Democracy under attack

This morning's Star Phoenix editorial Democracy under attack provides a stinging indictment of the gleeful Con response to last week's court ruling on the election phone call scandal:

No sooner had a federal court judge ruled that there had been widespread voter fraud in the last federal election involving a Conservative party database than a party spokesperson was bragging of victory.
It was a chilling response to a terrifying verdict. Justice Richard G. Mosley was unequivocal in his assessment, that misleading calls were made to electors in ridings across the country - including Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar - "and that the purpose of those calls was to suppress the votes of electors who had indicated their voting preference in response to earlier voter identification calls."
He was less sure, however, that it was enough to change the results. . . .
It was that uncertainty that had the Conservatives crowing victory. In a press release, the party insisted the judge concluded "there was no wrongdoing by the Conservative party or ... candidates."
Justice Mosley's ruling makes no such conclusion.

If we don't bother to care, then we will elect more buffoons for mayor

Winnipeg Free Press columnist Bartley Kives provides  a round up of Rob Ford's most embarrassing moments beginning with the Don Cherry debacle:

"Oh man, it was just embarrassing for the largest city in the country -- it just made me sad," Coun. Paula Fletcher, one of those apparent kooks, told the Toronto Star at the time.
Little did she know she just witnessed the high point of Rob Ford's time in the mayor's chair."

Yes, and we've all been laughing about Rob Ford ever since.
But Kives goes on to describe how easy it is to elect a buffoon in any city which doesn't take itself seriously:

In 2010, Ford was a well-known political commodity in Toronto: A lazy anti-intellectual of dubious personal character. Yet he still won the mayor's race by capturing the public's imagination with a simple, idiotic slogan: He was going to end "the gravy train" of wages and benefits flowing to city employees.
Simple sloganeering has elected many vile politicians, most notably back in the days when ordinary people did not have access to endless quantities of information, 24 hours a day, practically everywhere.
But with a minimal modicum of effort, any Toronto voter in 2010 could have learned who and what Rob Ford was, both as a person and as a politician. The fact a majority decided a political lightweight was still the best person to lead the nation's largest city is a testament to how little voters actually bother to care about anything anymore.
This is chilling, not hilarious. And the phenomenon is not restricted to the people of Toronto, who now deserve our sympathy and compassion, not ridicule....
Toronto's elected leader has unfortunately set the mayoral bar as low as it can go. Given the importance of the office, this should not make anyone happy, anywhere.

Hustle and Ford

The Globe and Mail has published the Ford family’s history with drug dealing.
Its like reading a movie script -- a beefier Kiefer Sutherland playing the suburban drug dealer with the dysfunctional family who uses his drug profits as the foundation for his more charismatic and electable younger brother's meteoric political career, thus becoming the power behind the throne but then watching helplessly as said brother destroys himself and all they achieved through his own addiction and hubris:

In the 1980s, anyone wanting to buy hashish had to know where to go. And in central Etobicoke, the wealthy Toronto suburb where Mayor Rob Ford grew up, one of those places was James Gardens. In the evening, the sports cars often wound along Edenbridge Drive, past the gated homes and the lawn-bowling pitches, until they reached the U-shaped parking lot. By nightfall, the public park was a hash drive-thru. One former street dealer, whom we will call “Justin,” described the scene as “an assembly line.”
There were usually a number of dealers to choose from, some of them supplied by a mainstay at James Gardens – a young man with the hulk-like frame and mop of bright blond hair: Doug Ford.

What did Harper know and when did he stop knowing it?

Coming awfully close now, isn't it?
Wright didn't just dash off a cheque to Duffy in a moment of sentimental weakness, to dry Duffy's tears on a sad February day.
Harper's chief of staff actually went through a negotiation with Harper's former legal counsel to give Harper's best media buddy a legal deal for $90K:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former special counsel and legal adviser worked on the legal deal between Nigel Wright and Sen. Mike Duffy’s lawyer that called for Wright to help Duffy pay off $90,000 in invalid expense claims, CTV News has learned.

But none of them told Harper anything about it.  Oh, sure.
Despite Perrin's carefully phrased denial, I just don't believe Harper's sanctimonious Sgt. Schultz 'I know nothing NOTHING' defense, and neither does anyone else.
Canadian Press reports on what happened today during Question Period:

"They think we're fools," said Francoise Boivin of the NDP. "They're trying to make us believe that (Harper) knew nothing."
Complained New Democrat Nathan Cullen: "These guys will not be accountable."
Charlie Angus, the New Democrat who has been worrying at the issue since it began, called it "abuse of the public trust."
The government "has lost its moral compass," boomed Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. "The prime minister is in this up to his neck."
Liberal colleague Ralph Goodale called it "an insidious scheme."
Through it all, Baird maintained an uncharacteristic calm, glancing periodically at his notes and insisting Harper only knew of the payment to Duffy when it became public last week.
The minister, who can be a vitriolic opponent, never raised his voice. "I can't be any more clear," he said repeatedly.

Oh, say...

This:


reminded me of this:

Tweet roundup

Some priceless tweets about Wright and Duffy and all that:

They're beautiful, those Chiefs of Staff, but lifespan wise it's like getting a great dane.
— Tabatha Southey (@TabathaSouthey) May 19, 2013

Fewer tears at the end, but the kids can't ride it like a pony, so emotionally on the Chief of Staff vs Great Dane choice, it's a draw.
— Tabatha Southey (@TabathaSouthey) May 19, 2013

@tabathasouthey We’ve had our Great Dane for nine years. Not as spry as she once was, but she hardly ever gives money to senators anymore.
— Daniel MacEachern (@DanMacEachern) May 19, 2013

You know, it makes me wonder...if Wright was so upright and honest and honourable and all that, like the tweets are saying, then why would it occur to him to give Duffy a personal cheque to make an audit go away? And if so, then who suggested it to him?

A Canadian Brownie

After reading Dawg's excellent piece about the man who was appointed by the Harper Cons as Librarian and Archivist of Canada, all I can say is, "Heck of a job, Danny!"

Leadership in borrowing

Was this the leadership that the Harper Cons were praising Mike Duffy for -- having a well-connected friend willing to give him $90,000?
With no strings attached, of course.
On that basis, I'm ready to show that kind of leadership myself! I can send Mr. Wright the address where he can mail my cheque.

Pathetic nonsense

The Harper Cons are trying to spin their loss in Labrador as negative for Trudeau. How pathetic is that?
Mia Rabson writes:

The Conservatives who are trying to spin that this is no big deal because well, majority governments don't often win byelections and well, the Liberals didn't win it by as much as one poll said they would a few weeks ago so really Trudeau messed things up and this is a sign he is in over his head, is just nonsense and kind of smacks of sore losership.

The question about Mike Duffy

There are two possible ways of looking at Senator Duffy's behaviour in the Senate regarding $90,000 in housing allowances.
Here's the Harper Con way:

The Harper government is praising Conservative Sen. Mike Duffy for showing "leadership" in the Senate expenses scandal.

That's because he paid the money back, I guess.  But here's the Liberal way of looking at it:

But Liberals say the Conservatives are protecting one of their own, tipping off Duffy about ineligible per diems and whitewashing a report on his invalid housing allowance claims.

Gee, which way is the right way to look at this? How can we ever possibly tell?
Well, when in doubt, I suppose we should look at what people actually do rather than what they say.
Yes, Duffy did pay back a whack of undeserved money.
But he kept signing those supposedly "confusing" primary residence declarations month after month, every month for three years.
And then he avoided answering questions about it by ducking through a hotel kitchen after a speech.
Some leader...

May the fourth be with you

We even drove past the comic book store today and saw a bunch of people in costume, but we still forgot that today was Star Wars Day because May the Fourth and all that.
Checking You-Tube, there seem to be an extraordinarily large number of Star Wars videos using Legos, I don't know why.



And don't forget Patton Owsalt's rant extraordinare, too.

How much is $3.1 billion?

It's hard to comprehend a figure like $3.1 billion.
Here's some examples of what us ordinary Canadian mortals could buy if we had this amount of money to spend:

62 million bottles of really good wine
Two hundred thousand cars
Eight thousand pretty nice houses
Pretty good salaries for four thousand people a year for ten years, plus the daycare costs for their children

Or, to put it in another way that we're all thinking about this time of year

Every penny of what me and more than 25,000 other Canadians paid in federal income taxes last year.

So that's how much the Harper Cons lost track of when they were frittering away those "anti-terrorism" dollars on airports and police and databases ... and gazebos, don't forget the gazebos ...

It was always Paul for me

We got tickets today for Paul McCartney in Regina in August -- as teenagers growing up in Saskatchewan, we never thought we would get to see him in person.


We're just a wee bit older now, of course, but I can hardly wait.

Pro-bullying legislation

The Cons have passed a law that allows police to bully anyone they want to:

The law will allow police to detain people pre-emptively and hold them for as long as three days without charges and would give authorities power to compel testimony through so-called investigative hearings at which people are brought before judges to answer questions.

Under Paul Martin, the police never used these powers. Under Vic Toews and the Harper Cons, does anybody think they'll be so careful and circumspect? The record so far isn't very reassuring.

Well, thank goodness that's over

Was it just me or did the United States completely lose their mind over the last week?

Shortly after the blasts occurred, the tabloid [New York Post] falsely claimed that 12 people had been killed and a Saudi national was in custody; and then, to add insult to injury, they ran a front page photo which libelously depicted a high school track star as a federally-sought suspect.
The Post then continued to stand by their reporting long after it had been proven wrong.
Meanwhile, on CNN, Wolf Blitzer and the "best political team on television" once again found themselves unable to keep up with a breaking news story that doesn't involve a poop ship—and were subsequently commended by their boss for it.
And lest you think the shit show was confined to old media, allow me to disabuse you of that notion.
On popular websites like Reddit and 4Chan, amateur detectives conducted a crowdsourced investigation which wrongly named a missing college student as the wanted culprit; but that didn't stop them from congratulating themselves on their sleuthing

And by the way, the Czech Republic and Chechnya are not the same place...