Poll Nazi tells Harper

Whoops!  Looks like all the Divide-and-Conquer tactics, all the abortions and guns that have been furiously lobbed our way from the PMO over the past few months, aren’t enough to make stubborn Canadians fall in love with CRAP, and might even piss us off a little.

According to the latest EKOS poll released today, we are sooooo not impressed with the whole “Culture War” thing, it’s just sooooo Last Decade:

33%!?? – it’s enough to make a grown man cry.  And Stephen Harper, too.

What happened?  Does the weekly tracking tell the tale?:

Maybe not.

I take it to mean that no matter how much we might beef and bitch at each other, when push comes to shove, pitting Canadian against Canadian isn’t a winning formula.  The temporary polarization has only served to put us on edge and apparently, make us get a little more serious about this “voting” thing.  But it doesn’t look like the CPC is reaping the rewards of their divide-and-conquering:  if an election were held today, they’d barely hang onto their minority government status.

Who knows, maybe we’re just riding a wave of that “Throw the bums out!” zeitgeist emanating from south of the border.  (We are all teabaggers now.)

Or maybe the Iggster’s bus tour worked?

And did I just hear an anguished, tear-choked scream from beyond the eastern horizon?  It seemed to be crying “eLEEEEEEEEETS!!!”

NEXT!

It’s about time

The National Post editorial board is hailing the decision as “some sanity in our prostitution laws”:

The Ontario Superior Court struck a blow for sane legislation on Tuesday when it struck down laws against communicating for the purposes of prostitution, living off its avails and running a “common bawdy house” — i.e., a brothel. Like it or not, the exchange of money for sexual services between consenting adults is legal in Canada.

… but dig a little deeper at the same site and you’ll see that, as predictably as darkness falls each evening, the Punishment Freaks have come out to play:

Many libertarians will applaud the legalization of prostitution, which is in theory a victimless crime. The reality is that high-end prostitutes already know how to look after themselves, while low-end prostitutes are usually just trying to get from one drug fix to another. They will have little interest in pre-screening their johns, because they are desperate women. Does anyone really believe that they are going to spend money on an “office,” advertise their services, keep accounts, submit to regular health testing and pay taxes on their income? Dream on. Does anyone really believe that pimps will then become vacuum-cleaner salesmen?

Eww, there’s that insidious word again: “believe”.   That word has facilitated the spread of more misinformation and fly-specked bullshit than any other.  ”I believe (that up is down, black is white, Barbara Kay has anything intelligent to say about the sex trade…etc.)”

It doesn’t matter what anyone “believes” — only the facts matter, and the fact is, if you support the ongoing criminalization of the sex trade, you are supporting organized crime.   If you force women out to the fringes of society where they can fade into the shadows without anyone even noticing they’re gone, you are enabling the Robert Picktons of the world.  If you can live with organized crime and serial killers in the name of expressing your purse-lipped, lemon-sucking disapproval of certain business transactions between consenting adults, then knock yourself out.  But spare us the sanctimonious scolding, as if there’s something respectable about your point of view.

Then consider how many “respectable” married women routinely “cut off” and otherwise ration sex in the process of negotiating for new Maytags or eternity rings, or just as punishment for husbandly transgressions.

The sex trade isn’t restricted to sleazy street corners on the seedy side of town, it’s alive and thriving in just about every sunlit suburban matrimonial bed on the planet.  Those who sell their commodities on the open market are just more upfront about it.

A little voting music, please…

GunNut©®™ rock!

Kidding aside, I fully expect C-391, the bill to scrap the Long Gun Registry, will croak today.   I also don’t believe for a second that anyone in any party will make good on any proposals to “fix” the registry.  As it stands it’s far too valuable a wedge issue to scrap, change, fix or otherwise fuck with.

That is the reality of Canadian politics in this foul year of 2010.

Batshit In America

Shariah, the Law that Refreshes.

The first installment of a series I’m calling “Batshit In America” comes courtesy of newly-minted GOP/Teabagger senatorial candidate from Delaware, Christine O’Donnell.  Since she was pretty much an unknown entity before this week, after she won the nomination the digging quickly got underway and predictably, it wasn’t long before some ugly little skeletons were boogeying out of Christine’s closet.

O’Donnell, also known as “the Anti-Masturbation Candidate“, has apparently waxed longingly about how “refreshing” she found the oppressive laws in the Middle East while she was visiting there.  Take it away, Christine:

I’ll tell you, I just came back from the Middle East, and it was refreshing. With all that is going on, it was refreshing not to be constantly bombarded with smut all the time. [MSNBC, 3/23/04]

Bombarded with smut?  Where is this place?  Can I go there?

Little wonder O’Donnell is currently knocking them dead at the “Values Voters Summit“, the frenzied little shindig put on by the Jesus Camp hatebots from the American Taliban Family Research Council.  One would think her empathy with Shariah Law would go over like a lead balloon with this crowd, but really, when the masks drop they’re all Taliban.

UPDATE: Hmmm, looks like someone clued into the fact that this candidate isn’t exactly camera-ready.  I anticipate a Palin-like avoidance of all media except Fox.

When gazillionaires attack

Furious backpedaling:

Will this prompt some pre-emptive blog re-design?:

Free speech comes with responsibilities, dude.  Learn it.  Live it.

UPDATE: The Sun Girls join the fray!

UPDATE II: Unfriended! (thanks to DammitJ for the screenshot)

Rachel Maddow: Women candidates versus womens rights

Last night, Rachel had an interesting segment on the ascendancy of radical anti-abortion candidates in the GOP, including women, and what it will do for their share of the female vote.

This was something presciently referenced by Heather Mallick in that infamous hit piece she did on Palin two years ago: in order to win our vote, it’s not enough to run a candidate with the same chromosomes.

When elitism comes to Canada

The great gaping cavern of discordant gibberish that is the Mouth of John Baird has once again gotten him some attention, because what he said was not calculated to win friends or even influence people, especially among the “elites”:

Eleeeeeeets!

Government House Leader John Baird is blaming “Toronto elites” for the certain death of a bill to abolish the Federal long-gun registry.

The Ottawa West-Nepean MPP admits the Federal Government’s latest attempt to abolish the registry will likely fail next week, saying it’s Toronto party leaders and elites for being behind the movement to defeat the bill.

The NDP says it will have enough votes in the House of Commons next week to defeat the Conservative private member’s bill to abolish the registry.

Baird warns MPs who “face pressure from Toronto elites” and change their votes will be held accountable at the polls.

Baird, who is generally wrong and dumb about almost everything else, actually has it right this time.   When people who don’t own guns and know less than zero about them can force their weapons-grade gun stupidity onto those of us who do know something about them, that’s practically the textbook definition of elitism:

That those who dwell in the select and favoured Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa axis  believe they have not only good reason but some God-given right to continually prevail over the rest of us on this issue is certainly elitist.  For them to make criminals of those who don’t comply with their goofy rules, give the police access to our personal information without even Probable Cause, as well as alarmingly expanded search and seizure powers, is something a lot more sinister.

When fascism comes to Canada, it will be sipping a mocha latte, wearing a smiley face button, blithering in high-speed wild-eyed hysterics about how a list can “keep us safe”, and without a hint of irony, tsk-tsking about “authoritarian thugs” at the G20.

In the frenzied publicity dance that is the run-up to the launch of Sun TV

… one more step:

Kory Teneycke, a former spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper who sparked controversy with his attempt to create a new television news channel, has announced he’s resigning immediately from Quebecor Media.

In a statement to reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday, Teneycke said his past political involvement has made him a “central figure” in accusations of political interference and “nefarious plots with foreign media organizations.”

“As the saying goes, perception can be reality,” Teneycke said. He cited a petition signed by more than 80,000 people calling on the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to stop what they labelled “Fox News North.”

“While most of these criticisms are not based in fact, it becomes increasingly clear my involvement only serves to inflame,” he said.

What next for the young Kory?  Will he re-surface as some kind of arm’s-length media consultant working with the nascent wingnut station under the sinister cover of darkness?

Stay tuned…

UPDATE: Whoa whoa whoa, easy there Proggies, don’t spin a bearing.

Anyone who believes that Teneycke’s departure is Sun’s last gasp — and there appear to be several in that rarefied little club — is in for a profound shock.   Today Teneycke’s replacement, Luc Lavoie, pounded the table and bellowed that it’s “full steam ahead” for Sun, announcing that their latest hire is conservative radio talker Charles Adler.  Teneycke may be looking for work now, but aside from that nothing’s changed but the weather.

T-Minus 9 (Updated)

(Not a long gun, but whatever)

Bang!   (Whoops, I mean Bam!)  Only 9 days until the vote on the notorious Bill C-391 that would scrap our beloved long gun registry and turn Canada into a dystopian badland of unthinkable brutality and savage lawlessness where the sound of gunfire rages constantly in the background like dumb white noise… “Mad Max” on maple syrup-flavoured steroids.  In cities across the soon-to-be-beleaguered nation, survival kits of canned food and kevlar are being feverishly assembled even as we speak.

I have my own suspicions about what will transpire on September 22 — aside from a huge outbreak of Parliamentary Flu, I strongly suspect that when the dust settles and the drama concludes, we will all rise from the fainting couches to find that the long gun registry lives to pander another day.  The registry is far too valuable a wedge issue and fundraising tool for either of the two major parties to let it go.  The Liberal government of the time knew that when they created it, and Stephen Harper knows it too.

As for the media campaigns being run against the registry, the phrase “sound and fury” comes to mind…

Whichever way it goes, the vote will likely be a squeaker.  I invite you to prognosticate…

UPDATE (Tuesday): Did I call it or did I call it?

Fired up?

Wow.

Okay, cue the smart-ass remarks about switching to decaf.

Crying at Home Depot

In the summer of ’99, my old dog had been put to sleep and I was grieving inconsolably.  My boyfriend thought fondling some power tools might take my mind off things, so away we went to Home Depot.   The plan was a dismal failure:  I wept openly as I walked among the nuts and bolts and lumber and wallpaper and even the cordless drills.  The other female customers glared at my boyfriend with overt hostility — you could almost hear them thinking  “What did that asshole do to her??”.  One woman even attempted a rescue, strategically positioning herself between me and The Enemy and demanding to know if I was okay, while tossing disgusted over-the-shoulder glances at the hapless boyfriend.  All the way home, he complained piteously about his maltreatment by the estrogen-frenzied mob, prompting me to suggest that next time one of my dogs died and we marked the occasion by going shopping, I’d wear a sign saying “Please ignore:  My dog died today”.

Fast forward a couple of years.  I was one of those people who was truly traumatized by 9/11, so shocked and terrified that I was almost afraid to leave the house that day for fear of crashing planes and falling bombs.  (And I live a long long way from the American eastern seaboard.)  I was more than shellshocked: I felt like I had entered an alternate universe where nothing squared with what I thought I knew.  It was one of those times when the mind is so jangled by conflicting information that it just shuts down and says “No”.

The next day I’d put things together enough to enter a sort of grieving stage, which kicked off, inconveniently enough, at Home Depot.  As I mindlessly sorted through the bath taps, out of nowhere I was gripped by a great wrenching sob and suddenly I was in tears.  But this time nobody glared, because everyone Knew, or at least Suspected, what was wrong:  like so many that day, I was heartbroken.  By what had happened the day before, and in a vague way, by what it meant was sure to come.

I got the first shadow of a glimpse of that about a month later, when visiting family in Toronto.

It was a typical morning with my mother, in retirement glory, relaxing with coffee and the Star.  Suddenly she disgustedly exclaimed “Oh, great!” and I wandered over to see what was up.

Like most media in the aftermath of 9/11, the Star was fat with War News:  articles about the attacks, terrorism, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, bin Laden, Arabs and Islam in general.  The paper was open to an article that was headed with a graphic of elegant Arabic script.  Mom looked up at me and said “First thing in the morning and I have to look at that??”, stabbing an arthritic finger at the graphic.

Let’s be clear:  my mom was a lifelong liberal, albeit a moderate one, who voted for Alan Rock because of the gun registry, supported minority rights, abortion rights and all that other good stuff.  Her visceral reaction to that graphic rattled me — not just because it was so out of character for her, but because I realized that, in some stupid, vicious, vengeful corner of my heart, I felt the same way.  And it occurred to me that if people like us felt that way, something I knew even then we’d recover from with time, what about those who didn’t recover?

Well, we’re 9 years down the road and now we know.  (And we know.  And we know.)

And as much as I’d like to think I’ve cried at Home Depot for the last time, I also think it’s a good thing that along with the power tools and paint, they also sell Kleenex.  (But unfortunately, no Krazy Glue for broken hearts.)

Slap Into Action

Well well well!

Mark at the Slap decided to turn over some rocks and see what kind of tax-exempt slime lurked beneath, and look what he found.

This is a great opportunity, not only to correct the kind of bogus charity scam that most of us don’t want to see supported by our hard-earned tax dollars, but to vent some well-deserved hostility towards all things bigoted, stupid and wrong, starting with the vicious dingbats at “Exodus Global Alliance“.

If these rabid born-again geeks claim they have the power to “cure”, shouldn’t they pay their taxes like any other doctor?

Let’s rumble.

(h/t Bruce)

Sun Sets on Fox News North Conspiracy Theory?

And so yet another juicy and compelling conspiracy theory lies in smoking ruins.

Via Impolitical, CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein responds to an August Globe & Mail column which speculated that the wheels of Sun TV’s CRTC application are being improperly greased by the PMO.   (“Improperly greased”, heh. Woo!)  The chairman more or less shits on the chest of that particular theory, writing:

I read with consternation Lawrence Martin’s column Is Stephen Harper Set To Move Against The CRTC? (Aug. 19) calling into question the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s independence as a regulatory body. The column stems from Quebecor Media’s application to launch a TV news service called Sun TV News.

I would like to categorically state that no one at any level of government has approached me about the Sun TV application, the appointment of the CRTC’s vice-chair of broadcasting, or my own mandate.

Quebecor’s application is being treated according to the CRTC’s well-established processes. The application was published on Sept. 1 for comment, and a public hearing will be held in Gatineau, Que., starting on Nov. 19. The CRTC will then make a decision on the basis of the evidence on the public record.

Konrad von Finckenstein, chair, CRTC, Gatineau, Que.

One can well imagine a bound and gagged von Finckenstein being forced — at long-gun point — to type this letter as it was dictated to him by Harper’s grinning, brainless minions.

On a more serious note, yesterday as I tried to familiarize myself with this issue I couldn’t help noticing that I’m not the only one confused about licensing, and with good reason.  Much of the reporting on this issue ranges from half-assed to abysmal, with terms like “must-carry” and “must-offer” used interchangeably, though they are very different things.  Add to that the hyperventilating rhetoric, a liberal dollop of well-deserved suspicion of Stephen Harper… and stir!  Boom!  Confusion A La Mode, half-baked.

Their bid for a Category One license having been rejected, but also having accomplished the task of generating mucho buzzo… …Sun is now being considered for a “Category 2 Specialty” license, which means the channel has to be offered in at least one cable package.

At my cable company, this type of channel is offered in packages of certain numbers of channels — 2, 7, 14 or the Full Monty –  and customers pick their own lineup.   A Category 2 Specialty license means Sun TV must be one of the channels on offer along with BBC Canada, Animal Planet and others, but nobody’s forcing customers to select it (as far as I know): it’s just one more choice.

And really, I have a hard time working up a lot of righteous anger at the prospect of being given more choice.  If anyone can prove that Harper is somehow involved in improperly greasing the wheels of the licensing process for Sun TV — and based on meetings like this, who could be blamed for wondering? — then that would be an issue for me.  Otherwise it’s just another choice, and I am, after all, pro-choice.

Three words (Updated)

Okay, six words, in two parts.

First,

Get a grip.

Then,

You’re being played.

Sun TV News, the new wingnut news station that’s being called “Fox North”, and lately the perfectly rational “Hate Media”, isn’t even on air yet but has been generating red-faced progressive outrage for months.  There are petitions to stop it from …from what? From getting a Mandatory Carriage license?  From going on air at all?  One wonders.

One also wonders if people understand what a Mandatory Carriage (aka “Category One”) license actually is, and why such licenses are granted.  A “Category One” license is granted to stations covering specific programming genres, one license per genre.  The 24-hour news genre is already covered by CBC Newsworld and it doesn’t much matter what kind of bias Sun TV News reports with, it’s still 24-hour news. Granting them a Cat One license, something that could only happen if some CRTC regs were overhauled, would mean also having to give one to CTV Newsnet, and maybe others.  Apart from mandatory carriage, one of the perks of a Cat One license is a low spot on the dial, and guess what:  there are only so many of them, which is why Cat One licenses are so rare.  The chances of “Fox News North” getting a Cat One license are less than zero.

But the chances that this Kory Teneycke dude might just be the smartest guy in the room are pretty good.

UPDATE: There is a lot of confusion around this issue, and I am one of the Confused.  In the comments, stageleft (see his more explicit take on this topic here) sheds some light on the situation:

Quebecor is asking for a “must offer” license, which would mean that the cable/satellite networks would have to offer it somewhere in their line-up. Something that is considerably different from the must provide it to every household with a basic subscription that the CBC enjoys.

“Must offer” is indeed very different from Category One.  The confusion probably arose because Sun TV originally applied for a Category One but was rejected, prompting Teneycke to comment

“We’re not particularly fazed by that letter. We’re focused on moving forward [...]  We’re confident that we’ll have a licence in time for our projected launch, and one that will satisfy our needs on the business side.”

Those opposed to the station apparently took that remark to mean that the coveted Category One license would be obtained by some underhanded, nefarious means, probably with the helpful interference of our totalitarian Prime Minister.  The suspicion was bolstered when CRTC chairman Konrad von Fickenstein, whose term ends in 2012, was offered another job to vacate early, and thus began the C/1 Truther Movement.

My opinion that Teneycke is the smartest guy in this particular room still stands.