alison Redford’s agenda, and Ed Stelmach’s before her. 

In fact, if you consider promises to diversify the economy and sock away cash savings, Prentice is still following the agenda Peter Lougheed pursued for 14 years from 1971 to 1985 

.
The whole Prentice enterprise often looks like a dismal reflection on decades of PC rule. The same party keeps picking new leaders to solve the same old problems.

Lame justifications about 'driving away investment' a bogieman of ancient vintage just keep slamming up against the fact that we could raise 10 billion dollars in new corporate taxation alone, filling our 7 billion dollar fiscal hole with enough leftover for long delayed infrastructure improvements BUT STILL have the lowest corporate taxes in Canada.

The goal is to use the crisis du jour of low oil prices to protect ideologically based wealth distribution upwards and attack organized labour and public services.

At some point we have to stop falling for this.

Learning to Cope

It's been nine days since he was laid off, lets see how Ezra Levant is dealing with unemployment...

The Invisible Backhand of the Marketplace

The holy market has spoken: There is insufficient audience in Canada to sustain a far right TV network - unsurprising as there was insufficient audience even in Alberta to sustain the far right Alberta Report magazine.

If we follow the logic of the political and economic right the judgment of the market on these media outlets is a judgment on the literal value of what they were selling.

Call it the Invisible backhand across the face of Ezra Levant.

Lucky for Some, Unlucky for Others

If you are a crazed far right loon with raging inferiority and persecution complexes and watching bulging eyed mouth breathers spew hatred on your TV is the only thing that gets you through the day then Friday the 13th 2015 is really going to suck for you.

For the rest of us, not so much.

Sun News Network is about to sign off, permanently. CBC News has learned that the cable news television channel will shut down early Friday.

My sympathies for those for whom it was just a job, focusing a camera or spending long hours in an editing suite.  For the Sun News 'personalities' such as revolting bigoted hate mongers Ezra Levant and Michael Coren on the other hand...

In Character

Honestly anyone surprised by Danielle Smith's craven rat paddle away from the sinking Wildrose ship just hasn't been paying attention. When she couldn't control the Calgary school board with the the sheer self evident perfection of her Fraser institute indoctrinated ideology she blew it up in a display of juvenile mean girl behaviour that has typified her career. 

When it became clear that her deeply held passionate conviction that global warming was just a nasty fraud perpetrated by the 99% of scientists who belive in it meant a permanent exile in the electoral wasteland she abandoned it - publicly at least - with barely a moments delay. When it became obvious that good, moral gay hate clutched close to the withered hearts of her bigoted supporters had inexplicably become a barrier to her ambition she suddenly began pretending to be a lifelong defender of diversity and proud friend of Dorothy.

She's one of Canadian politic's most calculating, chameleon like, weather vanes to ever leave principle lying in a pool of its own roadkill blood as she tools down the highway to the bright future of power in devoted service to the elite.

Don't these mewling whiners understand her needs are what really matter?

Cozy little Conspiracy

It is unacceptable for the Alberta government's coalition partner* (in all but name) to also be the official opposition.

Wildrose's leader and house leader and at least five other current Wildrose MLAs are now members of the governing party and the pretense that the MLAs still keeping the Wildrose name are in any way an independent, separate party is just insulting horseshit.

Wildrose must surrender the status and perks of official opposition if they want to continue to pretend to have any integrity at all.





*remember kids, coalitions are only acceptable when they are made up of right wing parties.  Any left of center coalition is of course an affront to democracy and decency

Personalities over Principals

Who cares what the locals want, this guy has better optics federally.

Federal Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau denies his party's nomination process is undemocratic, and said prominent Sikh businessman Barj Dhahan withdrew his bid to be the party's candidate for Vancouver-South willingly despite accusations he was forced out of the race.
"Barj chose to withdraw from the race and I'm proud of the way the open nominations have been running," Trudeau told Rick Cluff, host of CBC Vancouver's morning radio show The Early Edition.
A number of Skih Liberals in British Columbia told CBC News they would be leaving the party, saying Trudeau is being "manipulated" by the World Sikh Organization, by choosing the WSO-backed Harjit Singh Sajjan to represent the party in the Vancouver-South riding.
Dhahan would not comment on the allegation he was forced out of the race, but told CBC News he withdrew from the nomination process reluctantly.

There's always a tension between local riding democracy and the broader strategic interests of a national party, but public ill will, lawsuits and lots of process stories about dissension in the ranks can end up being a net negative no matter what nebulous benefit a so called star candidate offers an often secretive party executive.

For example, will we ever know why Rob Anders was so ferociously protected and local riding democracy suppressed so blatantly to protect an obviously insane dimwit?

But the Liberals, it almost goes without saying, are the real party of the cult of personality in Canada. The don't really have any choice as they so carefully avoid being identified with any specific principles or ideals. They are always on the hunt for the next Messiah so Justin the anointed heir with the good hair is kind of the archetypal Liberal Party leader.

Living well is the best revenge.

Lets respond to this attack on Canada by being as Canadian as we can just as hard as we can.

By being decent, and courteous, and concerned about each other and committed to peace and justice and shared struggle.

Lets respond by reaffirming our beliefs in free expression and free assembly, in inclusiveness and welcome. Lets respond to a provocation that HAS THE EXPLICIT GOAL of making us over-react, to behave the way our enemies want us to and expect us to, by not falling for such a blatant scheme and playing into the hands of our enemy.

Lets remember our enemy isn't Muslim, or Arabic, or the newcomer or the dispossessed. Our enemy is injustice and want and abandonment, the sources and breeding grounds for the fanaticism and hate that can be found speaking any language, believing any creed and in any colour

Fear is the only real enemy.

The Honest Pro-Lifer

An American right wing pro-life columnist named Kevin Williamson has done us  the good service of taking the pro-life 'Abortion is murder' rhetoric to it's logically consistent extreme:

Over the weekend, a presumably bored National Review writer, Kevin Williamson, became the subject of much derision and shock across the political Internets when he tweeted his argument that ”the law should treat abortion like any other homicide.” My colleague Elias Isquith highlighted Williamson’s clearest descent into pure trolling — responding to a question about whether women who have abortions should get life without parole with the line, “I have hanging more in mind.”

As the Salon piece points out, all Williamson has done is strip away any soft soap gloss from the extreme radicalism of the Pro-Life position.  He has openly articulated the end game of the Pro-Life movement in a way most Pro-Lifers get uncomfortable and mumbly about when pressed, as this video shows.

 Of course the real world expression of this viewpoint is already affecting women's lives as many US states have started criminalizing miscarriages and attacking personal bodily autonomy based on junk science about the effect of maternal drug use on fetuses.

Birds flying high, they know how I feel

Working hard or hardly working?

The sun is shining, my coffee is hot and a lazy sunday lies ahead of me

And last night Rob Anders slunk away from
his humiliating defeat trying to parachute into the Bow River riding in a last desperate attempt to avoid having to work for a living.

Closed-minded, defiantly, proudly stupid.  arrogant, aggressively partisan no matter how inappropriate  the timing, racist, sectarian and homophobic (but repeated rumours that he's throwing stones from inside the closet.), a petty, dim, small minded thug with all of Ezra Levant's squirming, bulging eyed hatred but none of his even minimal flair or semi-articulate vocabulary.

Basically any chance or hope for growth that he had from the spit be-flecked, wild eyed  ideologue a lot of us flirted with as a persona in college, was ruined by his safe ensconcement in his clearly comfortable backbench seat the last 17 years.  Any incentive the rest of us had due to employment, relationships or just a social desire not to be perceived as a loud mouthed douchebag to sand off our rough edges, learn when to keep our nuttier ideas to ourselves and to not say stupid shit about Nelson Mandela has never been a factor for this sad, emotionally stunted horse's ass with parliamentary induced arrested development.

He will probably be scooped up by one of the wingnut welfare operations like the Fraser Institute, it doesn't serve their interest for him to be found delirious, wandering the streets of Calgary and playing with himself on street corners.  We will be paying him for a long comfortable retirement but not to the lifestyle he's grown accustomed to.

Rob if you are taking suggestions, instead go somewhere they have never heard of you, drop some E, find a bar with pounding beats and sweaty bodies and celebrate the death of Rob Anders MP.  This is your chance to explore becoming somebody else. 

God knows being him couldn't have been much fun.

Is Scotland about to leave the UK?

The UK is about to go through what we did in 1995 - but not necessarily with the same ending.

The headline trend could not be clearer: the poll for TNS showing that yes and no voters in Scotland are level-pegging at 41% among those who are certain they will vote is the second in three days to indicate that the final outcome in the referendum is too close to call.
But if the result on 18 September remains uncertain, the underlying trends are absolutely clear. The momentum is towards yes: in early July, no held a nine-point lead with the same pollster.
The figures tally with others that have been seen. The YouGov poll for the Sunday Times at the weekend gave yes a two-point lead – but no led by 22 points on 7 August.

I'm inclined to think both Scotland and the rest of Britain are better together - the actual slogan of the no to separation side - like here, the loss of the separating nation would tip the rest of the country far more right wing.

If the No side manages to pull out a last minute squeaker - very possible, polls showing a possible win for independence will have the more cautious supporters of independence reconsidering their vote now that its no longer a protest but a real possibility - expect to see a radical new round of devolution of powers to Scotland from the rest of the UK.

If the Independence side in Scotland wins I think we will feel it here when the Parti Quebecois and the Bloc both rise back from the dead overnight.

BC Parents dropping their Christy Clark $40 bribe checks right into the Teacher's strike fund kitty

They were at $12,000 a few hours ago the last time I looked, they're about to hit $15,000 now. 

This is BC parents giving to the Teacher's Strike fund, in denominations of $40.

The Christy Clark Liberals are throwing a farcical $40 a day bribe paid for with public funds at BC parents in a desperate attempt to deflect the well deserved blame for the teacher's strike.  The parents, in huge numbers, are then turning around and giving that money to the Teacher's strike fund.

The Christy Clark government is helping to finance the Teacher's Strike.

Can there be a more symbolic and perfect demonstration how utterly the Christy Clark government has lost this public relations battle? 

The Teacher's arbitration offer is just a twist of the knife, the government knows it can't win a fair, unbiased arbitration, or even come out even, and they can't explain to the public that they are rejecting arbitration because they can't live with a fair settlement.

All that's left to this war is shooting the wounded. 

Christy Clark's Liberals sacrifice BC children to protect Christy Clark's Liberals

School will start late in BC because the BC government wont agree to any deal with its teachers that doesn't give the government immunity from the Supreme Court for any consequences of its failure to bargain in good faith.

This government is sacrificing BC kids on the altar of protecting the BC Liberals from the consequences of their own misdeeds. Their blatant bad faith bargaining is going to end up costing millions of taxpayer dollars once the grievances finish winding through the arbitration process and they don't want to explain that to the voters.

When Fassbender proposed leaving grievances out of bargaining, and allowing the courts to settle the matter, he argued it would allow negotiations to focus on the key issues.

Iker, however, dismissed that proposal after Saturday’s talks.
“Does the government really expect that teachers would bargain away everything the B.C. Supreme Court has already awarded us?” he wrote in a release. “And what future decisions might bring?”

Persecution Complex

When a North American Christian claims they are persecuted, I hear 'I'm not allowed to persecute others the way I used to!'

Seriously, if anybody can give me an example that isn't that or 'Not allowed to treat our children like property that we can do anything we want to anymore.' I'd love to hear it.

You don't make Peace with your Friends

You make it with your enemies.

"It is a common sentimentalist assumption to hope that somehow the enemies will start understanding each other and liking each other and eventually they will reconcile and make peace. Throughout history things always work the other way round. Enemies with their hearts full of bitterness and hatred sign a peace contract with clenched teeth and revengeful feelings. Then, in the course of time, eventually there may come a gradual emotional de-escalation."

- Israeli writer Amos Oz

The Deliberate Ambiguity of Occupation

Israel has a policy of deliberate ambiguity about whether its control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is 'occupation'. Every other country on Earth including their closest ally the US says it is an occupation, Israel coyly argues it both is and isn't depending on which definition gives them the most flexibility under international law in any given scenario. 

In practice this leaves the Palestinians dispossessed, discriminated against and in the West Bank without recourse to the law when bands of violent, fanatical settlers descend from their hilltop bandit nests to attack Palestinian homes and crops and savagely assault any Palestinians who resist. 

 The Israeli police stand and watch.

It's time to stop coddling this sleazy little semantics game.

Le Monde diplomatique argues giving them three more years to the 50th Anniversary of the Occupation to once and for all define what they are doing as occupation or not. If its an occupation they are legally required to begin the process of withdrawal, if its not an occupation they are legally required to give full and equal legal citizenship rights to all the population under their control.

They have been allowed to be vague on this subject for almost FIFTY YEARS.

No longer.

The Iron Dome is a Scam

The Iron Dome is a scam according to experts inside and outside of Israel.

According to defence experts - plural - its a public relations exercise and it follows that both Israel and Hamas play along with it with because it suits both their interests for Hamas to seem more dangerous and effective than it actually is.

If the Iron Dome is actually stopping NOTHING and  if the 10% of sputtering rockets barely better than those you could buy from a roadside stand across the border before the fourth of July, that land randomly and have so far killed only one Israeli bringing supplies to the front line, if those pitiful few are actually the ENTIRETY of what is fired and each one is magnified automatically into multiple attacks....

Then you've got a combination appropriations scam, propaganda psyop and false or at least inflated justification for an attack that has taken hundreds of civilian lives including scores of children.

The last time someone as paranoid and vindictive as Stephen Harper was thwarted...

The one entity, one independent power that has stymied Stephen Harper again and again, contradicted his agenda, limited his options and overturned his decisions MULTIPLE TIMES in just the last few months has been the Supreme Court of Canada.

Does Stephen Harper strike anyone as someone who responds well to independent oversight or any restrictions on the exercise of his power?  Can we really count on Harper placidly accepting such an infuriating limitation on his exercise of power - clearly his number one constant priority?

There is a precedent, for a similar powerful, suspicious, paranoid and dictatorial leader being challenged by the judicial branch and lashing out violently in defiance of constitutional norms.  Should Canadians be watchful for our own high court equivalent of the Saturday Night Massacre?

Reversal of Fortunes

Rand Paul has a problem:  The American conservative movement KNOWS that 'Obamacare' is an expensive, repressive failure straight from the desk of Satan himself that is bringing a great darkness upon the land, slaughtering millions on the altar of government death panels, blighting the crops and turning good American kids gay. 

But Paul has the same problem as Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell; in their home sate of Kentucky the Democratic governor enthusiastically cooperated with Obamacare and KYnect (Stop that giggling!  It's NOT a funny name!)  the Kentucky state health care exchange has been one of the biggest success stories of the Affordable Care Act.   McConnell's method of dealing with this unfortunate political reality is to deny that KYnect and Obamacare are the same thing - a position that has resulted in scornful take downs within Kentucky and without.  Paul Just tries to dodge the question.

Thousands of people in Kentucky who would have died without the ban on refusal of coverage due to prior medical condition and the medicaid expansion consider the Kentucky KYnect application of Obamacare a lifesaver and attacking it directly is rapidly becoming political suicide in the state - deep in the heart of the firmly Republican south.

The time is rapidly approaching when Republicans will regret so firmly associating a President they hate with a program Americans are coming to love.  Which is probably why Republicans of yore were just smart enough not to call social security FDR-Security or Medicare LBJcare.

On the Value of Scorn

Of late we've been seeing a lot of bigots, kooks and reactionaries trying to adopt the language of victimization.

Gay rights advocates in the US are not being gracious in their victory over decent people who just wanted to go on treating a whole subset of humanity as second class citizens.  Now various laws designed in the last few years to attack, dehumanize and marginalize gay Americans  topple like dominos and they have the sads and gay rights supporters are being MEAN to them.

A conservative spokes clone accuses Bill Nye of being part of a vast conspiracy to bully people who believe that scientists must just be fibbing with this silly 99% of scientists believe global warming is real and human caused stuff. 

You big meanie!

Scorn is a useful social construct.  It exists for a reason.  In the marketplace of ideas scorn is the health department closure poster on a cafe door.

Some ideas and the people who promote them SHOULD be scorned.  Some positions should be career limiting and socially devastating. 

If you believe this nonsense you are wrong and you should feel bad.

That's how society evolves, less from the new ideas we adopt than from the ones we outgrow.

The Real Benghazi Scandal

For outside observers the spectacle of Republicans shrieking "Benghazi!" for the last few years has been so blatantly partisan propagandizing that you have to wonder how anyone falls for it.

There were more than a dozen attacks on US embassies and consulates under George W. Bush but despite that the Republican Party voted to slash $300 million from Embassy security over the strenuous objections of Obama and the Democrats.

Benghazi is a scandal. Its a Republican scandal.

Disassembled

Piece by piece Allison Redford's agenda of betrayal of the public service workers and progressive Albertans who elected her is rolled back, invalidated by the courts, abandoned and repudiated by the government. A premier who assumed all we Albertans were just inconveniently mouthy bit part players in her heroic story returns to the legislature to watch another major plank of her government shrivel and die.

Schadenfreude is the only appropriate response.

Former Alberta premier Alison Redford’s ill-conceived anti-union project is in shambles tonight, with an agreement to send two bills attacking public sector pensions to a legislative committee where they can die with dignity. 

With the car in the ditch, wheels spinning and headlights pointed skyward, the Progressive Conservative government of Premier pro tempore Dave Hancock agreed this afternoon to send the two controversial pension bills to the committee, which is supposed to report back in the fall. 

If sanity prevails within the PC caucus and the party remains mired at current levels of unpopularity, it seems likely this will lead to the eventual demise of both Bill 9, the Public Sector Pension Plans Amendment Act, 2014, and Bill 10, the Employment Pension (Private Sector) Plans Amendment Act, 2014. 

The agreement by Mr.Hancock’s PC government and all three Opposition parties also suggests the repudiation by Mr. Hancock personally of the radical program attacking public service unions and employees that emerged unexpectedly in the second year of the leadership of fired premier Redford, who finally reappeared in the Legislature today.

This is what a psychopath looks like

A Greenpeace representative tweeting a worried call for people to keep an eye out for a missing friend is an opportunity for this greasy specimen with a shit stained soul to mock him  and make political hay over a missing woman.

Being an unambiguous psychopath, he is doubtless incapable of shame,  but hopefully this display of complete lack of human feeling, concern and decency will follow him forever.

In the mean time everybody please keep an eye out for Louise Veillard, her friends and family are very worried about her.

So the state of Oklahoma tortured a man to death last night...

[Clayton] Lockett, 38, received the first dose of the three-drug cocktail at 6:23 p.m.The drugs were midazolam, which causes unconsciousness; vecuronium bromide, which stops respiration; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. They are administered in that order. The state has said the procedure is meant to involve three doctors with hand-held syringes, injecting the drugs into IV lines in both the inmate’s arms.At 6:33 p.m., 10 minutes after the execution began, a doctor said Lockett was unconscious. But three minutes later, Lockett began to nod and mumble and writhe, witnesses said. [...]A spokesman for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections [...] confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that Lockett did not die immediately after the lethal injection was administered.“The director did say that it appears that a vein [in Lockett's body] blew up or exploded, it collapsed, and the drugs were not getting into the system like they were supposed to,” spokesman Jerry Massie said.Massie said that after the new injection was administered, the condemned man “was obviously showing some movement.”“After several minutes, five minutes, he was not unconscious,” Massie said. “They made a decision to halt the execution, but at 7:06 he suffered a massive heart attack and expired.”

Anti-TFW But Pro-Immigration

It's important I think, in the mounting fervor against the Temporary Foreign Worker Program to remember that the workers in it are not the enemy.  These are people who are following the rules they were given in an effort to improve their families lives.  They have travelled thousands of miles to work hard and live frugally so they can send money home or save it up to someday bring their own families here.

It's all part of the same immigrant tradition as the family histories of most Canadians. 

I don't object in the slightest to competing for jobs against fellow citizens; workers who aren't afraid to stand up for themselves or change jobs or organize.  But migrant workers too afraid of being deported to do any of those things?  Workers who will put up with any abuse, tolerate any working conditions, be unwilling to even take sick days all because they are afraid of failing their families by being sent home?

Creating a class of workers that vulnerable and desperate and exploitable is bad for everybody.

Canada needs more people.  All the boomers will retire in waves and to afford the social safety net we want Canada will need more taxpayers than we will create with births alone.  We should increase immigration and make it faster and easier.

What we shouldn't do is create a permanently exploitable underclass.

"Yes, they are disenfranchised. Some of them don’t work for us anymore. But in the scheme of things, it doesn’t matter." - McDonald's Canada CEO John Betts

Betts spends much of the conference call railing against the CBC's coverage of the controversy — but admits there is truth to the stories.
"Here’s the kicker. The kicker is there’s an element of truth in each of these stories," Betts said.

"What we’ve got to do is fix what we have in the restaurants concerning the temporary foreign workers.
"But what we’ve also learned is that we have other opportunities in the people area that we also need to take care of. Violations of labour law. And those are the kind of things that suddenly become compounded because we have another issue over here, that’s very emotional in Canada."
With regard to the company's decision to halt its Temporary Foreign Worker Program, Betts told concerned franchisees that, "In dealing with the government, the smartest move was to pre-empt their move in terms of suspending us."
"I think the relationship we build with the minister here is a politically astute one to be taking. Because they're feeling the heat big time before this story broke and now it's bigger and bigger," he went on.
"They need to see us as partners in this as a brand that can help them make some progress on this and at the same time give us an opportunity to clean ourselves up."
At no point during the recording does the CEO mention hiring Canadians instead of temporary foreign workers or go over the rules of the federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

The plan is to wait till the heat dies down and get right back to business as usual. If the TFW doesn't get a stake in the heart from the Canadian public here and now it will come roaring back to life as soon as the public isn't looking. And suspending it just for the food sector doesn't help miners, IT staff, oil riggers. 

This government is Corporate Canada's eager servant and they are committed to wage suppression as an over-riding ideology before any other priority.

They are incapable of Governing

At what point does the fact that the Conservative government is just not competent enough at the process of government to produce laws that don't violate our guaranteed Charter rights and are therefore stuck down by the courts constitute political malpractice?

Are they just deliberately batting foul balls to have something to shout about judicial activism to their mouth breathing base over?

The Conservative government’s tough-on-crime agenda has suffered another major blow at the Supreme Court of Canada. The court blocked the government’s attempt to stop judges from routinely giving extra credit to offenders for time served in jail before sentencing.
The 7-0 ruling continues the losing streak of the Harper government in major cases at the Supreme Court over the past month.

The unanimous ruling is even written by one of Harper's own appointees! They were repeatedly warned this would happen and deliberately pissed away MILLIONS of taxpayer dollars to pass a law that anyone with even a child's understanding of the charter and existing sentencing law could and did tell them would be overturned by the courts. This is incompetence and wastefulness on a truly breathtaking scale.

Frankly it disqualifies them for governance.

Downfall

A surging third party and 25% of voters still undecided makes the coming Quebec election still too close to call but with the Liberals leading and the PQ declining we can be hopeful that after running one of the most despicable and cynical campaigns in recent Canadian history that the PQ are about to pay for their display of pandering xenophobia, scapegoating and contempt for the intelligence of the voters.

With the 'Values' Charter and the nomination of far right strikebreaker and propagandist Pierre Karl Péladeau they abandoned both liberalism and social democracy and it would be a very, very good message to the political elite if such blatant amoral opportunism ended with massive electoral disaster.

And a very bad message if it paid off.

The evidence keeps piling up

The Sun chain has often attacked the patriotism of others, often in the crudest of terms. Meanwhile they are owned by a supporter of and promote the agenda of a party dedicated to the destruction of Canada.

For example promoting and defending the PQ's despicable, pandering 'Values' Charter.

Quebec Premier Pauline Marois says if the Parti Quebecois is elected, it would, if necessary, invoke the notwithstanding clause in the Canadian charter to protect its controversial Quebec values charter. 

It is debatable whether the PQ would do so out of conviction or as a wedge issue in Quebec politics. Nevertheless, it would be a legitimate use of the notwithstanding clause. It enables provincial legislatures to override “fundamental rights”, including freedom of religion, conscience, expression and association.

The Sun: The official media chain of the campaign to destroy Canada

When you think about it, the Sun newspaper chain and Sun TV network being owned by an avowed separatist with the open and outspoken goal of destroying Canada is perhaps not that surprising; The Sun chain has always promoted discord, division, scapegoating and extreme ideology.  They have called for the abolition of things that bring us together as a country like the CBC, the Postal Service and the Canadian tradition of looking out for each other with a robust safety net, public healthcare and support for the weakest among us.  They have attacked workers and First Nations and immigrants and those demonstrating in the streets for a more responsive government.  They have imported a divisive and poisonous strain of political media from the US and the UK and appeared oblivious to the damage they inflict.

The owner of the Sun chain wants to break up Canada.  Is it perhaps time to wonder if he's been working towards that goal for YEARS?

The next time the Sun or one of their odious commentators attacks someone else's patriotism...

Lets just stop and enjoy the irony for the moment, of the owner of the rabidly right wing, aggressively 'patriotic' Sun newspaper chain and the even nuttier far right Sun TV network being a Separatist candidate in Quebec with the avowed goal of breaking up Canada.

If somebody who fought his way across Europe in 1944 wants to poke his finger into your chest you stand there and you take it

TORONTO - Turns out the public rage directed toward Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino was paid for by the union whose jobs are being cut.
The veterans' rage toward Fantino was put on display for the whole country to see. What wasn't told was their trip to Ottawa was paid for by the Public Service Alliance of Canada.
The whole show was orchestrated.
"The veterans were used by the union," Fantino said Thursday in his first interview since Tuesday's incident. "They were duped.

How condescending and disrespectful can you get? Its not his fault he was a rude self important pig, its the unions fault for 'duping' the apparently child-like and naive veterans. 

 Of course the Sun rushes to support even this feeble infantalizing claim like the loyal Tory PR firm that they are but check out the comments; its a bridge too far even for Sun readers and the scorn is withering.

Steyn by name, Stain by Nature

One of Canada's biggest blowhard exports south of the border may have plunged a stake into the heart of one of their premier right wing media operations.

The National Review magazine, longstanding house news organ of the establishment right, is facing a lawsuit that could shutter the publication permanently. According to The Week, a suit by a climate scientist threatens to bankrupt the already financially shaky publication and its website, the National Review Online (NRO). 

Scientist Michael Mann is suing the Review over statements made by Canadian right-wing polemicist and occasional radio stand-in for Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn. Steyn was writing on the topic of climate change when he accused Mann of falsifying data and perpetuating intellectual fraud through his research. 

Steyn went on to quote paid anti-climate science operative Rand Simberg — an employee of the right-wing think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute — who compared Mann to Penn State’s convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky.

Though the National Review likes to style itself as the genteel intellectual voice of American conservatism they are in fact a hard right operation that supported segregation, Apartheid South Africa and some of the most retrograde and reactionary ideas in American politics.  More recently on the website side of their operation they suggested that President Obama's mother must have been a communist because only a communist white woman could have married a black man.

They've been losing money for years and far from depending on the all knowing unseen hand of the marketplace of ideas have depended on subsidization by various sources - they probably can't survive either losing the suit or having to settle it.  Funny how calling someone a cheat and a fraud and comparing them to a child molester might have consequences isn't it?

Sitting back and enjoying the show.

Give it a rest

New rule: if you pull out the old "What about (Al Gore's, David Suzuki's, Neil Young's) carbon footprint?" chestnut I'm honestly going to pretty much tune out everything else you say because its an incredibly puerile, content free and utterly disingenuous distraction question designed to block any and all critical discussion about our fossil fuel economy by ANYONE.

It not only contributes nothing to the discussion its solely about throwing up roadblocks against any discussion. 

They didn't have their papers so they weren't allowed to travel from their Bantustan

A Manitoba MP is crying discrimination after two aboriginal women were not allowed to board a plane with her, even though they had tickets.

Niki Ashton, who represents the Churchill riding for the NDP, said Gail and Joyce Nepinak were scheduled to fly to Ottawa from Winnipeg with her on Sunday evening.

The Nepinaks had been invited by the House of Commons to speak at the special committee on missing and murdered indigenous women on Monday.
It is the first time the committee will hear from families.

Gail and Joyce don't have driver's licences or any other government-issued ID, which is required by airlines for passengers to board.

 Air Canada would not accept the Nepinaks' health cards, bank cards, their electronic boarding passes, a House of Commons invitation, or even Ashton vouching for them.

I have flown with less ID than the Nepinaks carry.  I don't drive so I don't have a driver's license, but I have flown multiple times since 9/11 with no problem whatsoever.  The rules seem to be different depending on some unknown  *cough* racism *cough* factor.

This is what our country is now, this is what Canada has become, and we are letting it happen.

Judicial Kabuki

As anyone and everyone could have predicted, the Alberta Tories attempt to legislate George Orwell's most feverish nightmares into existence will be challenged in the courts.

And the Government knows that when the laws have finally wended their way through the court's system they will be struck down.  Not maybe.  Not probably.

Inevitably.

They know this and are transparently counting on the years-long time line of public workers and all Albertans having their freedom of speech expunged getting to a judicial remedy to allow them to distract from covering up foster-care deaths in the short term and shaft public workers in the medium term.

It is a blatantly, disgustingly cynical and irrefutably deliberate abuse of the system.

It's also directly out of the the long sordid history of past right wing legal Kabuki, laws to allow licensed marriage commissioners and pharmacists engage in religious discrimination in their government licensed roles.  Who cares if they will eventually be overturned and how much the legal costs will be if they give the radical base a tingle up the pant leg when you need to throw them some meat?

You don't get to call yourself fiscally responsible or morally upright if you willingly waste millions of taxpayer dollars undermining human rights for as long as you can get away with it to promote your own party's partisan gain.

You don't even get to call yourself a 'human rights lawyer' anymore.

When a crazy stalker goes after someone who see's her coming

Poor Rachel.  I almost feel sorry for her only not really.

"Rachel Marsden – Come on down.

So a couple weeks back I get followed by one @RachelMarsden - I briefly glanced at her profile and saw she appeared to be a National Security and Political commentator so I followed back. She almost instantaneously began to make aggressive sexual advances to me in Twitter Direct Messages while also insisting she knew my true identity."

Anon-blogger/Hacktivist Jester goes on to exhaustively detail clumsy manipulation, narcissistic, genuinely creepy courtship rituals and an extended grand mal one-sided conversational melt down as Marsden slowly begins to realize she has been exposed, her oh so clever attempts at blackmail and sexual conquest have failed and she's being ignored.



But she is For hundreds of increasingly deranged and threatening messages. 

If this wasn't someone with a long, unambiguous, documented history of glomming onto and then destroying men this would seem meaner than it does.  With Rachel Marsden, who followed through on her threat to attack him in print and reveal what she thought was his identity (Jester denies she found and exposed the real thing, judge for yourself, I'm agnostic.) it seems like a public, preemptive act of self defence.   Jester is no saint, basically this is the story of Rachel Marsden coming up against someone smarter than she is and even meaner.

How will she sustain her act now that anyone she sets her mind on getting and/or destroying can find all her moves with 30 seconds of googling?

Losing their religion

When even The Calgary Herald agrees that legislation has gone too far in attacking unions and free speech it means we are halfway to Orwell's 1984.

"The passing of Bills 45 and 46 on Wednesday night mark a dark chapter in Alberta history.

...

The contract the government wants to impose is zero per cent for the first two years and then one per cent in each of the next two years. The union and province reached an impasse and the union decided to wait for binding arbitration, where it believed its chances would be better. That right and historic arrangement has been shredded.
Even more disturbing however, is Bill 45. Under this bill, public sector workers, union leaders and even members of the general public can be fined thousands of dollars for just musing about or encouraging a strike. If this sounds Orwellian, it’s because it is.
The fundamental right to freedom of expression is being violated here and should concern all citizens who value our rights and freedoms.
This legislation will also impose $250,000 fines per day for any illegal strike and a $1-million fine per day that would go into a liability fund. Fines for illegal strikes are not unusual, though these ones are onerous.
Needless to say, making it illegal to just talk about striking is the kind of law one might expect in some banana republic or other oppressive totalitarian state.

...

That Premier Redford actually has the gall to claim that among unionized workers “there’s an appreciation for what we’re trying to do,” is laughable.
Nobody believes that and no one can believe that a so-called human rights lawyer would allow such an abomination to the most fundamental right of any free and democratic society — the right to speak and say things that the state might not agree with."

 And we must never forget that the other motive besides sticking it to public workers, is to distract Albertans from the scandal over covering up the deaths of scores of vulnerable, mostly aboriginal children in provincial foster care.  This government is so cartoonishly evil they should be twirling their moustaches as they tie children and workers to train rails!

Laws of Nature.

The sun will rise in the east. Winter will follow Autumn. Falling objects will obey the law of gravity. And Rob Anders will be a blithering, drooling, verbally incontinent half-wit.

It's comforting to know the world contains some certainties.

“I have previously provided my thoughts on Nelson Mandela.“I will let history be the judge.

Nice Day for it

When Conservatives get in trouble due to their scummy worst instincts, whether it be covering up the deaths of scores of foster children in Alberta or being caught being pigs in the trough in the Senate they look for an enemy to burn at the stake or hang from the tallest tree to distract their nutter base.

The Auto-da-fé target du jour both provincially and federally is working Canadians who commit the horrific sin of banding together to defend and promote their interests, those evil thugs who believe employers owe their employees the opportunity to have a decent middle class lifestyle. The barking mad Conservative base is never happier than when someone half-baked libertarianism and sheer seething hatred for anyone who thinks differently than they do is getting it in the neck and the politician's corporate honchos are happy with the ongoing plan to turn Canada into a low wage economy in a mad race to the bottom with the slave labour economies of the developing world.

Middle Class Canadians watch their middle class lifestyles recede in the rear view mirror but maybe enough will say 'fuck you Jack, at least I've got MINE' to give the Conservatives another one of those razor thin margins of 30% or 35% of the population they laughingly refer to as a mandate.

"Oh well its a nice day for it, bring the kiddies - Oooh look at his feet kick!"

Shhhh, don't actually talk about what he stood for!

I can certainly see why the political right wants to brand any comment about what Mandela really stood for and what he would have thought of the right wing politicians with kind but neutering words for his legacy now as 'inappropriate'. How convenient a blockade to any public commentary about what Mandela stood for in the context of today's policies. 

How helpful a taboo to block discussion of the long sordid history of the Canadian right wing and politicians alive and active today who defended Apartheid, demonized Mandela and the South African opposition and promote the kind of policies today that Mandela was imprisoned for opposing. To hell with your sensitivity to 'appropriateness'. Its just another con.

Alberta's Premier Alison Redford, in a breathtaking display of cynicism, opportunism and hypocrisy seeks now to wrap herself in Mandela's legacy, this just after she has savagely curtailed labour and free speech rights for Albertans with the despicable bills 45 and 46.  

Mandela was a proud and steadfast supporter of organized labour, free speech and the rights of workers.  Here's a speech in support of a General strike that today would get him arrested in the Orwellian new Alberta created by Alison Redford.

Stephen Harper joins nervous right wing politicians across the world offering anodyne and neutering compliments to Mandela the Statesman.  He certainly doesn't want to talk about Mandela the revolutionary, Mandela the freedom fighter - that would open the rancid can of worms that is the toxic history of Apartheid apologists in the Canadian right wing in general and Stephen Harper specifically.

They want to lull us into forgetting who and what they are.

Don't let them.

Double standards

New Conservative Party policy:

"Federal public service unions and those in federally-regulated industries should tell their members how much of their dues go to political donations, media organizations and other political activism. Union members should be allowed to “opt out” of the portion of their dues that go to such activities." 

Does that mean that corporations should also be required to reveal how much of their profits go to 'political donations, media organizations and other political activism' and their customers should be allowed to opt out of the percentage of the costs of their products that go to such activities?

In Celebration of Labour Day: Market Failure's Biggest Hits

What so many managerial class fiscal conservatives never seem to get, is that the health of the Labour Market affects the health of the Market in general - and even the health and well being of the people in it. 

EG: The people least likely to get paid sick days or be able to afford unpaid ones are the people who handle your food.  The impact in lost productivity is many times what paying service workers enough to be above the poverty line and provide sick days would cost.

EG: With the winding down of train service and the increasing price of gas for a huge chunk of the Canadian population a single company, Greyhound, is their sole and only way of traveling.  A Corporate Monopoly controls the travel of millions of Canadians visiting family, following work or fleeing disaster.  They have used this monopoly to let service quality slide to virtually Dickensian levels and threaten to withdraw service without extortionate payoffs from provincial governments. 

EG: A neighborhood acquires a reputation and a customer base because of its character, its unique and independent businesses providing goods and services people cant find elsewhere.  That success causes commercial rents to rise.  And to continue to rise until all the independent, character filled small businesses are forced out of the area and replaced with the soulless  big-box chains that can afford the rents.  The thing that added value to the neighborhood is killed in the process of squeezing every last penny out of that value..

Anybody else have any examples?