Harper’s Trost Trouble No Trouble

And what are we to think of mouthy little Brad Trost, the CPC backbencher from Saskatchewan who’s gotten into the habit of losing control of his yap and going rogue on the topic of abortion lately, even on nationwide TV?

Speaking to CBC’s Evan Solomon, host of Power & Politics, Trost said the government should “take a position that’s at least moderate, rather than the extreme left position that we’re taking.”

“I don’t think the government takes an actively left-wing position, but the government has taken an apathetic position toward it, and I don’t feel that’s appropriate. I feel that it’s a civil rights issue that needs to be addressed,” Trost said.

Next up for Trost?

It’s a left-wing position but it’s not a left-wing position.  Well, that makes sense.  About as much sense as saying it’s a “civil rights issue” — meaning the civil rights of Joe Fetus, of course.

We already know that Trost’s views are shared with others in the CPC who could be characterized as Rabidly Anti-Abortion (*waves* Hi Cheryl).  But the government has largely ignored the issue — it only seems to come up when some baffled little fart of a backbencher tables a goofy bill about “coerced abortions” or some such shit, it’s promptly shot down and life goes on.

The PM seems agnostic about it.  Harper’s said many times that the issue won’t be raised as long as his ass warms the Big Chair, and has described his own personal position as “complex” and “not in any of the polar extremes on the issue”, which sounds suspiciously pro-choicy to me.  But one thing is clear: it’s a toxic issue for Harper because it conjures up visions of the “Hidden Agenda” that have dogged him for years, so he mostly avoids it and strongly recommends his MPs do the same.  Anyone who steps out of line quickly finds himself outfitted in a leathery “Gimp” suit, ball-gagged and hanging from the ceiling of Harper’s Secret Parliamentary Dungeon, where the unspeakable acts of discipline are carried out… ugh… ack!  Screech

Whoops, got a little carried away there…  But you have to wonder why Harper’s been so unresponsive while Trost yaps like a frenzied little anklebiter, barking his brains out about such a verboten topic.  Maybe the Gimp suit is out at the dry cleaners?

Or maybe Harper knows that using a backbencher to make the social conservatives happy and take their minds off the things that make them unhappy:

“So in reinvigorating the debate as they have by funding IPPF, you’ll see more politicians like myself will be discussing the matter. In a respectful way, but it will be discussed,” he told CBC News following his interview with Solomon.

Trost said some social conservatives will feel it was a slap in the face. He admits he may get in trouble for speaking out against a Conservative minister’s decision.

…is just Good Politics.

*facepalm*

Word of the Day:  “Satire”

Look it up, Washington.

Please.

(P.S. to The Terrorists: You can stop now.  You’ve won.)

Free the Wall Street Bull!

Wall Street’s famous “Charging Bull” has been incarcerated — for his own good, of course.  Because this hasn’t been a typical 10 days in the cold, constantly pounding, never sleeping heart of international finance that is his home.

In a testament to Twitterpower, the message to “#occupy” New York’s financial district instantly spread far and wide without any help from the mainstream media.  The protesters should have hired a few teabaggers to stand around in their “founding fathers” costumes: instant wall-to-wall media coverage!  As it is, well, never has so much been covered by so few.

The demonstrators are mostly young and their message sometimes seems as vague and incoherent as that of their elderly counterparts at the tea parties.  But at the center of it all, they’re protesting lost opportunity: a future sucked up by economic vampire bats who flew off jeering at the burned bridges left behind them as they stole away, with all hopes for prosperity in our time gripped in their bloody fangs.  In that context, the Wall Street demonstrators have a point.

Along with the Charging Bull, the NYSE has been barricaded to keep protesters at bay, although I think protesting the stock exchange is a little off-target. It wasn’t the NYSE that created the real estate bubble, subprime mortgages and exquisitely intricate, highly-leveraged parcels of dogshit that were passed off as good investments and drunkenly rubber-stamped “AAA” by ratings agencies. The protesters should be surrounding Goldman Sachs and Standard&Poor’s.  (Leave the Wall Street Bull aloooooooooone!)

However, the NYSE and Wall Street’s iconic Charging Bull are symbols of Capitalism, and for good or ill, that’s what many of the protesters seem to blame for their broken dreams.  But if America had real Capitalism, the risk of failure would have been at least as compelling as any potential profit to be made from building a flimsy financial house of cards that was bound to collapse and take everyone with it.  In a Culture of Bailouts, it’s a lot easier to go insane with recklessness and slobbering greed.

Harper “ensconced” in power for next 8 years??

“Ensconced” — I love that word.  But in this case…

As much as I might roll my eyes at the feverish fear and loathing Harper provokes in some of the more doctrinaire corners of Left Blogistan, even I have trouble with the idea of him being ensconced — or even sconced – in power for another 8 years.  Thirteen(13) consecutive years of Harpie??  Say it ain’t so:

After uniting the right, winning three consecutive Conservative governments, and now facing an opposition in disarray, Prime Minister Stephen Harper could be in power until 2020.

“I think he’s safely ensconced for at least another eight years,” predicts veteran Parliament Hill journalist and Globe and Mail national affairs columnist Lawrence Martin, who documented Prime Minister Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) consolidation of power over five years of minority government in Harperland: The Politics of Control. The bestselling book was re-released last week with a new chapter.

With both the NDP and Liberals in search of leaders who can challenge the Prime Minister in 2015, it appears that the next election is already his to lose.

His to lose his to lose his to lose…

In the absence of an aggressively charismatic opposition leader and/or an economy that goes completely to shit, incumbents are always hard to take out.  This goes double(x2) for Harper, who strikes me as the type who’d hang on by his ragged, fungus-laden little toenails simply because he’s got nothing better to do.  Former Harper advisor and remorseful wannabe hit man Tom Flanagan concurs:

“He doesn’t really care much about money,” Mr. Flanagan told The Hill Times. “He likes to watch hockey and so on, but he doesn’t have a lot of active interests that he wants to pursue. He doesn’t play golf. He doesn’t play tennis. He doesn’t care much for travel. He doesn’t paint. He doesn’t garden. He doesn’t fish. You know, he loves politics.”

Never mind voting:  now we finally know for sure how to remove Harper from office.  Find him a hobby!  Stamp collecting, home brewing, karaoke, bingo, sky diving, basket weaving, triathlon, anything that will rouse in him such a passion that he can’t wait to leave Parliament Hill behind so he can devote more time to it.

Suggestions, as always, are welcome!

Leaky nose, poundy head, chesty cough

Yep, that would be me.  A thousand pardons for the lack of blogging — my brain is sore.

On a semi-related note, if you haven’t already done so then go read about Dr. Dawg’s experience with our horrible health care system.  Compare and contrast.

Santorum the Rick vs. Santorum the “Frothy Mixture of Lube and Fecal Matter”

So nice to have that bible-whomping Republican wingnut Rick Santorum back in the spotlight again, if ever so briefly.

Anyone who’s ever googled “Santorum” — and why the hell wouldn’t you? — is aware of what’s commonly known as Santorum’s “Google Problem”: a highly successful campaign to mock the goofy homophobic ex-Senator by linking his name with a hilarious but somewhat graphic sexual term and Google-bombing it right up to the top of the search engine rankings.  Thanks to millions of clicks on millions of links like this one — Santorum — the satirical site with its cute little introductory brown squirt has topped the Santorum Google hit parade for years (and other search engine hit parades as well).

Santorum (the politician, not the frothy mixture) became hyper-aware of his Google Problem when he launched his doomed presidential primary run this year, and finally he’s decided to fight back:

On Tuesday, the socially conservative politician lashed out at Google, saying the company could get rid of the sexual references to his name on the search results if it wanted to — and perhaps would do so if he were a Democrat.

“I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it,” he told Politico. “If you’re a responsible business, you don’t let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country.”

He continued: “To have a business allow that type of filth to be purveyed through their website or through their system is something that they say they can’t handle, but I suspect that’s not true.”

Typically, in the dank fever swamps of Santorum’s mucid imagination, where man-on-dog action is the order of the day, Google is persecuting him because he’s a conservative.  But Google maintains a decidedly absolutist position when it comes to free speech, regardless of political bias, and there are many examples of right-wing google-bombing to prove it (including racist images of the First Lady).  A Google spokesman suggested the best way for Santorum to resolve his Google Problem would be for him to contact the offending site’s webmaster, Dan Savage.

An unlikely outcome, to say the least.  Savage has already offered to take down the website if Santorum would donate $5million to “Freedom to Marry“, an advocacy group for equal marriage, and he hasn’t done it yet.  (I know this because I googled it.)

You have to love the irony and lack of awareness in Santorum deciding that the best way to get rid of his Google Problem is to draw more attention to it.  The offending site is once again racing to the top of the search engine results: #3 when I checked just now.

Poe: Next Generation?

We knew it all along: US House Speaker John Boehner isn’t orange, he’s PINK, as in PINKO!  And he better watch his pink ass, because somebody wants his job (besides Eric Cantor)… a tea party challenger, and this guy’s a doozy:

So how many teabagger stereotypes did that guy exhibit?  Let’s tally it up.  Raging fetus fetishist, check.  Inarticulate to the point that he’s barely able to string a few words into a coherent sentence, check.  So fascist by nature that he thinks John Boehner is a commie, check.  Painfully slow-witted, with the dull resentful eyes of a frightened squirrel monkey, check.

Is it just me, or did the word “Poe” cross anyone else’s mind?

For the blissfully unaware, “Poe’s Law” governs humourous parodies of religious fundies.  It rules that fundies are so inherently ridiculous that there’s no way they can even be parodied without the parody being mistaken for the real thing:

“Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won’t mistake for the real thing.“

This Lewis guy who’s challenging The Tan Man may not be a religious fundamentalist, although the fact that Planned Parenthood is his Number 1 Issue — over the economy, over jobs, over the world financial crisis and a shitload of other issues that should be far more important to any sane individual, or even a Republican — makes a pretty good case for it.  He claims to be “the tea party candidate”, and he’s so goofy that it might just be true — or, a new and interesting possibility, he might be someone parodying a bagger.  I just don’t know.  Who can tell anymore??

Has it really come to this?  Is a new Poe’s Law needed for teabagger parodies?  Poe’s Law is pretty adaptable.  Just replace “fundamentalism” with “tea partier”, and there’s the next generation of Poes.  Maybe the law should just be updated to include a subsection (“a(i)”) for ‘baggers.

Whether this guy’s a Poe or not, the Democratic Party should hire him immediately.

(from TPM)

Can’t even go to the internet

…without having to see dumbass ignorant bigots, to the point that I literally have a hard time even turning on my computer to do something as simple as surf the net… And this is freedom??

And what about The Children, when they go to the internet??  Whenever they’re on the internet and see some ignorant dumbass bigots, I hold my breath in anticipation of awkward questions about how, in the 21st Century, some people can have one foot (if not both) planted firmly in the Dark Ages.  Questions I’m not ready to answer:

The same people who say I shouldn’t impose my morality on them, are imposing immorality on me and my children to the point that I literally have a hard time even leaving my home anymore to do something as simple as visit the park. And this is freedom?

At the pool this summer there were homosexual couples with children and, while I was polite as my own young daughters doted on the baby with two “mommies”, I also held my breath in anticipation of awkward questions – questions I’m not ready to answer. My young daughters are all under the age of eight and they are not old enough to understand why a baby would have two women calling themselves “mommies”.

[...]We haven’t been back to the pool for a couple of weeks, except once but it rained. The truth is, now I don’t really want to go back.

Afraid to leave the house because of Teh Ghey.

I’m speechless.

This is becoming more than a phobia with some people, it’s getting to be a form of psychosis worthy of a listing in the DSM-IV.

Because it’s Saturday

When Amazon set up their website to allow Customer Reviews of the psychotic myriad of products they flog, I wonder if they knew those reviews would become such a source of entertainment that they’d have their own Top Ten Lists?

My favourite product from that list has to be the Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank.

This is just what’s needed to deal with those stupid 4-way stops and traffic roundabouts.  Nothing says “Might takes right” like a Donk!

All in all, a pretty funny list, but strangely lacking: no Top Ten Amazon Customer Review List would be complete without a book review from The General.

A Tale of Two Georges

I shouldn’t have to say it, but for the benefit of the cerebrally-deprived I will anyway:  I am not a fan of George W Bush — far from it.

But this is ridiculous:

Next week’s appearance by former U.S. president George W. Bush at an event hosted by a local evangelical Christian university has been cancelled.

The decision came Wednesday, the same day three former students launched a petition http://www.tyndale.co/petitionEND urging the university to cancel the speech. On Tuesday, a class valedictorian and professor publicly spoke out against the appearance following the resignation of another staff member.

Bush was scheduled to speak Sept. 20 to about 150 people at an invitation-only breakfast hosted by Tyndale University College and Seminary, home to about 1,400 students at two campuses in Toronto’s north end.

So, the school puts on a little shindig featuring the incoherent gibberish of George W Bush.  An exclusive event, meant for an invitation-only audience of about 150 people.  “Invitation-only” — meaning nobody will be forced to attend, no virgin ears will be irreparably damaged nor tender psyches shattered by the discordant sound of disagreeable views.  The speech will be attended only by those who want to hear Georgie speak, and those who despise the man don’t have to put up with him.  That’s what most people would call a win-win.  That’s what most people would call free speech.

But not everyone.  For a disgruntled few, opting out of the speech wasn’t enough — the choice to attend the speech had to be denied even to those who wanted went to the trouble of getting themselves on the Invite List.

So much for universities being bastions of free thought and free speech.  Imposing your choice on someone else, or taking their choice away, isn’t freedom:  it’s the ugly face of authoritarianism in all its censorious glory.   And in this case, probably hypocrisy of the highest order:  I wonder how the Self-Appointed Censors of Tynedale College reacted when it was this guy’s speech being censored.

That said, this engagement has only been public knowledge for a couple of days, so there’s a pretty good chance that the cancellation was just due to a scheduling conflict for The Georgie, not a victory for the Censors.  But that doesn’t make the intent any less, which is all that counts.

Careful, Operation Rescue…

… that “shoulder to shoulder” stance would put his hands in pretty close proximity to your wallet.

From the “You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby” files

Read it and weep:

A bus driver told Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard to get on a separate bus from other Government leaders after mistaking her for one of their partners during the recent Pacific Forum, TVNZ has reported. [...]

An anonymous police source told TVNZ a bus driver stopped Ms Gillard as she was getting on the bus with other leaders and told her to get on a bus with their partners.

It said the mistake was cleared up when an aide told the bus driver he was talking to the Australian Prime Minister.

Well, this is nothing if not timely.  Last week I had a discussion with a male friend who insisted that after all these years of “Wimminslib” things couldn’t possibly still be different for women.  Think this will set him straight?

Explodable Quotable

Yay!  Here’s a Tuesday Night game for you:

What rabidteabag-festoonedfoaming-the-mouthwingnutcalled Social Security a “Ponzi Scheme” whose days are numbered?

“Social Security is structured from the point of view of the recipients as if it were an ordinary retirement plan: what you get out depends on what you put in. So it does not look like a redistributionist scheme. In practice it has turned out to be strongly redistributionist, but only because of its Ponzi game aspect, in which each generation takes more out than it put in. Well, the Ponzi game will soon be over…”

No, not that wingnut, the other one.

Uhh, excuse me while I — whoops!  Stand back!!

You may now join me in the Ceremonial Wiping Up Of Bits Of Brain And Skull From Keyboards and Monitors.

(via ZeroHedge)

Comment of the day

The laughfest known as “the Tea Party Republican Debate” continues apace.

Candidate Michelle Bachmann was in especially fine form last night, hinting darkly at horrible side effects from the cancer-preventative HPV vaccine; theories which have long since been debunked and dwell on the ragged edge of politics in the murky conspiratorial caverns that house ideas like Birther- and Trutherism.  But post-debate, Bachmann dug in her heels and doubled down on her absurd contention that the HPV vaccine might cause mental retardation.

Mrs. Bachmann said on NBC’s “Today” show on Tuesday that after Monday night’s debate in Tampa, Fla., a tearful mother approached her and said her daughter had suffered “mental retardation” after being vaccinated against HPV.

Across the ideological board, the judgement of the blogosphere and its commentariat was swift and terrible, and to some of us, delightful.  But the best comment I saw was at Hit & Run:

But hey wait not-so-fast: amusing as it may be, Bachmann’s scientific illiteracy doesn’t preclude her winning the nomination.  In that crowd, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

“The Empire Is Eating Itself”

That’s the title of a Ralph Nader piece that ran in Counterpunch last week, and on this 10th Anniversary of 9/11 Weekend, with sovereign nations joining the “TBTF” club, stock markets careening every which way but loose and formerly robust economies grinding to, if not a halt, at least a noticeable slowdown, it’s as apt a description of the current state of affairs as I can imagine.

The collapse of the iconic Twin Towers may have been the end of the World Trade Center, and some would say life as we knew it, but it was just the start of many far-reaching consequences that spun out as the US, and to a lesser extent, the world, was swept into a vortex of paranoid hysteria.  We struggled to come to grips with the obvious fact that Daddy Government wasn’t looking after us like he said he was — instead he was out getting drunk on dollars, bar-hopping from the Big Oil Brewery to the Wall Street Cafe to Rick’s American Big Bank Bar.  When mayhem struck we were home alone, and it was hard to face.

Instead we took the path of least resistance, rewarding Big Daddy’s dishonesty and ineptitude by allowing him to run even further amok.  In the intervening years between 9/11 and now, a lot of things were allowed to happen that in “normal” times would be unthinkable.  Civil liberties took a back seat to “safety”.  Former “Bastions of Freedom” were degraded to the status of shit-hole failed states where torture, kidnapping and “black sites” are acceptable, even routine.  We stared into the abyss.  In our fevered imaginations, The Enemy was among us.   We became like the starving plane crash survivors who, in the absence of nourishment, began looking hungrily at each other, forks and knives flashing in our bulging, bloodshot eyes.

But that’s history and maybe it can be put behind us.  Nader’s article looks to the future, and asks how we can move forward by fixing some of our post-9/11 mistakes:

But many Americans might also want to pause to recognize — or unlearn — those reactions and overreactions to 9/11 that have harmed our country. How, in this forward-looking manner, can we respect the day of 9/11?

Read the whole thing.

(Image from the Arab-American Institute)

Sicksicksick

I realize this video clip of GOP contender Rick Perry at the candidates’ debate has already gone a bit viral, but it’s so creepy and sick and weird that I couldn’t resist posting it here.  (I only wish I had a pukeworthiness rating system so I could rate it as “Triple Projectile Pukeworthy”.)  On we go…

During the debate, the moderator refers to the state of Texas’ notorious death penalty body count, and when the number is named, the Republican audience bursts into excited applause — applause?  What?  Applesauce?  No, applause, as in “Come on people!  Let’s Give It Up for the Grim Reaper!”.  Though “applesauce” would make about as much sense:

How very odd to see all those presumably “pro-life”, “small government” conservatives jizzing their pants over the idea of state-sanctioned murder.  It was somewhat less surprising to hear that the CEO of Texas hasn’t lost any more Beauty Sleep over deciding who takes the Stainless Steel Ride than he has over where to build bridges and which 4H pancake breakfasts to attend.  If Perry presided over the execution of an innocent man, as many suspect, why would the execution of guilty ones bother him?

The governor has been criticized for replacing members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission just before they were to review a new report critical of the arson science used to convict Willingham. If the evidence ultimately proves Willingham did not kill his children, it would be the first known wrongful execution in Texas.

Wrapping it up was as good an example of Total Sycophantic Media Fail as I’ve ever seen:  after Perry’s response that he wasn’t struggling with lost sleep over executions, how could the debate moderator not ask the follow-up question, “Even Todd Willingham’s?”

(h/t: Dr.Dawg)

WTF is “Islamicism?

It’s bad enough in any scenario that we’d allow sleazy politicians to twist us around their porky little fingers like we had spines made of overcooked linguini, but now we’re even letting them make up the Scarywords they employ to click us into Freakout Mode and send us screaming and scrambling under our beds.

In the spirit of never letting a crisis, or even the distant memory of one, go to waste, Prime Minister Steve is jabbering about terrorism again.  In honour of the upcoming anniversary of 9/11, he’s even come up with a new word:

Arguing that the major threat to Canada “is still Islamicism,” he vowed to resurrect the two contentious clauses from the Antiterrorism Act that expired in 2007.

“Islamicism“!…??  Really??

Shortly after 9/11, US bloggers coined the term “Islamist” to describe Muslim fundamentalists of the flying-planes-into-buildings variety.  It’s been a perfectly serviceable word, more than up to the task at hand — but apparently not for Harpie.  Reading that Globe article, I thought the word “Islamicism” looked and sounded about as wrong as any word could, like the cat had run across the keyboard and added a couple more random letters.  I immediately consulted with Mr. Google.  Results:  “Islamicism” has a Wiki entry, but it’s one of those “disambiguation” pages: to me, incontrovertible proof that the word is at best semi-legit.  Hmm.

And the plot thickens.  Coincidentally, that Wiki page appears to have been put up late the same day Harper made the remark — yesterday, September 7th.

Making up words, Harpie?  To scare people??  And then putting up a Cover Your Ass Wiki page??  Shame, shame.

I wonder what he’s got planned for the 15th Anniversary of 9/11? “Islama-bamma-fo-famma-ization”?  Maybe for the 20th Anniversary we’ll be treated to something like  “Islama-whamma-bamma-thankyou-ma’amma-ization”.

STOP HARPER… from making up words!!

UPDATE:  Late to the party!  Others have been making wry observations about Harpie’s new word and his reason for inventing it from the Word… “Islamicism”.

Credible terrorism threat?

Hmmm?  Or someone trying to take the wind out of Obama’s big speech in a few minutes?

Good luck with that.  The President apparently plans to reveal his his package on nationwide TV, and according to Tim Geithner, it’s “substantial“.  Could be a hard act to follow.

(And people wonder why I find their politics so much more amusing than ours.)

The moose is loose

An apple tree, a fermented apple, a hungry moose.

Do the math.

Happy Labour Day

Enjoying your long weekend?  Thank a labour union.

Meanwhile, here’s Johnny Cash with a “song for the working man”:

Cullen mulls NDP leadership?

As the next Parliament looms menacingly, the NDP must be weighing the pros and cons of a leaderless Opposition facing a bellicose and belligerent Conservative majority government, and coming up decidedly short.  Sooner or later the question of who will fill Jack Layton’s considerable shoes has to be resolved, and members of the NDP caucus are starting to quietly think about it.  The latest to consider it is the MP for Skeena-Bulkley Valley, Nathan Cullen:

Skeena NDP MP Nathan Cullen is spending the next couple of weeks thinking about running for job left vacant when Jack Layton​ passed away last month.

Cullen said party members are now thinking about a leadership race after first getting over the shock of Layton’s death from cancer.

“I’ve been thinking about it for the last few days. I’m going to spend a couple of weeks and see if it’s the right fit,” said Cullen late last week.

I like Cullen for this gig, but he’d definitely be an unconventional choice.  Where most federal NDP leaders (apart from Tommy Douglas and Audrey McLaughlin) have been from the east, Cullen’s from the rural west and like most rural MPs, seems more responsive to his constituents than party line.

Cullen proved his maverickyness last year when he voted along with a few other rebel MPs (and the CPC government) for the Private Member’s Bill to scrap the long gun registry. Layton’s policy was not to whip votes on PMBs, which freed NDP MPs to vote as their constituents wished. Most voted to save the registry, but Nathan Cullen, whose constituency is a vast untamed swath of sportsman’s paradise in northern BC, wasn’t one of them.  Ultimately Jack Layton managed to save the registry by convincing some of his MPs to vote against scrapping it, but Cullen stubbornly stood his ground — to do otherwise would have been political suicide.  But the vote caused a lot of anguish, fear, loathing, and you-name-it among the NDP’s urban supporters, and I don’t suppose they’ll be forgetting it anytime soon.  Therefore, as deservedly popular as he may be with his constituents, Cullen probably doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance of winning the leadership.

But leadership is an issue that has to be dealt with, and if the convention being held in January, sooner is better than later.  What do you think?  Who might be a good leader for the Dips?  Why?

********************

And somewhat off-topic but equally important in its own way, weren’t you relieved when you clicked onto this site and for the first time in three(3) days your eyes weren’t scorched to smouldering piss-holes by this?  HAHAHAHA!

(h/t National Newswatch via Ricky on Twitter)