Kelly McParland resurrects a classic racist smear divorced from history and reality

"If the U.S. does go ahead with plans to intervene, it will be doing so despite overwhelming public weariness across the western world with problems in the Middle East and Arab countries, with limited support from other western governments, and with no real appetite from Americans themselves. The experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan, the ongoing crisis in Egypt, the apparent lack of any progress in a region addicted to violence, have all been effective in diluting the West’s innate sympathy for the people of the region.  How often can you try to help people who don’t seem to want it and respond largely with anger and even more violence?"

Ahistorical, racist nonsense that deliberately ignores how often the West has intentionally stamped out any stirrings of real democracy in the region.

The end of Inevitability?

We all know that helpless frustrating feeling.

We are allowed to debate all we want, the majority can express their view clearly and unambiguously objecting in the streets and the ballot box.

The the elites will do what they want anyway.  'Austerity economics are inevitable and unavoidable', throwing ourselves into the latest military quagmire is the only real option, the drug war will continue no matter how much the majority object. Lie back and enjoy it or shake your adorable little fists either way the 'grown ups' will make the real decisions.

But suddenly that aura of inevitability is wavering.  The UK parliament stuns observers by actually reflecting the will of the British people and deciding NOT to blindly sign on to raining death down on the Syrian people to object to the Syrian government possibly having rained death down on the Syrian people.  Harper and Mckay go back to the old filthy propaganda well to try to smear Trudeau as promoting drug use to children (won't SOMEONE think of the children?) but despite their smears the Liberal's popularity actually jumps as Canadians go, 'Yeah? So he's admitting publicly to what a huge percentage of Canadians do or have done privately? Good for him.'  In the US the drug war shows every sign of beginning to officially wind down as Obama's Justice Department signals it will not sabotage the will of individual states to stop treating Marijuana like Satan's leafy friend.

The discredited orthodoxy of austerity still dominates the discourse of mainstream politics worldwide, despite the will of the public but even there cracks are beginning to appear.

Could we finally be getting past the stale argument that there is no choice but what the elites tell us so we should just be grown ups and accept it?

Starvation Experiments

The story appeared yesterday and seems to have sunk beneath the surface with nary a ripple.

Beginning in 1942, and ending nobody seems to know when, Canadian government bureaucrats deliberately withheld food and nutritional supplements from native communities and native children to chart the progress of various kinds of malnutrition.

Some communities would get vitamins, others as the control groups would not.  Residency schools would get half their milk ration cut to observe the effect on the tiny bodies imprisoned within. Dental services would be deliberately withdrawn from groups of children to better see the progress of malnutrition related gum disease and tooth decay.  Adulterated food that could not be legally sold to white people would be provided to see its effects.

These horrific, Mengele reminiscent experiments with the hungry bodies of children weren't performed in Nazi death camps they were conducted in Canada only a few short decades ago.

Where is our outrage?

Underwater

Been a wet day here.

This is three blocks away from me.

I live in the downtown core of Calgary.  A relatively dry spot two blocks outside the evacuation zone.  I'm high and dry on the 26th floor of an apartment building but I'm not going anywhere.  We are completely surrounded by evac zones and all of the bridges in and out of downtown are closed.

On the plus side still have power and clean water and the river water appears to have crested.

 

New occupants of the courthouse jail-cells, evac'd from the zoo.

There's an eerie ghost town quality to the streets below.  I've lived in Calgary almost 25 years this is dramatically different in scope and severity to any flooding the city has experienced in the past (1994, 2005 - neither were anywhere close to as severe.)  the irony is inescapable: the major power center of the global warming industries of Canada is experiencing what is very likely the consequence of severe climate change.

And next week a political party more concerned with attacking trade unions than even acknowledging the existence of climate change is meeting here.

Class War at its most blatant

To the Tories this is win-win.  

Get a Judge venal enough to jump at a dangled Senate appointment and they get legislation designed to crush Canada's Labour movement past the courts.

 Get a Judge who actually respects Canada's constitution they get to rant about activist judges to their base when its over-turned.

Either way the Canadian people pay for the Conservative Party's ideological war with the concept of workers banding together to protect and promote their interests.

Critics of a controversial bill requiring unions to disclose in-depth financial details are calling on its supporters to produce a constitutional expert to testify the bill can pass legal muster — because they don’t believe that one exists. 

As Bill C-377 enters its second week of Senate committee hearings, several constitutional scholars are speaking out against the Conservative private member’s bill that would force labour organizations to disclose to the Canada Revenue Agency how they spend the dues they collect. 

Such experts — including the Canadian Bar Association and law professors who testified at last week’s Senate hearings — say it violates Charter guarantees to privacy and freedom of association, and encroaches on provincial jurisdiction.

Perspective

So Torontonians, the next time you are tempted to stereotype Calgarians as a bunch of redneck rubes, our Mayor is an urbane Muslim college teacher.

Your Mayor is Chris Farley with a crew-cut.

$90,000

It appears to be the magic right wing scandal number right now.  It's the amount Stepen Harper's chief of staff surreptitiously paid to a sitting Senator in order to stonewall an embarrassing audit.

And now its the amount the Alberta Wildrose Party has been charged by the CRTC for unsolicited and deceptive robo-calls during the the last provincial election.  Good luck finding out about it from Alberta's right wing cheer-leaders pretending to be unbiased media. Only Global Media tersely reports the story but declines to report the nature of the calls.

I received one of the calls personally and immediately recognized it as a Wildrose push-poll.

There were lots of questions like "If you knew that PC leader Allison Redford supported the Liberal daycare plan of Paul Martin and opposed Stephen Harper's parental credit alternative and hired a campaign manager who didn't pay his debts would you be more or less likely to support her?"

The call didn't identify itself as being from the Wildrose Party, didn't identify itself as campaign material, in fact deliberately presented itself as a poll with the implication of impartial information gathering and was a deliberate, sleazy attempt to damage Allison Redford by implying, horrors, that she was a squishy liberal.

Global's story twists itself into knots to avoid mentioning any of this.

$90,000.  A number that now represents the venality, arrogance and media granted impunity of Canada's political right.

Don't insult us

The most rigid control freak running the most hierarchical top down PMO, controlling the most micro-managed government in Canadian history and we're supposed to believe Harper's chief of staff short-circuited Puffy's embarrassing audit with a thick wad of cash WITHOUT Harper's knowledge? Pull the other one.

The BC voter:

Wait, what?

Am I the only one weirded out by the reaction of Americans to the shooting of 19 people at the New Orleans Mother's Day Parade? 

"OhGodOhGodOhGod!!!....wait it's just drug and gang related? Whew! We were worried for a second..."

What?

"Public Sector unions are a blight on society"

 ...says convicted felon and well known douchebag.

Region of Guatemala under Martial Law to Protect Canadian Business Interests

A Canadian silver mine.  Local residents afraid their home and way of life will be irretrievably poisoned frustrated that their protests are ignored and the mine is treated as inevitable.

Now military, police and Canadian paid private security forces hold sway and civil rights are on hold. 

Does this make you proud to be a Canadian?

[Posted from Guatemala City]
Residents of four towns east of Guatemala's capital woke up to news that their communities had been placed under a 30-day State of Siege by the administration of President Otto Perez Molina, following anti-mining protests that turned violent. One policeman was killed, six civilians were wounded by rubber bullets, and a number of police cars were burned and overturned on roadways. Here is the government's official public announcement. Public gatherings in the area are banned for 30 days.


According to Guatemalan Defense Minister Col. Ulises Giron Anzueto Noah (shown at right, photo today by Carlos Andrino), 3,500 total personnel participated in operations to bring the "estado de sitio" (state of siege) into effect. Some soldiers entered the areas in armored personnel vehicles and tanks. Hundreds of police officers were involved, as were private security officers for the Canadian-owned Escobal mine at the center of the controversy.

Whining Corporate Welfare Bums

Quebecor, the owners of Sun News also own Videotron, a cable company serving almost two million subscribers in Quebec and Ontario.  They are before the CRTC right now demanding that Canadians subsidize their Sun News operation by being forced to have it added to all cable packages with an accompanying increase in cable bills.  They claim this is necessary because they aren't seen in enough households and they need this forced government subsidy to survive.

When asked why they don't automatically add Sun News to their own Videotron cable network with prominent channel placement as they have every right to do and are NOT doing now they had no answer.

Why should the Canadian people be forced to provide corporate welfare to a private TV channel that their own owner won't support and promote?

25 Years Ago

Dedicated to all the Truthers, Birthers and Midnight Nerf Herders.

"The kooks are our future. The average fifth-grader these days doesn't know whether Japan is a state or a city; wonders what happens when you get to the "edge" of the United States on a map...and even believes that the government is there to protect him!

The years to come promise incredibly fertile fields for the sowing of superstition, cultism, and pseudoscience; they'll grow so fast we'll wonder if there had ever really been an Age of Reason.

Make no mistake, it shall be a rich harvest for industrious Skull Farmers of every creed; the brains of the all-too-willing are out there, ripening...millions of potential vegetables just waiting to be plucked, shucked, and hauled off to market."

-Introduction to High Weirdness by Mail by Rev. Ivan Stang of the Church of the SubGenius, 1988

Keep Calm and Stay Strong

Muslims all over the world today woke up, read that the Marathon bombers had been tentatively identified as being from Chechnya, home of Russia's own simmering war with Islamist insurgents and thought some variation of 'aw, crap.'

Muslims are once going to be tarred with an ugly brush over this and an overwhelmingly loyal and law abiding American Muslim community is no doubt battening down the hatches and preparing themselves for a long national strip search.

 They will be accused of 'Not condemning terrorism' vociferously enough - were all white right wingers quizzed about their loyalty after Oklahoma City? Muslims from different regions, different ethnicities and different religious traditions will again find themselves conflated with the kind of extremists every faith produces and Jihad, a word with far ranging and subtly distinct definitions, primarily meaning to most Muslims a kind internal spiritual struggle to live up to the tenants of their faith will once again be bandied about as meaning nothing but terrorism and murder.

I'd like to believe Americans have been inoculated against the hate-mongers and divisive demagogues by the last decade - but I'm very much afraid that the terrorist goal of spreading division and fear and mistrust will be eagerly abetted by the same people who helped fan it last time.

 This week has kind of sucked.

The Personal and the Political

"Did they expect us to treat them with any respect?

they can polish their medals and sharpen their

smiles, and amuse themselves playing games for a while

boom boom, bang bang, lie down you're dead" 

Pink Floyd, The Fletcher Memorial Home

I've read some truly nauseating screeds in the last few days about individual acts of civility and grace by Margaret Thatcher that supposedly put the lie to her being heartless and cruel. I'm reminded of Sam Donaldson saying of Reagan that if you were down on your luck he would give you the shirt off his back - then sit down shirtless at his desk in the Oval office and with a stroke of his pen take your parent's social security away, your kid's school lunches away and the poor's welfare away. That kind of disconnect between the personal and political isn't evidence of a secret hidden heart, just a failure of imagination and empathy bordering on psychopathy.

Remember when Jack Layton was harshly attacked for pointing out that the social cuts that Paul Martin's liberals committed literally meant they had blood on their hands because of the deaths they would cause? Who's interests are served by the suggestion that pointing out the real human costs of policy is out of bounds?

Maggie Thatcher was hated and reviled for causing real human costs and suffering to thousands of real people. Suggesting that hatred is inappropriate is the real disrespect.

DING DONG

Margaret Thatcher, dead at 87.

For those about to whine about respect for the dead, showing respect for this monster would constitute disrespect for her victims.

She was a vicious autocratic demagogue who figured out how to scrape up a working majority of barely 30% of the population while viciously abusing the rest - sound familiar at all?  She engaged in active class warfare massively redistributing wealth upwards while slashing away at the social safety net at the same time and demonizing the poor.

She attempted to outlaw the very concept of homosexuality.  She engaged in a shameless military adventure to hold onto power before an election she was about to lose, instituted a poll tax to suppress the vote of those who opposed her, supported fascist dictatorships like that of Chile's Augusto Pinochet as if keeping autocrats holding power through torture and death squads in charge was a holy mission and supported the racist regime of Apartheid South Africa - and for those about to argue that was just Cold War anti-Communism her own values can be inferred by the fact her son was later convicted for plotting a Rhodesia style white military coup against an African government.

Good riddance, the world would have been better off without her.
.

The leeches at the top bleeding us dry

So private interests take over gigantic communications infrastructures built by the sweat and millions of the Canadian public for pennies on the dollar.  They then reduce quality of service to the bare minimum they can get away with, eliminate thousands of well paying jobs reducing the anemic Canadian middle class even further while exporting those jobs out of Canada to third world sweat shops and taking away all the rights and job security of those few employees left that they can. 

For this their soulless, piggy eyed CEO is feted as a corporate genius and paid 11 million a year.

Welcome to Canada.

Rape culture

A radical suggestion to Candy Crowley of CNN, who all but wept at the sentencing of the Steubenville rapists and the awful effect it will have on their bright futures:

If you rape and piss on an unconscious teenage girl your lives SHOULD be over!

The mask ripped off

So of course austerity is ordinary people stolen from to pay for the wild partys thrown by bankers and speculators.  Of course it is.  I know that and since you are reading a politics blog you  probably know that too.

But for everyday people who don't follow the news and whose lips curl at politics talk much less economics, who have been fed on an endless diet of lies about what we can afford and why and contempt for the poor as if they were the ones stealing from them - to them austerity has been sold as a correction to costly indulgences we can no longer afford, for them austerity doesn't currently feel like theft.

As if decades of giveaways to big business and the super-wealthy and the deliberate hollowing out of revenues had never happened.

Then Cyprus.

"It’s as if the Europeans are holding up a neon sign, written in Greek and Italian, saying “time to stage a run on your banks!”" 
- Paul Krugman
 
The elite are now openly and sanctimoneously planning to pay for the disaster they caused by directly looting the bank accounts of ordinary people.

First they came for welfare and I said nothing because I wasn't on welfare.  Then they came for education and I said nothing because l wasn't a student. Then they came for healthcare and I said nothing because l wasn't sick.

Then they came for my bank account.  By then it was too late.

Wake up!

They picked a new Godfather

The Catholic Church, where the least controversial candidate for the top job is the guy accused of collaborating with a military dictatorship that murdered 30,000 people.


UPDATE: As Dawg points out, Bergoglio recently angrily denounced a plan by Agentina's current leftist government to legalize gay marriage as 'the work of the devil'.  He said NOTHING while a right wing government was murdering 30,000 people, operating torture chambers around the clock with the active participation of priests and kidnapping leftist women and giving their children to loyal right wing supporters of the regime.

In his defense that he helped smuggle people out of the country, interceded for kidnapped dissident priests and tried to recover kidnapped children during the dictatorship he has revealed that he was unambiguously lying when he said he didn't know about these crimes of the regime until years later.

So legalizing loving relationships between people of the same gender is a secular leftist government doing the work of the devil.  Torture, kidnapping and murder by a right wing government that publicly presented itself as the defender of the faith merited no such condemnation.

This is your wake up call

The God of Drums

Know them by their enemies

Hey Canadian media, since Idle No More's biggest critics are all publicly beshitting themselves and being exposed as rapists, batterers, petty fraudsters and supporters of the sacred liberty to view pictures of children being molested - is it maybe time for a reappraisal?

Songs for Justin

Two songs dedicated to the Liberal Party, once again picking dreamy school girl crush as their leadership criteria.

Some offense.

The Green Party is a Con-job

In Europe the various national Green Party's are real and valid progressive alternatives with a history of positive contribution to promoting progressive values and ideals.

In Canada the Green Party is a false flag operation.  A deliberate right wing stalking horse designed and promoted with the explicit goal of splintering the progressive vote.

When David Suzuki, quite reasonably, refused to appear at a venue with a Sun News 'reporter' in attendance after the contemptible attacks they regularly make upon him, Elizabeth May sided with Fox News North and gave their attending propagandist a big friendly hug.  The Sun News quisling then gushed about how much she 'respects' May.

So think about that.  Doctor Suzuki doesn't want to pander to a propaganda operation by treating them as if they were really journalists that is deliberately and repeatedly attacking him in the crudest and most contemptible terms precisely because he is such a credible opponent to the Conservative Party's slash and burn approach to the environment .  Elizabeth May gives Fox News North a big hug and the Sun News pod person takes pains to say how much she 'respects' her.

At this point anyone still supporting the Canadian Green Party is either a dupe or in on the con.

De Facto Two-Tier Healthcare

Alberta always a hotbed of innovation, has secretly developed a two tier parallel healthcare system for the elites, that Ralph Klein spent years trying to create in law.

But hey maybe that's a little harsh.  Just because elite private clinic  patients paying $10,000 a year (for better magazines in the waiting room?) were getting tests in weeks the general public was waiting months or years for doesn't mean anything unsavory was going on.

And if you believe that then I'm sure the Conservative Party appreciates your support because clearly you'll fall for anything.

Staff of a Calgary private medical clinic that is the focus of allegations of queue jumping told a provincial inquiry on Tuesday that its patients, who each paid up to $10,000 a year for care, were not buying special access to the public health system.

Witnesses have told the inquiry that patients from Helios Wellness Centre routinely got access within weeks to colonoscopies at Calgary’s publicly funded Forzani & MacPhail Colon Cancer Screening Centre while the general public waited years for the same tests. One witness testified that a Helios doctor told him during a tour of the private clinic that it was set up as a “reward” for well-heeled donors to the University of Calgary.

The next time one of your family or loved ones cant get the test they need to save their life, remember the elites avoid the pain they have inflicted through mismanagement and chronic underfunding of the Alberta public sector by breaking the rules designed to ensure fair access to the health system they are undermining.

Heard it too many times

Don't say it!

Ethnic cleansing, forced re-settlement, less political and social rights based on religion or skin colour, laws demanding fealty to the state religion, laws restricting marriage rights between Jews and Arabs - now coerced government sterilization of a minority even if only temporary - but there's one historical comparison with these things you are never ever allowed to make no matter what.

Israel has admitted that it has been giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants birth control injections, according to a report in Haaretz. An Israeli investigative journalist also found that a majority of the women given these shots say they were administered without their knowledge or consent.

"Wow that sounds just like..." Don't finish that sentence you filthy antisemite!

Pop Quiz

Identify the true statement:

1. Trip Hop pioneers Massive Attack are writing the soundtrack to a Broadway musical version of King Kong.
2. Wrangler are releasing a line of jeans that are infused with skin cream and moisturize your ass while you are wearing them.
3. Socialist welfare state Norway is so much better at managing oil resources than the free market utopia of Alberta that its version of the Heritage Fund is 41 times bigger, they have a fraction of Alberta's income inequality and huge surpluses to spend on infrastructure and social programs.

Answer: ˙ǝɹǝɥ puɐ ǝɹǝɥ 'ǝɹǝɥ ǝǝs  ˙ǝnɹʇ ןןɐ ǝɹɐ ʎǝɥʇ 'uoıʇsǝnb ʞɔıɹʇ ɐ s,ʇı  ¡ǝɥɔʎsd

Manufacturing Indifference

The Canadian mainstream media willfully participate in a smear campaign designed to undermine an attempt by a community's leader to bring their desperate plight to light and then are shocked that they aren't welcomed with open arms.

If an auditor flew in to your company or your town and giving you  limited time and resources to cooperate, conducted an audit/witch hunt that the courts later ruled was unnecessary and possibly illegal and found, in a two year span, approximately 30 missing invoices and receipts, would you conclude that your company or town was corrupt?  Or would you conclude that running a large community with huge social and economic problems with limited resources can easily result in a couple dozen receipts going missing in the span of a couple years?

Oh and by the way, this was during a period of co-management by the government (which the courts actually ruled was an unreasonable remedy), these problems occurred while the government appointed co-manager had signing authority.

Spence cleaned things up massively when she came in., The problems at the reserve were not caused by theft or mismanagement but lack of sufficiant resources and the reserve has been ASKING for a real forensic audit for years. The few examples brought up in the smear job can probably be cleared up by asking vendors for confirmation of purchases as the reserve themselves requested. 

The smear job by the government with the active complicity of the media has accomplished its goal: the message that  'corrupt, incompetent Indians are wasting or stealing all the generous support your tax dollars pay for so you can safely stop paying attention' has been delivered and gratefully swallowed. All the followups pointing out the truth will either be confined to alternative media and ignored, or actively suppressed as the Kinsella Sun piece was. The media did their job as the interests they are paid to defend see it.

UPDATES:  Sorting out the spin and counting the real money

Any Questions?

Seems legit.....

So let me get this straight: It would be wrong for the Canadian government to own and administer any of our resources like the Oil Sands for the good of the Canadian people because that would be socialism - but it's ok for the communist Chinese government to own our resources for the good of the Chinese people because that wouldn't be?

 Makes perfect sense.

Not just Un-Canadian. Inhumanly vicious and depraved

The pathologically sadistic and demented Harper government has now gone so far they managed to shock the conscience of Saskatchwan's right wing Premier Brad Wall.  Or maybe he just realized it would appall his constituents.

Premier Wall called Ottawa’s decision to deny chemotherapy to a refugee in Saskatoon "un-Canadian.” Now, the Province of Saskatchewan is stepping up to the plate.
The province will pick up the tab for chemotherapy for a man seeking asylum in Saskatoon. The man says he fled Pakistan when he was persecuted for his Christian faith.
Shortly after arriving however, he was diagnosed with cancer, and the federal government refused to pay for treatment.

Ottawa quietly introduced changes in the spring to the Federal Health Program, which cut drug, dental and vision care for refugee claimants.  These cuts were highlighted in a recent mail out by Saskatoon area MP Kelly Block. The mail outs triggered protests, saying the language was inappropriate and offensive.

The  display of small minded, xenophobic demagoguery by MP Kelly referred to was this:

Block lets her constituents know that she is working hard for them and "ending unfair benefits for refugee claimants." The mail-out goes on to say, "new arrivals to Canada have received dental and vision care paid for by your tax dollars. Not anymore."

The pamphlet then asks constituents to answer a questionnaire that provides two options. A respondent can agree either with the statement, "I agree with Kelly Block. Newcomers don't deserve more benefits than Canadians," or, "I disagree. Refugee claimants should get dental, vision and phar-macare even if I don't."

To say that the MP's mail-out to constituents is misleading is an understatement.

Actually, if you are a government-sponsored refugee, health benefits such as vision and dental care continue. But if you are a refugee sponsored by a church group, those benefits ended as of June 1. We now have two different classes of refugees in Canada as a result of the federal government's rule changes.

Block's reference to "newcomers" leaves the impression she is talking about all immigrants. For the record, most immigrants who land in Canada - particularly if they come under the immigrant nominee program - never have had dental, vision care or pharma-care benefits. In the past, all refugees did.

Unseating Stephen Harper and his merry band of repugnant toadies is now a moral necessity in order to save the soul of this country.

Just a thought

Critics of Israel's actions in the Gaza are once again being tarred with the pro-terrorist, anti-Israel even anti-Semitic brush. Yes, during a prison riot the guards and the people living outside the prison have a right to defend themselves. It doesn't mean the reasons for the prison riot and the methods of quelling the riot AND the justification for the prison's existence in the first place aren't legitimate topics of discussion.

 Also it was just a few decades ago that critics within and without Israel were saying that seeking to undermine Yasser Arrafat and the PLO by promoting and supporting the Islamist opposition to the PLO was an immoral, short-sighted idea that would be bad for Israel in the long term. Hamas was essentially the creation of care and feeding by the Israeli government and people who opposed that creation were accused of being soft on terrorism, being anti-Israel even anti-Semitic.  Please note that the source link for that statement is that well known purveyor of lefty conspiracy theories The Wall street Journal.

 At some point, based on track record alone, maybe critics of Israel should be listened to rather than slurred.

'Pro-Life' laws murder women

Savita Halappanavar, dead at 31

A sincere message to the Republican Party:

Common Ground

The messy balance between protecting free expression and prohibiting incitement, villification and threat in Canada is a valid subject for debate, but I think we can all come together and find common ground in the sincere belief that the Koran burning pastor 'Reverend' Terry Jones is an asshole.

My country's border control having a 'no assholes' rule is something I'm reasonably comfortable with.

Holy Writ Rant

I know its been a while since my last post.  As an antidote for the time of universal dishonesty we live in, here's the entire masterpiece Rant in E Minor by the irreplaceable Bill Hicks. The greatest comedy album ever recorded.  Dennis Leary stole 90% of his act from Bill Hicks and this album will make you realize just how weak and pathetic mainstream so called comedians are. Listen and weep. With laughter AND sorrow that Bill Hicks was taken from us the same year this was released.

NSFW as fuck.

Meanwhile in Florida...

Republican outreach to Women:

Only Themselves to blame

Republicans. A couple months from now, the day after the election as you are feeling that dismal stomach churning angry despair over there still being a black man in the White House, please remember that you lost the election long before the final coup de grâce in the voting booth.

Let us have no whining about non-existent vote fraud. You rode that hobby horse as hard as you could to suppress the non-white vote as much as you could. Even wide scale Jim Crow style minority voter suppression can't save you this time.

Don't console yourself that the media was against you and you were treated unfairly by the press. It is in the media's interest to pretend there was more of a competition than there really was and they have spent most of the campaign propping you up and withholding the scrutiny you really deserved. Not to mention having an entire TV news network entirely in the tank for you.

When the media turned on you it was because you gave them no choice. If a Democrat had lodged his foot as deeply into his mouth as Aiken did would you not be enraged if the media soft pedaled it? And all Aiken did is say what Republicans actually believe out loud.

Republicans, the enormity of the defeat awaiting on election day will be purely and entirely your fault. You are the ones who chose to so completely alienate women, Latinos, young people, old people and independents.

And don't pretend you were given no chance to talk about real issues with the public - that's what killed you, you were.

You've claimed for years that you want to run on the issues and values you stand for, that any defeats in the past were because you held back from running on your real beliefs, goals and governing history. Well you are going all in on the right wing extremism this election and the voters are abandoning you in droves.

You are going to lose and lose badly and you will own your defeat utterly.

Get him off the Street!

Despicable swaggering bully Const. Taylor Robinson, who shoved a disabled woman to the ground in an unprovoked assault still thinks he did nothing wrong.

"It's important to know the officer has never acknowledged really any wrongdoing in shoving Ms. Davidsen and has continually held to the unbelievable position that she was grabbing for his gun," Bernstein said Tuesday.
"The video shows her hands nowhere near his gun," he said of the June 2010 incident. "It really is unbelievable he can continue holding to this position, but that's what he's doing."

If he doesn't think he did anything wrong that's basically a 100% guarantee he will do it again or something even worse if he thinks he can get away with it.

Corporate Atrocity Enablers

When Iran wants to spy on its citizens international Telecommunications firm MTN helps them do it.  When Syria is about to roll tanks into a neighbourhood and blast it into rubble MTN helpfully shuts off their phone and Internet service first.

Tell MTN what you think of international corporate citizens helping dictatorships spy on and murder their citizens.

Republicans debating their Social Welfare policy:

Return of the Mythical Horse Race

There's been angst from liberals and conservatives with a modicum of sanity and exultation from the far right over Mittens' choice of Paul 'Sarah Palin with a Penis' Ryan as his running mate. Lots of hopeful pronouncements from the American media about how this radically shakes up the race.

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, bullshit.

Mitt Romney's speech introducing his new running mate was was his concession speech. This was Mitt Romney being told by the Grey Eminences of the GOP to write off his shot at the White House and simply provide Ryan with his entry point for the 2016 race.

But.. but.. Obama is only a few points ahead of Romney in the polls and the jobs situation in the US is still dismal (Due to Republican obstructionism but they have Fox News to blame it on Obama 24/7) so how can you say that?!?

Remember what we all learned over the last few American election cycles; the popular vote isn't what selects the President, it's the Electoral College vote.

And in the Electoral College vote polling Obama has an all but insurmountable 84 vote lead over Romney and Mittens would need to get the equivalent of multiple Royal Flush hands on election night to beat him. There is virtually no path to victory to the White House left for the Republicans.

Demographically the current old, white, mean and male GOP is a dead party walking. They've spent the last few years spitting on women and Latinos, alienating independents and watching their constituency die off and not be replaced. They are, in a word, screwed. This was about the last Presidential election that the current iteration of the Republican Party had even half a chance of winning and that chance evaporated over the last couple years as income inequality, traditionally not on the American political agenda became item number one.

Of course it isn't in the Mainstream Media's interests to admit that short of something absolutely cataclysmic and unprecedented Obama is going to romp to a huge victory on election day so expect the drama to continue, just don't make the mistake of thinking its based on reality.

Democrats and commentators should use this mythical horse race meme over the next several months to argue that a defeat of Romney/Ryan in November is an ultimate and decisive repudiation of the Republican agenda. 

And then act like it when it happens.

Zombie Eyed Granny Starver

When Jimmy Breslin called Rudy Giuliani "A small man in search of a balcony." I never thought I'd hear a better one line description of a politician. Then Charles P. Pierce called Paul Ryan 'A zombie eyed granny starver.'

Mark this day down as the point Mitt Romney decided he just didn't really want to be President after all.

Betraying a Hero

The wife of the first woman in space Sally Ride will receive no survivor benefits because of small minded, petty homophobes who support the Defence of Marriage Act.

Sally Ride was the first American woman in outer space. Upon hearing the news of her death last week, media outlets and celebrities alike celebrated Ride as a hero. But under federal law, Ride’s domestic partner of 27 years will not receive death benefits or Social Security payments. Is that any way to treat a hero?

The Slaughter Continues

Three horses, three beautiful majestic animals killed in the Chuck Wagon races at Stampede.  We all knew it wasn't a matter of if, only when.

Can it still be called a tragedy if its as regular as clockwork?

Fuck your tradition.  It isn't worth a single horse's life, much less dozens.

Nancy Grace: Disgusting Evil Monster

Irresponsible self righteous bully drives another troubled woman to suicide:

A tragic accident, a loving mother with a drinking problem accidentally smothers her newborn while sleeping with it.  Police believe it was unintentional, a tragic accident, but the grieving mother faces manslaughter charges leaving the courts to decide the matter. 

In rides Nancy Grace to dub her 'Vodka Mommy' and DEMAND murder charges.  After watching herself be pilloried on national television followed by a campaign of harassment by the despicable Ms Grace's lynch mob fans, the grieving mother kills herself by self immolation.

This brings the repugnant Ms Grace's death toll from her harassment to two.  Why does CNN still give her a platform for her despicable bullying?

Jesus was pretty clear about conservatives...

“‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

We can't afford Stephen Harper

Real Change

The Liberals and Conservatives have the same governing goal: managing and facilitating Corporate rule. The Liberals add a touch of noblesse oblige while the Conservatives pine for the days of the lash and prison time for not doing what you are damn well told.

For the first time we have a federal opposition that is actually operating from a different paradigm from that of the government.  Harper deliberately tried to engineer this believing that if the alternative was the Conservatives and the NDP the Canadian public would never choose the NDP.  The Liberals won many elections by convincing skittish progressives of the same thing.
 
A solid year of neck and neck polls and growing comfort with the NDP from the Canadian public suggests Harper's ideological blind spots have once again trumped his supposed Machiavellian brilliance.
 
A government that actually IS on the side of ordinary Canadians is within our reach

I Love Canada

The Canada Stephen Harper has openly revelled in his hatred for and unambiguously promised to destroy.   #DenounceHarper

Sourced from Unseat Harper

"You have to remember that west of Winnipeg the ridings the Liberals hold are dominated by people who are either recent Asian immigrants or recent migrants from eastern Canada; people who live in ghettos and are not integrated into Western Canadian society."
Report Magazine, 2001

"Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society. It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff."
Interview with Terry O’Neill of BC Report newsmagazine, 1999

"[Y]our country [the USA], and particularly your conservative movement, is a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world."
Speech to a Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, June 1997

"Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it"
Speech to a Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, June 1997

"In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance."
Speech to a Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, June 1997

"Canada appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status ..."
Op-ed article in the National Post, December 12, 2000

"Now 'pay equity' has everything to do with pay and nothing to do with equity. It’s based on the vague notion of 'equal pay for work of equal value,' which is not the same as equal pay for the same job."
National Citizens Coalition Overview, Fall 1998

"For taxpayers, however, it’s [pay equity] a rip-off. And it has nothing to do with gender. Both men and women taxpayers will pay additional money to both men and women in the civil service. That’s why the federal government should scrap its ridiculous pay equity law."
National Citizens Coalition Overview, Fall 1998

There's no hidden agenda, he's been quite open about it.

Tory Government: Screw the disabled!

The opposition tried to bring forward amendments to the bill but the government rejected them. Even an amendment that would have allowed those with perceptual disabilities, such as deaf or blind Canadians, to break digital locks in order to transfer the content to Braille or to add subtitles for closed captioning was defeated.

NDP MP Charlie Angus was livid Friday over the government's refusal to make a minor tweeks to the legislation.

"My daughter went through school deaf and to get copyright material she had to actually break the lock rhythm which is used to access material," Angus told Industry Minister Christian Paradis.

"Why would the Conservatives not work with us on a clear amendment that would ensure that students with perceptual disabilities are not treated as criminals for accessing material in an educational format so they can succeed?"

Subversion

If the feds really want to go after foreign subsidized organizations engaging in subversion against Canadians they should be looking at the Canadian IP Council.  This is an organization openly lobbying to drastically reduce the freedoms of Canadians and in fact criminalize and imprison whole new classes of lawbreakers.

The IP Lobby's Post-Bill C-11 Playbook: ACTA, SOPA, Warrantless Search and the Criminalization of IP

The Canadian intellectual property's lead lobby group, the Canadian IP Council (itself a group within the Canadian Chamber of Commerce) released a new policy document yesterday that identifies its legislative priorities for the coming years. Anyone hoping that the SOPA protests, the European backlash against ACTA, and the imminent passage of Bill C-11 might moderate the lobby group demands will be sorely disappointed. Counterfeiting in the Canadian Market: How Do We Stop It? is the most extremist IP policy document ever released in Canada, calling for the implementation of ACTA, SOPA-style rules including website blocking and stopping search results from resolving, liability for advertisers and payment companies, massive surveillance at the border and through delivery channels including searching through individual packages without court oversight, and spending hundreds of millions of tax dollars on private enforcement.

If a Neo-Liberal tells you that there is no alternative...

... and you are being profoundly un-serious to even try to find one - they are plainly and simply lying to you.

Iceland proves that to recover economically you should listen carefully to what the wise, consensus neo-liberal gray eminences sternly tell you about how you must make the poorest pay for the excesses of the richest if you don't want to face complete disaster... and then do the exact opposite.

Iceland was the only European country that dared to default on the bankers. In February 2011 Iceland’s President Olafur R. Grimsson refused to sign a $5B bailout bill and told the bankers he was going to put the bill to a referendum. Although 44 of the 63 members of Parliament had passed the bill, Grimsson said he was responding to a popular demand for a plebiscite after more than 42K of Iceland’s 318K inhabitants signed a petition asking him to block it.

Icelanders absorbed some of the costs itself but forced foreign investors to take the biggest hit. Not deterred by horror stories about an “unthinkable economic demise” that have prevented countries like Greece and Portugal from defaulting, Iceland has proved that default was the best thing it could have done. As a result, not only has the economy not collapsed since last year, but its gross domestic product is expected to increase by 2.6% this year. Much of that growth is based on increased production, mainly in tourism and the fishing industry. In contrast, most other European economies are either stagnant or in decline. Even the Times article admitted that many economists say Iceland’s recovery was aided by the collapse of the banks.

I wasn't worried before now...

The CDC, The American Center for Disease Control just felt the need to formally deny that the Zombie Apocalypse has begun.

WTF Blogspot!

All blogspot.ca sites are setting off virus scanners and being blocked by Facebook right now - if you are wondering why my blog is setting off alerts they ALL are right now. Blogspot fix or remove whatever you have added that is triggering this please!

UPDATE: Appears to be fixed. Whew.

Quebec Spring

Most of you have probably seen this on Huffington Post already but damn its inspiring.

I Stand With Quebec Students

Poster by Molly Crabapple

Because we all hang together or we will all hang separately - and with this federal government are you 100% sure that is hyperbole?

Because this is something bigger, maybe even the start of a Canadian Spring.  Lead, follow or get out of the way.

Because whatever you think of the student's cause, Bill 78 is a breath-taking assault on freedom, Totalitarian by design, explicitly formulated to cripple dissent against the elites by intent.  This is a declaration of war.  The political class, frankly, need to be terrified by the social and political consequences into never trying such odious legislation in this country again. Shock and awe motherfuckers.

Because, as I've asked before, The question isn't why Quebec students are fighting back so fiercely against education being incrementally turned into a tiny gated community for the wealthy and the imposition of lifelong crippling debt for the rest of the population, the question is why aren't the rest of us?

Miles Davis and John Lee Hooker

Have yourself a Bluesy, Jazzy Saturday

If the shoe fits...

Black said he was not pleased that the New Democrat called him a "British criminal" while speaking in the House of Commons.

"If he wants to divest himself of his parliamentary immunity, it would certainly be my pleasure to sue him for defamation," Black told Mansbridge.

Except truth is a defense against libel or defamation.  So what basis does a convicted criminal who is a British citizen have for complaining about being described as a 'British criminal'?

Provocation and/or Police State?

There are only two options: Either the two undercover officers arrested at the G20 were engaging in illegal behaviour - they were provocateurs in other words - or this is an admission that you didn't have to break the law to be chained and jailed, just protest. Either one condemns the entire police operation:

TORONTO, ON (NEWS1130) - The watchdog that keeps an eye on the national police force has found that two people arrested during the G20 summit in Toronto in 2010 were plain-clothesed police officers.

"Are you now, or have you ever been, an Environmentalist?"

In yet another display of contempt for democracy, the environment and the Canadian people the Harper government has rejected calls from the Opposition to break up the budget bill into separate bills so that the unprecedented erosion of environmental protections and vindictive witch-hunting of environmentalists enshrined in it can receive the scrutiny and debate they deserve. 

The Stephen Harper 'Enemies List' is about to become the law of the land.

I've started to have a repetitive nightmare.

The light in the hearing room is bright, hot and pointed right at me. The heat is suffocating, and I am visibly sweaty, the senator leans over, taps his microphone and begins to read questions from a typed sheet.

"Mr. Fenton, Have you ever donated to or been a member of the Sierra Club of Canada?"

"Do you own a book or books written by Dr. David Suzuki?"

"Did you or did you not write blog posts that were critical of the oilsands?"
That's usually about the time I wake up, but instead of relief that my nightmare is over, I make the mistake of turning on the radio or picking up the paper to find my speculative fiction becoming more and more real.

Using God to justify being a vicious prick

Pastor Sean Harris of the Berean Baptist Church Fayetteville, North Carolina is the latest pro-Amendment One pastor to demonstrate just how virulently anti-gay the campaign is. In his sermon this past Sunday, he gave the parents in his congregation “special dispensation” to use violence against their children if they violate gender norms. For example, if you see your four-year-old son “dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist.” Pastor Harris says boys should have their girlish behavior “squashed like a cockroach” and similarly advises forcing girls to conform to female gender norms

For those who argue biblical justification for their bigotry against gays: If you saw your brother working on the Sabbath would you bash his head in with a rock? Do you believe in the death penalty for eating shell fish? If our country defeats another country in a war, do you believe that gives us a right to slaughter their children and take their women as sex slaves? No? Then you are already picking and choosing which parts of the bible you will follow and which you won't, the fact that you embrace the passages that justify bigotry against gays says more about you than it does about a rule book written for nomadic goatherders thousands of years ago.

The Real Question

The question isn't why Quebec students are fighting back so fiercely against education being incrementally turned into a tiny gated community for the wealthy and the imposition of lifelong crippling debt for the rest of the population, the question is why aren't the rest of us?

UPDATE: And lest anyone forget, it is a proven, established fact that the Quebec police engage in agent provocateur violence to justify a harsh response. We KNOW they do this, its not an accusation, its a fact.

Do you get it now?

The Conservative House Leader says plainly and unequivocally that Woodworth's bill was intended to lead to changes in Canada's abortion laws.  Can those naive twits who fell for his denials and suggested there was a good faith discussion to be had about what stage in a pregnancy a woman loses her human rights admit they got suckered yet?

The Progressive Blogosphere suffered a major schism over a SoCon trolling exercise.  How would this have played out if Harper hadn't just watched the Wild Rose Party get annihilated?  We just had a demonstration that even in the most conservative province in Canada social conservatism is electoral poison and suddenly an incremental attack on women's rights becomes a platform for Harper's government to demonstrate his independence from the social conservative right. 

But if Mondays result had been different so would this debate.  Woodworth and the SoCons just got thrown under the bus but Harper would have embraced them if he thought he could get away with it.

Dance with the ones that brung you Allison

“The PC party of Alberta has a proud history of being progressive and conservative and as we go forward from this place tonight we will honour both of those traditions.” - Premiere Redford's Victory speech Monday night. 

Translation: "Thanks for bringing me to the dance after those other guys dumped me, would it be OK if I still flirted with them now that we're here?"

In a word, No.

Alberta's progressives saved Premier Redford's bacon and that of her party on Monday. Here's what that support will cost, please note, this is not a wish list. This is a price tag.

• Labour - Alberta has the highest worker fatality rate in Canada. It also has the single most anti-worker labour laws in the country, a prevalent attitude of contempt for labour and the most chummy pro-management policies of any province in Canada. It's not a coincidence, there is a direct correlation between these things. If Redford wants to keep the progressive support that saved her from the unemployment line, the current state of affairs is not going to fly anymore. She needs to bring farm workers under Occupational Health and Safety rules and remove the second class citizen status that forbids them from even tyring to form a union. An exception originally justified for small family farms has resulted in ruthless, often deadly exploitation by huge corporate Agribusiness giants. A human rights lawyer who countenances such a thing is, to put it mildly a despicable hypocrite. Among many other concerns for Labour like a blatantly in the management tank provincial Labour Board is the Temporary Foreign Workers program, which is under federal jurisdiction, but its in Alberta that it has achieved its full flowering of racism, abuse and exploitation. All of this needs to change if Redford's vaunted 'Progressiveness' is to be anything but tattered fig leaf. 


•   Health Care - Redford has many soothing words on this file promising major new investment and labour peace. We will be watching to see if this government continues its sub rosa campaign of underfunding and mismanagement that for years has been a clearly intentional effort to manufacture consent for privatization. The government has zero good will and trust from the Alberta public on this file and would be advised to remember that. 


• The Environment - Sure, unlike Danielle Smith Redford concedes the existence of global warming caused by man. Good for her. But acknowledging the problem while resolutely doing nothing about it is less than meaningless. And no, carbon capture, an expensive useless pr boondoggle with numbers that will never add up does not count.

These are the top of the list on the bill - I'm sure others can think of more examples. It's due now, when can we expect payment?

Creep

Recorded just a few weeks ago.  Gave me chills.

Ignoring the Charter

Conservatives hate the idea of rights they can't just arbitrarily legislate away if they offend the reactionary bigots, you know, their base.

So blah blah blah divided history - that's an easy excuse, not a reason.  The real reason Harper and the Conservatives are so shamefully ignoring the Charter's anniversary is that they really do think the government belongs in the nation's bedrooms, and doctor's examining rooms and in our bodies and they really do think politicians should have the final say on human rights.

 And they hate that the Charter doesn't let them.

Meanwhile the Canadian Constitution and Charter have become the standard the rest of the world looks to instead of the centuries old US Constitution - and even an American Supreme Court Judge recommends the Canadian over the American Constitution.  This while the yokels in charge try to pretend the whole aniversary isn't even happening.

Petty schmucks.

Like Digger Wasps

I was born in Alberta and I've lived most of my life here but I did spend a decade on the lower mainland in BC.

In BC the two main political groupings are the people, as represented by the NDP and what I'll call the Chamber of Commerce Tendency as represented by... well thats the thing.  It tends to burrow inside existing parties, hollow them out from the inside and ride them until their exclusive and enthusiastic servicing of the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else taints it beyond reclamation and then it is abandoned to wither and die as the Tendency moves on to its next host.. 

When I lived there it was animating the husk of the BC Social Credit Party - most of the kookiness of Social Credit had been shed in favour of cold blooded service of capital but  their last Premier Bill Vanderzalm mixed a sleazy televangelist grinning wing-nut vibe with an approach to ethics and finances that also brought televangelists to mind. After years of less flamboyant but still sleazy simmering scandals under Vanderzalm's predecessor Bill Bennett, Vanderzalm's toothy religiosity and nickle and dime sleaziness in his personal dealings with shadowy Hong Kong land developers sunk the Social Credit label completely. As the NDP took over the Chamber of Commerce Tendency  withdrew to lick its wounds.

And to slowly, over years inhabit the BC Liberal Party, hollow it out and animate it like a grotesque jerking corpse puppet.

Now that the zombie stink has gotten too much for the BC voter and the Liberals look like they are shambling to a political grave the 'Tendency' turns cold eyes to its next husk, the BC Progressive Conservatives.

 The B.C. Conservatives took 2.1 per cent of the vote in the 2009 election. But under the leadership of John Cummins, the party is tied in recent polls with Premier Christy Clark's B.C. Liberals in second place at 23 per cent.

Marshall said there are striking similarities between B.C.'s Clark and Alberta's Redford: Women in their mid-40s who returned to elected office after successful careers outside politics and became leaders of par-ties whose previous male leader had become too unpopular.

Both enjoyed brief bursts of popularity, added Marshall, followed by a decline in the polls as small-conservative voters shifted to an insurgent party from the political right.

Similarly, Redford was a red Tory - "certainly not the blue-est of candidates for the Alberta PC leadership" - while Clark was a federal Liberal, said Marshall.

Simon Fraser University political scientist Royce Koop agreed that Wildrose and the B.C. Conservatives share a common tack. "They are both consistently and openly principled conservative parties."
"There doesn't seem to be any attempt or desire to moderate that. When you are coming in from the right, as the Reform Party did on the federal scene, you sort of behave in a principled right-wing manner."
One difference, added Koop, is that Wildrose is poised to take power. Given the NDP's current strength in B.C., the most the B.C. Conservatives can hope for in next year's election is to replace the B.C. Liberals as the main party for B.C.'s anti-NDP forces.

Not Open for Debate

I resist absolutism but some things are red lines.  A woman's right to control and 'own' her own body is one of them.  Add me to the chorus of voices deeply disappointed in the tone of the Prog Blog moderators during the recent unpleasantness over the inability of some who call themselves 'progressives' to understand how monumentally offensive the suggestion that such rights could ever be open to debate is.

I had vacillated over severing ties but 'screaming banshees'? Scott?  Really?  'A trivial matter'?  Do you seriously not see the problem with these remarks and the attitudes behind them?   I couldn't even believe you had said that until I saw it with my own eyes.  Very, very disappointing.

This 'trivial matter' and your clueless response to it has cost you another blog from the list.  Please consider this my request for removal from the Progressive Bloggers Aggregate.  Those who come here from Progressive Bloggers - which I have been a member of for almost six years and do not abandon lightly - please make other arrangements.

'Screaming banshees'. Unfuckingbelievable.


UPDATE: Busily adding everyone who left Prog Blogs to my Links list who wasn't already there. I'm happy to say most of you were already were on it.  If I've missed anyone please let me know.

Conscience Rights in Action

May 2011 - (AP) NEW ORLEANS A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.
"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."
Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.

And to those who are now thinking, 'Well thats not the same thing as denying marriage to gays' - respectfully, fuck you, its EXACTLY the same thing.

Hello Wildrose, Goodbye Public Healthcare

In the States, that crazed pack of screaming ideologues known as the Tea Party only hate one thing more than the idea that a black man named Barack Obama could be their President and that's his paltry industry supporting attempt to provide all Americans with healthcare.  A plan that subsidizes private insurance company's and explicitly ISN'T a government provided healthcare system is derided as creeping Stalinism and irony deficient tight lipped teabaggers wave mis-spelled signs demanding Obama keep the government's hands off of Medicare.  Don't bother pointing out the logic problem there, they wouldn't understand you anyway.

Here in Alberta, the Tea Party's Canadian wing the Alberta Wildrose Alliance has to be a bit more circumspect about their fervent desire to end Canada's healthcare system and deliver us into the welcoming arms of the insurance industry.  Through gritted teeth they swear allegiance to universal healthcare while making long term plans to kill it as fast as they think they can get away with it.

David Climenhaga connects the dots here:

There’s not much need for scare tactics by supporters of public medicare: Yesterday the Wildrose Party laid out a pretty clear plan for privatizing health care in Alberta.

Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith’s news release touting the idea of a “wait-time guarantee” for medically necessary treatments and procedures is heavy on glittering promises (“Alberta families will have peace of mind”) and short on technical details, but it boils down to a three-part plan for privatization:

1. Starve the public system of funds
2. Pump public money into for-profit private health care corporations
3. Watch a two-tier private system quickly flower as the public sector withers

It’s not a big step from administering public health care in two tiers – a neglected public system and a pampered private sector – to an honest-to-gosh two-tier system in which extra payments get you timely care in a private clinic and lack of cash lets you wait longer and suffer more.

The Wildrose news release claims “we all know from experience” putting more money into health care won’t work. (This statement is false enough on its face to warrant a Wildrose-style “clarification,” perhaps in the form of a “bullying press release.”)

Anyway, how would we Albertans know? After all, at least from the time Peter Lougheed left office until Premier Alison Redford came along, Alberta’s long-governing Progressive Conservative party has been playing pretty much the same game of starving key parts of the system for funds in hopes of creating public support for private “solutions.” And the jury’s still out on what Ms. Redford would be doing were her party not facing an existential crisis thanks to her apparently incompetent re-election strategy.

The only thing is that, up to now at least, the PCs have made a practice of bowing to public pressure to maintain the public health care system whenever voters cottoned on to what they were up to. It’s not so clear what a Wildrose government of hard-right market fundamentalists and raw-meat social conservatives would do if faced by a public backlash.

Remember Danielle Smith is a Fraser Institute alum.  An organization dedicated to the idea that the public sector is always bad and people should have to put a quarter in a meter to use a sidewalk.  They despise Canada's system, not least because its a constant reminder that the government does healthcare better than the private sector does south of the border.  They view the affection the Canadian public has for our public healthcare system as an existential threat because any example of successful, economical public sector solutions directly contradicts their core premises.

Be very clear Alberta, a vote for the Wildrose is a vote to kill public healthcare, just as fast as they think they can get away with it.

Wild Rose promises to waste your tax dollars...

...by attempting to discriminate against gays and women seeking reproductive services, guaranteed to cause legal challenges equally guaranteed to be decided against the Alberta Government after expensive legal battles with preordained results.

So called 'Conscience Rights' have been decisively adjudicated.  People in government licensed positions like Marriage Commissioners MAY NOT refuse to perform legal civil marriage ceremonies because they disapprove of the people seeking to get a legal marriage.  So a hypothetical Marriage Commissioner who believed that gay marriages or racially mixed marriages offended his conscience (or his bigotry) cannot refuse to perform them.  His rights to 'concience' do not trump the right of those seeking a legal marriage to not be discriminated against by a representative of the government.  The same goes for a licensed pharmacist who 'doesn't think he should have to sell the sluts their birth control pills'.

The Wildrose Party would rather pander to the most reactionary and hateful elements of their hateful and reactionary base with a Kabuki show of wasting your tax dollars on doomed legal challenges.  When they inevitably lose those challenges they will rant about 'activist judges' to get more donations from their followers, but it wont be the Wildrose party that pays the millions of dollars in futile legal costs it will be YOU.

You don't get to call yourselves fiscal conservatives if you plan to deliberately waste MILLIONS of tax dollars to appease your bigoted base.