Thanks...
for F**k All
Clueless One!

Non - Premier Christy Avoiding the Ledge in Japan  For a few days there, Christy Clueless was gallivanting around Asia and sparing us her idiotic presence. It is actually better when she is gone, except for maybe giving stuff away to foreigners, but she can do that just as well at home and at least when she is gone the intelligence level of the province is a bit higher for awhile. But instead of staying far away, or maybe going even farther, like Mongolia, she's back to rekindle her attack on BC families and help her family and friends steal what little is left of the assets of our province.

 Between her and the Minister of Vice and Graft, Big Rich Coleman they have told the BC Utilities Commission what to do with their idea of regulating rates or any kind of energy policy planning and announced a completely transparently election goodie reduction in proposed rate increases - rate increases that are almost entirely necessary because of the incredibly deranged energy policies that Capo Gordo and now Big Bad Rich have forced on what was once a crown jewel of the province BC Hydro. According to the Mother Corp:

BC Hydro ordered to cut rate increases by 50%

          Rate to increase 17% rather than 30% over 3 years, energy minister says

.......On Tuesday, Energy Minister Rich Coleman ordered a nearly 50-per-cent cut in proposed rate increases for BC Hydro customers, saying families need the break and the Crown corporation can afford the cut.

Next April, during the provincial election campaign, electricity rates are due to increase by 1.4 per cent, Coleman said.

.......Clark said the government has told the B.C. Utilities Commission the rates must increase by no more than 17 per cent over three years......./snip

 The union representing BC Hydro workers said the government is hiding its own mismanagement, while holding back rate increases until after next May's provincial election.

Coleman said he directed the B.C. Utilities Commission to reduce the proposed rate increases without holding two weeks of public hearings set for next month........./snip

........ND P energy critic John Horgan, who consistently criticizes the Liberals for rising electricity rates, said the cuts are merely an attempt to get around a public hearing process that would likely reveal financial mismanagement at BC Hydro and impending rate hikes.

"This is the culmination of a decade of disastrous energy policy in British Columbia," he said. "Now they're putting in what they characterize as a rate reduction as a disguise to again thwart a public hearing into the activities at BC Hydro under the B.C. Liberals."

 Though Richy Rich and Christy Crunch vigorously deny this has anything to do with politics, it is oh so obvious that it does. Right now BC Hydro is being forced to buy IPP - Rape of the Rivers by Friends of the Liberals power at up to five or more times what it can be sold for, while BC Hydro's own dams are forced to open the spillways and shut down their own much more cheaply produced power. Then there is the Smart Meter boondoggle that for some reason costs 2-3 times as much per meter as the same equipment does for Ontario Hydro.

Then there is the math, Rich Coleman insists that the rates will go up about 17% over the next three years. Kinda funny that the first year raise, which JUST HAPPENS to come around on the guitar about a month before the next scheduled election will be just 1.4% , which when I went to school means that the next two years will have to increase by almost 8% each time. Of course they realize that by then they won't be government anymore. They also realize they won't be government when BC Hydro has to address what will be perhaps FIVE BILLION in deferred accounts that they've been using to hide debt and show a profit to pillage into general revenue from Hydro, just like they do from ICBC.

Of course if the voters of British Columbia are as dumb as they so obviously think we are and re-elect these un-indicted felons to yet another four year crime spree, they'll undoubtedly have to sell off poor over indebted BC Hydro to one of their friends CHEAP!

We can't wait 51 weeks to get these guys' hands out of OUR cookie jar, there HAS to be a few more sitting on their thumbs LIEberal MLAs with a speck or two of integrity that will leave caucus and make these creeps fall and force an election to be called by this fall at the latest!

Lisa
Canada Needs You Now!

The trains HAVE to run on time!
Update: Canadian Press May 23, 2012 11:39 AM EDT

TORONTO - Ottawa is prepared to table back-to-work legislation to end the strike at Canadian Pacific, federal Labour Minister Lisa Raitt said Wednesday as she urged both sides to keep talking to reach a deal.

         "This morning I have already put on notice a bill to ensure that we are in the position to 
           be  able to introduce legislation," Raitt said.

"If we want to we have the ability to introduce legislation at the first opportunity on Monday."

I have no special powers to predict the future, but it was clear that this would happen, that it would happen in less than twelve hours from the start of labor withdrawal is a surprise, one would have figured Lisa Raitt would have had the legislation ready to go at 12:01 AM Wednesday. It is clear that under the new fascist regime, otherwise known as the Harper Government© (and his buddy in Liberal disguise in Quebec, Jeannie with the Curly Hair) that both the right to strike and the right to assemble, associate or protest are dead in Canada - can free speech be far behind? The freedom to vote in a fair election has already gone by the wayside.........

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

As any fan of Benito Mussolini knows, aside from being famous as a fatuous goof, fleeing Italy in his younger days to avoid military service and arrest and hanging around the gas station upside down, he was dedicated to having the trains run on time. So in light of the following it is clear that our Ms. Lisa Raitt has her work cut out for her.

Canadian Pacific Receives 72-Hour Strike Notice From Union

TORONTO (DOW JONES)--Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. (CP, CP.T) said Saturday it may be forced to shut down its railroad operations in Canada as early as Wednesday if it fails to end a labor dispute with 4,800 engineers, conductors and rail traffic controllers. 

A shut down of the Calgary company's railroad network, which stretches between Vancouver in the west and Montreal in central Canada, would disrupt the movement of grains, fertilizer, coal and other commodities, potentially threatening the country's growth at a time when the recovery in the U.S., a big Canadian export market, remains fragile and Europe struggles to bring its debt crisis under control. CP also operates in the U.S. Midwest and northeast but train services in these regions would continue in the event of a strike.

The potential labor disruption also underscores the challenges U.S. activist shareholder Bill Ackman faces in his bid to improve CP's operations. On Thursday, Ackman, who owns a 14% stake in CP, won a four-month proxy battle to shake-up the board and replace the chief executive. With a reconstituted board and new leader, who still needs to be chosen, the hedge-fund manager believes CP's operations, over time, can approach the greater efficiency of its main rival Montreal-based Canadian National Railway Co. (CNI). But during the proxy fight some of Ackman's critics cited CP's unions as a reason his goals were too ambitious. Ackman couldn't immediately be reached for comment. In a press release, Canadian Pacific said it received a 72-hour strike notice from the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC), allowing its members to strike Wednesday....../snip

I might add that negotiations with the air plane drivers (pilots) at Air Canada aren't going too well either as in - Air Canada Labour Dispute: Pilots' Dispute Goes To Arbitration After Negotiations Fail. Maybe our little Lisa won't get to spend much time at the cottage this summer.

 Aversion Therapy for Gay Men!
 

Click to Enlarge at your own risk!
From Toronto Life:

Painter Margaret Sutherland made waves on the Internet last night with one of her latest paintings: a nude portrait of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The work, which we presume the Prime Minister did not sit for, used to hang on the walls of the Edward Day Gallery in Toronto, but is now dressing a wall in a library in Kingston (where the artist currently resides). In the 60-foot five foot oil-on-canvas painting, Harper is casually lounging in a state of undress. Salient features include the artist’s rendering of his nether regions, a woman serving the politician a Tim Hortons coffee and what appears to be a terrier of some sort. Fans of Canadiana-themed home decor will want to add this to their Pinterest board post-haste.

Definitely a case of the Emperor has no clothes...........

Large Scale
EI Abuse!

EI Abuser #1 - Jim Flaherty 
UPDATED (scroll down)

It gets difficult to tell if these guys, especially the Canadian Taliban, otherwise known as the Harper Government©, are loathe to use their brain before they engage their mouths, unable to use a brain that doesn't work or are just LIARS! This week our man in finance Jim Flaherty has come out swinging against lazy, entitled Canadians who would rather suck off the government tit and collect Employment Insurance than take a job that doesn't suit their elevated sense of entitlement. Thus Lord Jim has degreed according the the Canadian Press in No Bad Job that:

  The Harper Conservatives are signalling they are preparing to get tough with unemployed Canadians who refuse jobs they consider below them or too far away.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Monday new rule changes to define "suitable employment" and "reasonable" efforts at finding work have yet to come down, but as far as he's concerned people should be prepared to take pretty well any available job.

"There is no bad job, the only bad job is not having a job," he told reporters. "I drove a taxi, I refereed hockey. You do what you have to do to make a living."

    'There is no bad job, the only bad job is not having a job.'—Finance Minister Jim Flaherty......./snip 

The minister's statement came in a news conference in which he pressed the case for early passage of a massive omnibus bill the opposition has labelled a "Trojan horse" because it bundles together a wide array of issues, from environmental reviews to employment insurance, immigration, old age pensions and public service cutbacks.

Flaherty made clear that the definition of what constitutes "suitable employment" under the Employment Insurance Act will be decided by Human Resources Minister Diane Finley.

Any job for anyone 'insulting': opposition

But NDP critic Peggy Nash said Canadians should be concerned about what appears to be a hard line taken from the finance minister. "If you are a computer software developer, will you be working at Tim Horton's?

If you are an unemployed teacher or nurse, will you be working in the agricultural sector picking fruit?" she asked. 'If you are an unemployed teacher or nurse, will you be working in the agricultural sector picking fruit?'—NDP critic Peggy Nash

 In case you are thinking that I am being over the top by calling Mr. Flaherty an abuser of the EI system, keep in mind the fact that the entire system is COMPLETELY funded by employers and employees and for the last many years, due to constantly lengthening periods required to qualify for benefits and shortening periods of eligibility for those who do qualify  the system has managed to accumulate a surplus of almost 60 billion dollars up to the present time.  However that surplus isn't there because (here comes the abuse) successive governments, especially the current excuse for a government, have routinely raided the fund to subsidize such worker coddling projects as Corporate Tax Cuts, gazebos in Tony Clement Land, flying Peter MacKay to go fishing, buying orange juice for Bev Oda and bailing out banks.

In 2008 two unions in Quebec challenged this redirection of workers' INSURANCE PREMIUMS to other non-related expenses, such as subsidizing corporations to assist them in moving jobs offshore (Aveos, Caterpillar) but as one can't help noticing, justice is in short supply in Canada anymore, unless one is a member of the one percent club.  According to the Edmonton Journal from December 18, 2008:

   OTTAWA - There will be no EI Christmas bonus for Canadians after the Supreme Court of Canada refused Thursday to order the government to return a $57-billion surplus in the employment insurance fund to contributors.

However, the court said in the same decision that the former Liberal government illegally collected premiums for three years because it let the federal cabinet set the annual rate rather than Parliament.

In the 7-0 ruling, the judges gave the government one year to fix its unconstitutional error of "taxation without representation" in 2002, 2003, and 2005.

"According to that principle, a tax can be imposed only by Parliament or a clearly authorized delegate of Parliament," wrote Justice Louis LeBel.

The court did not suggest ways to make amends, nor did it order that any of the approximately $53 billion in illegal collections be repaid.

One option, said legal analysts, would be for Parliament to pass retroactive legislation approving cabinet setting the premium criteria in the years in question.

"We are analyzing the decision ... and its implications to develop a solution that respects the Supreme Court decision," said Julie Vaux, communications director for Human Resources Minister Diane Finley.

 I've, like Mr. Fathead Flaherty done many jobs in my life, from being a cowhand for $90 per month and found (room and board) to washing dishes at a truck stop, but later on in life when I was say off for a couple months for spring break-up as a high lead hook-tender making almost thirty dollars per hour (in the early 1980's), it was unlikely that the local Tim Horton's would even consider training me to make a double double just so I could go back to the woods once I got skilled. Besides, as a high paid worker I was only collecting benefits on an insurance policy that my employer and myself had paid for with our own funds. What's next, raiding CPP premiums and insisting all elderly folks become greeters at Wal-Mart? Actually the Fatuous Mr. Flaherty even went well beyond the fringe with:

"That means we are going to have to encourage more persons with disabilities to work, more seniors to work, more aboriginal people to work, including young people. We need to get rid of disincentives in the employment insurance system to people joining the workforce."

 This rhetoric is rich coming from a pompous ass who will undoubtedly have no qualms about collecting TWO platinum plated pensions after an overpaid, richly expense accounted and underworked career ruining life for both Ontarians and Canadians, and long before he reaches the age of even 65, much less 67 or 68! I would be happy to provide both him, and his boss Spiteful Steve and their buddies like Campbell and run-away to Asia non-premier Christy Clark with full room and board when they are all turfed from their current posh positions, in the gaols that these guys think are so wonderful, if the Canadians and folks of BeeCee wake up and do the right thing and fire their lying asses at the polls. In the case of the Harper Cons, we shouldn't even have to wait for an election, they should be charged with election fraud and the results of last year declared null and void. Actually, we shouldn't have to wait a year to send our unelected premier here in BeeCee to the unemployment roles, but apparently we who live in British Columbia have built up some terrible karma that we are still paying off, or the majority of us are just morons!

UPDATE:

Just in case you don't understand my frustration with Lord Jim's sycophantic idiocy, Boris over at the Galloping Beaver has weighed in on the subject much more elegantly than I can manage.  A couple gems for bait below, but please go on over and get the whole meal.

........If you ask the elderly and the disabled to take jobs, you're going to have to create some criteria about who can actually work and who cannot. Knowing your party, I doubt you'll be consulting medical professionals on that one. Those folks won't give you the answers you want......./snip 

The EI you want to curtail saves people and families by keeping them in communities and among people they know and love. Take those things away and you destroy lives. But then I don't suspect you give two obsolete pennies about people's well-being. What you're doing, whether you frame it that way or not, is destroying the middle-class and creating a nation of corporate serfs "doing what they have to do to get by." This I suspect will please your corporate masters' and China-drunk party leader's desire to turn Canada into a raw materials and energy maquiladora.

(Bolding would be mine - as usual)

Stoopidity is
Our Strength!

noted tyrant and suppressor of civil liberties Thomas Jefferson

It shouldn't be surprising that the House of Representatives of Paul Ryan, Tea Party icon and champion of taking health care, food and education away from the poor to sponsor wars around the world, would follow Spiteful Steve's lead and attack the U.S. Census, just like the PsuedoCons did to StatsCan - even before they got their now cherished "majority." It is clear that facts are the enemy of the right wing and their ideology of supporting the greed of the 1%. If actual facts or data should enter the debate, they lose. The right wing fundie whackos can yell and scream all they want, but to their dismay, they just can't alter reality and change the facts of the world, the best they can do is obfuscate, distort and as much as possible make actual information difficult to impossible to access.  

According to a report at (bolding by kootcoot) HuffPo:

 WASHINGTON –- The House voted Wednesday to eliminate the detailed surveys of America that have been conducted by the Census Bureau since the nation’s earliest days.

House Republicans, increasingly suspicious of the census generally, advanced a measure to cut the American Community Survey. It passed 232 to 190.

The survey is not part of the constitutionally mandated population count, but some version of it has been done by law as part of the decennial survey since the time of Thomas Jefferson to assess the needs of the nation. It’s generally considered a vital tool for business.

Republicans, acknowledging its usefulness, attacked the survey as an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, arguing that the government has no business knowing how many flush toilets someone has, for instance.

“It would seem that these questions hardly fit the scope of what was intended or required by the Constitution,” said Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.), author of the amendment.

“This survey is inappropriate for taxpayer dollars,” Webster added. “It’s the definition of a breach of personal privacy. It’s the picture of what's wrong in Washington, D.C. It's unconstitutional.”

The survey used to be done every 10 years, along with the census, when 1 out of 6 Americans were required to answer the so-called “long form.” But the administration of President George W. Bush reformed the process in 2005 to do an annual survey of 250,000 households, making the survey more manageable, cheaper and more timely.

Democrats were perplexed by the move, which would deprive policymakers and businesses of vast, vital troves of data that they use to make decisions,

“The Republicans have earned a reputation as the ‘do-nothing party’ and now they want to also be the ‘know-nothing party,’ “ said Rep. Carolyn Maloney after the vote. “This vote repeals the work done by Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama and six Congresses to modernize the census, and does so without even a hearing or full debate.”

Over at Lawyer's, Guns and Money,  where I was alerted to this recent stupid attack on sense and reason, they highlighted some  choice quotes in Your Republican Party!

  The modern Republican Party: creating myths about what the Founders thought out of thin air yet actually opposing what the Founders invented while screaming tyranny.

The latest example of the second part of this equation comes from the House passing a bill eliminating the census surveys that have been part of the census process ever since 1790 when noted tyrant and suppressor of civil liberties Thomas Jefferson created it to learn more about how the nation’s people lived.

Some choice quotes:

    “It would seem that these questions hardly fit the scope of what was intended or required by the Constitution,” said Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.), author of the amendment. “This survey is inappropriate for taxpayer dollars,” Webster added. “It’s the definition of a breach of personal privacy. It’s the picture of what’s wrong in Washington, D.C. It’s unconstitutional.”

Yes, because the government that created the census surveys didn’t know much about the Constitution since it only consisted of several delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

Also, the real Daniel Webster is no doubt rolling over in his grave (or more likely giving a 15 hour speech about it in the afterlife) about what an idiot his namesake is.

Come on people, wake up, we should be SMARTER in the twenty first century than we were in the eighteenth, but it certainly is difficult to find evidence to support that likelihood.  If we continue to allow the Republicans on both sides of the 49th parallel to win the war against knowledge and reason, we better learn to enjoy our descent into fascism and a return to feudalism.  As they stated over at Lawyers, Guns & Dough to end their alert to this insanity:  

I guess this all makes sense though, because there’s no question the Republicans are opposed to the Enlightenment.

A Brief Trip to
effing Stoopid!

Ignorance Personified (on the left)

 Wow, lately it is rare for me to post once every day or two, but I ran into such a heavy dose of stupid this afternoon that I just had to post for the second time in ONE DAY, just to share it with you. While Mitt Romney flip flops so much that no one can even guess what he really thinks - other than the necessity to say whatever might get him elected - this week Mitt is taking credit for saving Detroit automakers, when two weeks ago he was saying Obama should have let them go broke (Maybe Bain Capital could have snapped them up) Today I ran across the Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, who is consistently not only stupid, but apparently full of contempt for women and likely himself also. (Peterson is the person (?) in the picture that isn't blond.) Since his statements leave me almost dumbstruck speechless, I'll let Raw Story excerpts tell the story of the Compassionate Christian Pastor Peterson.

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a tea party activist that’s appeared several times on Fox News, and founder of an organization where Sean Hannity serves as an advisory board member, said in a sermon recently published to YouTube that America’s greatest mistake was allowing women the right to vote, adding that back in “the good old days, men knew that women are crazy and they knew how to deal with them.”

In the video, published to YouTube in March, Peterson explains that he believes women simply can’t handle “anything,” and that in his experience, “You walk up to them with a issue, they freak out right away. They go nuts. They get mad. They get upset, just like that. They have no patience because it’s not in their nature. They don’t have love. They don’t have love.”

Despite his statements being online for more than a month, Hannity welcomed Peterson on his show last Tuesday to castigate the Obama administration over “taking credit” for the Osama bin Laden assassination — but the segment didn’t exactly go as planned.

In his March sermon, Peterson adds that Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown Law student who recently spoke to a House Democratic hearing on contraception coverage, was actually revealing “all the sex” college students are having. “It’s really all about maintaining the freedom to kill babies in the womb,” he says. “Women are now degraded. Women have no shame.”

At roughly 8:30 into his 12-minute sermon, he doubles down, amazingly, saying that he believes America went wrong when it gave women the right to vote. “I think that one of the greatest mistakes America made was to allow women the opportunity to vote,” Peterson says. “We should’ve never turned this over to women. And these women are voting in the wrong people. They’re voting in people who are evil who agrees with them who’re gonna take us down this pathway of destruction.”

“And this probably was the reason they didn’t allow women to vote when men were men. Because men in the good old days understood the nature of the woman,” he adds. “They were not afraid to deal with it. And they understood that, you let them take over, this is what would happen.”

Peterson, founder of the conservative religious group Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny (BOND), appeared on the Fox News Channel on May 1, more than a month after giving his controversial sermon. Fox News host Kirsten Powers even confronted Peterson about his “misogynistic” speech and challenged Hannity to repudiate it, but the Republican opinion host did not, and instead gave Peterson a platform to denounce “liberal, women policies.”

 As if being perhaps one of the greatest spokesmen for the Republican's War on Women wasn't enough, the good (sic) Reverend then went on to share his attitudes about Black People, a group to which he would appear to belong with:

“I have a responsibility to tell the truth,” he added “You’re on the side of lies. Why shouldn’t I be on the side of truth? And it’s the truth that’s gonna make us free. Somebody gotta tell the truth, so I’m going to tell the truth.”

That “truth,” it would seem, isn’t just about liberal women, or even women in general. Peterson made headlines in January after telling a Huffington Post reporter that he would like to see black people put “back on the plantation so they would understand the ethic of working… They need a good hard education on what it is to work.”

On his website, Peterson has published an open letter to Attorney General Eric Holder that advocates the arrest of New Black Panthers members.

Perhaps Mitt should send the good Reverend out with Herman "9-9-9" Cain as a duo comedy team to explain the Republican Platform, especially as it applies to Women and People of Color........I would think he has some great ideas about Hispanics as well..........

To see the Rev live and in color go to Raw Story and check out the embedded videos!

Harper's Canada (TM)

from Canadian Geographic

The scene above is Spiteful Steve's vision of the Canada of the future. And thanks to the eradication of all that bothersome environmental oversight, hidden in the 400+ page document posing as a budget, Steve and his petro buddies from the Failing Nation to the South and the Rising Tiger in the East (China, Steve's real boss) can accelerate the conversion from the Canada we've known to the Nightmare the Cons want to impose. It's just too bad that Steve and all his buddies don't have to go live there, or even just downstream.

Steve Vaughn, Canada's (likely soon to be either unemployed or character assassinated) environmental commissioner released his report this morning on the status of previously contaminated and basically devastated sites to whom the responsibility for clean up has fallen to the Canadian taxpayers, while those who profited from the mess and long gone sitting somewhere counting their ill gotten gains.  According to the CBC:

Federally owned contaminated sites will cost the government billions of dollars to clean up, according to the 2012 report of Canada's environment commissioner.

Scott Vaughan says the government has made significant progress, closing the file on 9,000 out of 22,000 sites across the country, but the remaining sites present some major headaches.

"The government has reported its combined environmental liabilities at $7.7 billion," writes Vaughan. "Many of these sites are buried and out of the public eye, but they will impose human health risks and environmental and financial burdens for generations to come."

Frankly I would tend to think that the 7.7 billion dollar estimate is conservative, and I mean the word in its normal sense, not the name of the party of thugs, liars and thieves.  BC and Vancouver had to spend big bucks cleaning up Granville Island and the Expo lands after they who thrashed them moved on to other destruction.  And then after the Expo party was over, didn't our government kindly almost give a lot of the land away to fugitive financier Li ka-ching ka-ching, or somebody like that, all freshly cleaned up at our expense?

But for all the hoo-ha about Stevie and his gang being "economists" and frugal managers, it is not true either good business or accurate counting of "profits" as long as externalities like the mess above and the thousands of sites that are admitted to aren't considered a part of the equation. Their accounting doesn't consider the long term health costs arising from toxic waste and polluted air and water either!

But the 38-39% of you idiots who voted for this gang and gave Stevie his coveted majority, thanks a lot, and I hope you are happy that soon we can turn more of Canada into toxic wastelands even faster to benefit a few greedy and downright EVIL folks. There is nothing "conservative" about this ragtag gang of fundamentalist exploiters who can only understand a quick buck now, and only for the folks that matter.

Canadians, hewers of wood, bearers of water and shippers of RAW Bitumen!!!

I imagine to the Harper Government(tm), the clean-up costs won't matter, cuz why bother!!!

(btw, the picture above comes from an article in the June 2008 issue of Canadian Geographic, which can be found here.)

Thanks
Norm!

Herr Pee Wee Harper  Norman Farrell of North Vancouver is one of British Columbia's, no Canada's, BEST bloggers for many reasons and his posting yesterday that I am going to briefly discuss is just another example of why. One never knows what Norm will write about, but can always be confident that he will be thoughtful and do a very good job of connecting the dots. Sometimes he will simply share a good story, perhaps from his younger days, or his travels or his grandchildren. On other occasions he will mainly bring something already out there, but available in a venue not widely known or visited by some of his audience. Yesterday's post from Norm was an example of the latter as he primarily re-produced an article from a relatively obscure (to me at any rate, until this morning) website/blog/organization called the Council for Secular Humanism. In his post Verbal gymnastics? Maybe not, he brings to our attention a piece from 2003 titled Fascism Anyone?, by Laurence W. Britt.

One can go to the links above to read the original article or Norm's post from yesterday, but I just want to briefly do a stream of consciousness exercise with the fourteen points that Mr. Britt indicated were signs of fascism as evidenced by his study of "Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia." As I went through the headings and their explanation, I just couldn't ignore how reminiscent this all was of today in the USA, Canada and BeeCee. I have a bunch of stuff to do today, so I'm just going to do this quickly with the headings and what they remind me of, a free association exercise.  

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.

American exceptional-ism anyone? or Gordo's "Best Place on Earth"

 2. Disdain for the importance of human rights

the G20 Police Riots, NYPD, Gitmo, RCMP killings and beatings, Mehar Arar, Omar Khadr

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. 

Joe Oliver and enemies of the Harper Economy, Peter Kent and "money launderers, Vic "smelly" Toews and child pornographers. 

4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism 

USA, USA, USA biggest military on earth, militarism rather than diplomacy and of course Stephen Harper never heard of an American war adventure he didn't think Canada should join in with!


5. Rampant sexism

MP Woodsworth and moment of conception "debate|" or start of life. The Republican "War on Women"

 6. A controlled mass media.

Post Media, Faux News, Rupert Murdoch

 7. Obsession with national security.
.Post 9/11 North America

8. Religion and ruling elite tied together. 

Stockwell Day, Stephen Harper, Mitt Romney, televangelists,  Utah's meddling in Gay Marriage issue in other states,   Creationism taught in US schools."One nation under God" in and out of the Pledge of Allegiance to Murca


9. Power of corporations protected 

Citizen's United, Bank bailouts, BP has made the Gulf more wonderful, SNC, BC LIEberals, 

10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated. 

Reagan firing the air controllers and everything since.......Lisa Raitt

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts 

Latte sipping Librul Elites, etc. CBC cutbacks, CBC Symphony killed off, 

12. Obsession with crime and punishment 

USA has over two million people (mostly minorities) in prison, Harper's Omnibus Crime Bill

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption 

BC LIEberal Government,  BC Rail, Fish Farms, F-35, Tony Clements Gazebo World

14. Fraudulent elections.

G. Dubya Bush 2000, Treason Steven Harper 2011


Of course I could go on all day, but as I said earlier, I've got stuff to do...........

Black Day
in May

Inmate number 18330-424
and his buddy Vic the nanny impregnator
chilling at the Coleman Federal Detention Complex

Well, today we learned that unlike many actual Canadians who get enmeshed in difficulty with totalitarian regimes in Africa or the Middle East, through no misconduct of their own, the Harper Government(TM) will be welcoming convicted Brit felon Conrad Black back to the bosom of his shrew Barbara Amiel and the centre of the universe, otherwise known as Tranna. Although Harper and his thugs, Jason Kenny and Vic "smelly" Toews deny that "Lordy" Black, as he is known to his fellow prisoners, is getting any special treatment, he already has a temporary residency permit to live in Canada from May 2012 to May 2013, in spite of the fact that for most people it takes a year or more to receive such a permit. NDP MP Pat Martin thought that Lard Black should get a much shorter temporary permit, and said:

“I think he should be allowed back in this country for 24 hours – long enough to strip him of his Order of Canada.”

Generally one has to show remorse and accept responsibility for their transgressions in order to receive such a permit, or parole, but the Laird of Crossdressing still maintains he did nothing wrong and was a victim of a frame job by jealous losers. But I don't find it surprising that Lard Butt of the Media would be allowed back into Canada as soon as possible because CONrad is their kind of criminal. The party of fixed elections, fixed bids on useless planes, and sixteen dollar glasses of orange juice can only admire a man(?) of such despicable greed and arrogance.

However, the return of Canada's greediest swindler so far prosecuted in the USA isn't the reason this is a Black Wednesday in May. No, today May 2, 2012 is the one year anniversary of the success of the PsuedoCons' exercise in voter suppression and election fraud and their achievement of attaining a majority government, in spite of the fact that almost two thirds of Canadians who bothered to vote chose anybody but Harper and his thugs. The Globe and Mail, not surprisingly since they endorsed the election of Harper and his acolytes, think that the Harper Government(TM) has had a very good year, with the exception of the omnibus crime bill, which according to the anonymous editorial board of the Flailing Goober amounted to:

On crime, the government kept its promise to be tough, but a foolish promise kept should not be much satisfaction.

Actually, while it may have been a good year for the Harper Government(TM), it hasn't been quite so good for Canadians, a great number of whom have been labeled enemies of the state by the Canadian Taliban of Treason Stephen the Fascist Harper. Veterans who had the temerity to advocate for the rights of themselves and their colleagues have had their private medical records pored over by Harper staff trying to discredit them. Anyone who thinks that fish habitat, the north coast or anything in the environment might matter to future Canadians has been all but rounded up and taken to concentration camps. Future seniors will have to try to live in a world increasingly polluted and dangerous, due to Harper's all out attack on the environment, fresh water, food inspection and public health an extra two years before being deemed worthy of collecting their pension, while companies like Air Canada (Aveos) and Caterpillar receive generous government subsidies and close plants and abandon Canada and their Canadian workers anyway.

In a Yahoo Canada summing up of the Harperites' first year in power, Andy Radia had a different view than the Goober and Pail of Crap, being more over (or is that under) whelmed by the ongoing scandals, scandals that have been dominating the discourse IN SPITE of the ongoing super human efforts at secrecy and lack of transparency by Harper and his minions.

Gazebo-gate:

During the election campaign a leaked auditor general's report suggested then-industry minister Tony Clement funneled $50 million of G8 legacy money into dubious projects in his riding.

Clement claims he "recommended projects" to John Baird, the then-infrastructure minister who had sole authority to decide which projects would get federal cash.
In November, the RCMP announced that it had found no basis for further investigation of Clement.

Irwin Cotler affair:

In November, it was reported that constituents in the Montreal riding of Mount Royal were receiving calls from a telephone number identified as "Campaign Research" asking if they intend to support the Conservative party in an impending federal by-election.

There was one problem though: Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, who represents Mount Royal, had no plans of stepping down and there was no impending by-election.
According to an article in the National Post, the Conservative party eventually admitted to making the calls but claimed they were simply identifying supporters.

Peter MacKay's helicopter trip:

Opposition MPs went on the attack in December over Defence Minister Peter MacKay's 10-minute trip on a search-and-rescue helicopter in July 2010.

The helicopter picked up MacKay from a remote fishing lodge in central Newfoundland at a cost to taxpayers of $32,000.
Despite leaked documents suggesting the helicopter pick-up was only to be under the "guise" of a search-and-rescue exercise, MacKay continues to insist he did nothing wrong.

Robo-call scandal:

As Postmedia News reported in February, Elections Canada and police are looking into reports that automated calls in as many as 18 ridings falsely advised voters that the locations of their polling stations had changed.

At least some of these calls were linked to Racknine, a small Edmonton call centre that worked for the Tory national campaign.
The investigation continues.

Christian Paradis' ethics problem:

In March, industry minister Paradis was found guilty of conflict of interest for helping former caucus colleague Rahim Jaffer meet with senior bureaucrats on a controversial green-energy project.

According to Tim Harper of the Toronto Star, Paradis is now under investigation in two more ethics cases.

F-35 debacle:

Last month, auditor general Michael Ferguson tabled a scathing report claiming the Harper government's plan to buy new F-35 fighter jets was conducted with key data hidden from decision makers and parliamentarians.

Moreover, during a post-report conference, Ferguson said the Harper government would have known that the F-35 was estimated to cost $25 billion, not the $14.7 billion the public was told in the weeks before the last federal election.
The Harper government tried to explain the discrepancy away by claiming it was due to differing accounting methodologies.

Bev Oda's $16 orange juice:

Bev Oda's travel expenses to the UK caused controversy last week.

A Canadian Press story revealed that the international cooperation minister was originally booked to stay at a London hotel where she was attending a conference last June, but had her staff rebook her at the swanky Savoy hotel, where her stay cost her about $665 per night.

The total bill for her three-day stay including the room and room service was $1,995. The room charges included an orange juice that cost $16.

Oda also hired a car and driver, at a cost of about $1,000 per day, to bring her to the hotel she was originally supposed to stay at.
She eventually apologized for her lavish spending and repaid the money out of her own pocket.

Of course Mr. Radia's account merely skims the surface, as many more ridings than 18 are in question, the F-35 situation is much more complicated and Bev Oda hasn't necessarily paid back the almost $1000 per day limo fares to go to the hotel she should have been waking up in (two km from the Savoy). Andy also forgot to mention that early in their mandate, this corrupt gang that called an election to avoid being found in contempt of Parliament, quietly plead guilty to electoral fraud/overspending from a previous election, charges that they had vehemently denied for at least two years.

As a dedicated foe of Harper and his cohorts and everything they stand for, I can only hope that they do as well in the year ahead, and if they do even better, perhaps they will have been run out of office and with real good fortune, some of them will be sitting in prison