So who will be voting for this?

Now we hear that one of the aspects of the Conservatives trumpted "accountability" act is to impose a whole new set of accounting requirements on Aboriginal reserves -- thus pandering to the right-wing mantra cum Conservative wedge issue which claims that poor people, particularly darker-coloured poor people, are always trying to rip us all off.
Are the Conservatives also demanding similar levels of accounting detail for all of the municipal highway projects they fund each year? How about all of the business development grants they make? And the job-creation funding for companies? And the health-care transfers to provinces? Is the Auditor-General planning to expand her staff to hundreds of people, to look into all those federal transfers? Or are Aboriginal reserves going to be singled out?
I just hope the NDP, Liberals and Bloc will be asking questions like this before they give a knee-jerk vote in favour of "accountability" -- because who would want to be against it? -- without realizing they are actually voting for a divisive - maybe even racist - policy.
I say racist because so many reserves are already struggling to stretch their very limited, non-indexed federal dollars for education and housing. Now they'll have to spend even more on hiring more accountants, just to prove that they aren't spending anything wrong.
And don't tell me that these additional federal audits are needed to catch illegal embezzlement -- police and RCMP are already catching these offenders. Some cases of fraud don't justify implicitly tarring every reserve with the "fraud and mismanagement" brush, any more than every city mayor should be blamed whenever one or two mayors put their relatives on the payroll.

I searched the web for some photos of Aboriginal reserves, just to demonstrate that these are not people living in the lap of luxury. Here's a CTV photo of the Kashechewan reserve, which was under a boil-water advisory for two years -- TWO YEARS -- because their sewage treatment plant wasn't working and they couldn't get the money to fix it.

How about a nice little recession this spring?

In Comments, Scott notes that what many of us have had so far from the Conservatives is actually a tax increase. No GST cut yet -- apparently its not happening until the April or May budget or even later, into July.
Personally, of course, I'm going to try like hell to avoid buying anything major until the GST is reduced -- no new car, no new flooring if we can possibly delay.
I'm no economist, but it occurs to me that if everyone else in the country does likewise -- and apparently I'm not alone -- then in no time at all Canada will have a nice little recession underway plus maybe a few business bankruptcies.
Great stuff, Stevie.

Harper has opened the first envelope

A new manager takes over and finds on his desk three sealed envelopes marked One, Two and Three, with a note from the previous manager advising him to open them in order when he doesn't know what else to do.
So he settles in OK but finally the honeymoon is over and he starts having some problems, so he opens the first envelope.
"Blame your predecessor" it says.
So he does that and this works for a while. But then things start to go downhill again, so he opens the second envelope.
This one advises "Reorganize".
Ok, that works just great and everyone seems happier for a while, but then he starts having problems again and he's at his wits end how to solve them. So finally, he opens the third envelope.
It says "Prepare three envelopes."

Today Harper spend Question Period blaming the Liberals for every problem he was asked about -- obviously he has already had to open the first envelope.

Don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out

Tom Delay's last words, referring to Hillary Clinton:

Nothing worse than a woman know-it-all.

Takes one to know one, you jerk.
Let's just remember, too, that neither Hillary nor Cynthia McKinney nor any of those other know-it-all women have had to resign in disgrace.
Memories of Charlotte Whitton, first woman mayor of Ottawa:

Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.

Yes, it happens just about every day

From Digby (of course, who just won a Koufax for his writing):

...I guess that whole 'Delay Rule' thing was secret Democratic plot to take over the minds of Republicans and make them act like asses. (A common leftist tactic.)

There but for the grace of God

As a parent, when I read a story like this one, I just cannot help but finger my own metaphorical rosary beads of the times when my own children could have been grievously hurt, but by grace or fate or chance, were not.
Here are some of the beads I count every now and then:

I tripped over her walker when I was carrying my baby girl into the kitchen and somehow I twisted in mid-air as I fell so that when I hit the floor she was on top of me instead of underneath.

I poured a cup of coffee, then left it to answer the phone and turned back just in time to see my toddler daughter had grabbed the coffee cup and was holding it over her head and I leaped and pushed the cup forward and spilled the steaming coffee over the floor.

Our children were playing in the next yard and somehow the dog got out of the front door and the neighbour who saw it all said that the car that hit our dog came this close to hitting our 5-year-old son instead.

I hope little Brandon continues to recover.

Learning to shut up

The Ahenakew hate-crime conviction appeal was heard today. Ahenakew's lawyer argued that he shouldn't have been convicted because he hadn't intended to promote hate. But as the Crown pointed out "No one forced him to argue in support of his views, he did that by himself. You're not excused because you are answering questions by a reporter or anyone else." The news story also goes on to note that that "Ahenakew ... would not speak to reporters." Well, that's a relief. The world has heard quite enough from him already.

Ring around the rosie

Pocket full of posie
Husha
Husha
Delay fall down
He must be guilty as sin. By next week, all the Republicans in Washington will be saying "Tom who? Nope, sorry -- never met the fellow." Thus joining Jack Abramhoff as the Republicans Nobody Knew.

The bestest photo ever

Havril at [insert something clever] titles this post of Bush with Harper We'll always have Cancun.
I found it referenced at Canadian Cynic:

God of War

Great line of the day

From Michael Berube, International Professor of Danger:

If you want to make wingnuts' heads explode this week, just propose an illegal immigrant amnesty program in which immigrants become naturalized citizens if they agree to take jobs away from liberal professors.

Emphasis his!

I'll drink to that

So I guess the original researchers were three sheets to the wind when they concluded that drinking prevents heart disease.
Darn.

Overstaying your welcome

So Ralph is shocked! SHOCKED! that almost half of his party wants him to leave now.
But after all, Ralph, its been 14 years. Not surprising that people don't want to make it 15 -- party leadership is not an endurance contest.
When you start throwing books at 17-year-old girls, maybe its time to say buh-bye.
There's a little ditty which Paul Martin remembered clearly -- and it would behoove other party leaders to remember as well -- the one that goes like this: "Got along without you before I met you; Gonna get along without you now."

Great line of the day

Steve Gilliard critiques both the Democrat's new security plan and the Republican's old security plan:

. . . there is no plan to actually make an Army which can fight guerrillas, aid and protect NGO's and mobilize quickly. Instead, we're converting artillery and engineers into ad hoc infantry and MP's and sending people out to die in hillbilly armored vehicles.

Can I copyright this idea?

How's this for the newest reality TV show idea -- Wal-Mart endurance contests. Each team would consist of a parent and a teenager, with the parent committed to spending at least one-third of their time in the home and garden departments, while the teenager would be in the electronics and game departments.
I know its no trick, really, to shop at Wal-Mart unnoticed by their staff, but in this game the team that goes the longest without needing to find a staff member to ask for help wins.