But...but...lefties use bad words on the internet

Dear people who like to claim "both sides do it"  and bemoan the use of strong or obscene language on the part of the lefty and progressive bloggers and claim that calling people "fascists" is hyperbolic vilification.
Go read what Dr. Dawg has brought back from the conservative swamp and then you can come back and apologize. And be sure you click all the "again" links.

addendum, with a hat-tip to Driftglass

"Where will he go next, this phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare--Chicago; Los Angeles; Miami, Florida; Vincennes, Indiana; Syracuse, New York? Anyplace, everyplace, where there's hate, where there's prejudice, where there's bigotry. He's alive. He's alive so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being. He's alive because through these things we keep him alive."

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Killing time

Much is being made by folks on the left in the U.S. from Glenn Greenwald to the Rude Pundit about the speech this week by Attorney General Eric Holder on the legality of the President killing American citizens without any sort of trial or other judicial process. As Stephen Colbert described it, Holder's argument is that the U.S. constitution promises "due process" not judicial process - that as long as there is a standard process followed in every case, everything is nice and legal. And that due process at the moment is that the president and his advisers discuss matters and decide which American citizen they want to kill. And then they kill them.
Pretty nasty stuff, to be sure and I agree with Glennzilla and his Rudeness that Obama's dogged continuation of some of the worst excesses of the Bush regime is despicable.
But speaking as a not-American, welcome to our world U.S. citizens! Your government has been killing us clearly inferior not-Americans all over the globe for many many years now - sometimes by proxy, sometimes with drones, sometimes with airstrikes, sometimes with your military and espionage agencies, sometimes for commercial considerations, sometimes for revenge, sometime just for shits and giggles - with near total impunity. And most of the time, the vast majority of you have been okay with that.
I'm not saying that every instance of the United States government killing people is wrong. We were quite pleased you finally pitched in and helped defeat Hitler after a couple of years of watching from the sidelines. What I am saying is that it is tough for us not-Americans to get too upset about the U.S. Government deciding that it is going to level the playing field and start killing Americans just like it kills everybody else. 
I know this is upsetting for some of you what with that notion of American exceptionalism and all that, but I figure maybe, just maybe, if you know you are in the same boat as the rest of the world when it comes to the U.S. government being able to whack you at the drop of a hat for any reason at all, no questions asked, you might start to think that letting the government kill people, any people, isn't such a hot idea. You might even start to think that its a bad idea to threaten to bomb countries just because it's an election year and the yahoo contingent want a "strong" leader.



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I don't usually read the horoscopes, but this one is spot on

 Sagittarius It's true that no man is an island, but all bullshit humanistic hand-wringing aside, it's totally okay to be happy that malignant Breitbart asshole is gone forever.

 My sympathies to his wife and children. By all accounts he was a devoted family man and I'm sure they will miss him. It is always sad for friends and family when someone dies at such a  relatively young age.

It is also sad that this is the only nice thing I can think of to say about Andrew Breitbart.
Smart Patrol, who is considerably less sympathetic,  has much, much more to say over at A Drop of the Hard Stuff
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He's cheesy and he's greasy

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Dumb and Dumber

Who is a clumsier liar and stupider spin merchant - Dean Del Mastro or Maurice Vellacot?

 In this corner....IT WAS THE LIBERALS!

Conservative demand Liberals release phone records, but won't release their own
Dean Del Mastro, the parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, blamed the Liberals over and over again during question period Monday.
"When those records are made public the Liberal party will in fact have fingered itself for each and every one of those calls," he said.
However, when asked by reporters if the Conservatives would release their own records, Del Mastro said they didn't need to because they are not the guilty party.
"No, because obviously our party is not behind the calls. We know that. We believe the Liberal Party has in fact made these allegations and they've made these allegations knowing full well that they've paid these companies millions of dollars to makes calls to hundreds of thousands of households across the country," he said.
Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae said his party has agreed to release all phone records, including scripts, from last May's election.
"We're hoping to release stuff as soon as possible," Rae said, following question period.


And in this corner...IT WAS ELECTIONS CANADA!

Tory backbencher lays blame for robocalls with Elections Canada

OTTAWA — A Conservative backbencher is suggesting Elections Canada may be to blame for the robocalls affair.
“I suspect that at the end of the day, if Elections Canada has the resources to do a proper investigation, they’ll find they’re themselves significantly responsible,” Saskatchewan MP Maurice Vellacott said in a statement.
“That tech issues with marrying (Elections Canada) lists to available, electronic phone lists is part of the problem, and in a few instances there may have been malfeasance by one party or the other.”
Vellacott says there have been numerous address errors by Elections Canada in each of the six federal elections he has contested.

 
Ahem

From the CBC May 2, 2011 story:

Susan Friend, an Elections Canada official, said the agency never calls voters directly to warn them that polling stations have moved.

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Why Stephen Harper really wanted those pandas

I fully expect to see these hairier versions of John Baird knocking on doors for the CPC in the next election

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Running the government like a business

“I'll simply say that our campaign was run with the same standards, the same structure, the same processes that any modern progressive company would use to ensure that its employees, and its agents operate ethically and in compliance with the law,” Mr. Giorno said. 

 Any company, like say Enron or Haliburton or Bre-X.
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Harper's the One

What the hell are those things on the side of Dean Del Mastro's head? They can't be ears, because he clearly isn't listening to a word that is being said to him. Del Mastro is probably sitting down in the video linked above because he has been spinning so much lately, he is too dizzy to stand up. What a maroon.

As Stephen Lautens pointed out on Twitter the other day, the Tory have a sort of standard response anytime they get their tails caught in a crack. I've amended his list slightly:

1. It's a smear
2. It's not worthy of a reply
3. It's a rogue
4. But...But...ADSCAM!
5. Look over there! A shiny object!
6. The Liberals did it/the Liberals did it first
7. But the NDP are SOSHILUSTS! OMG!
8. Sure it happened, but REAL Canadians don't care about all this insider political stuff, just ask Don Cherry
9. Prove it, copper!
10. Everyone does it
11. Plead guilty and pay a fine

Let me be perfectly clear, and I'll use small words so people like Del Mastro can understand.   There is nothing wrong with using robocalls to ask for support for your party, whether the calls come from Canada, the United States or Timbuckfreakingtu.
The only time the point of origin becomes an issue is when the calls contain illegal content, because if the company making the calls is outside the country, it is more difficult to compel them to provide information to investigators.

Calling voters and claiming to be from Elections Canada or claiming to be calling on behalf of a party other than the one paying you, is ILLEGAL.
Lying to voters with the intention of preventing them from voting is ILLEGAL.

With the vast number of ridings now reporting illegal calls intended to suppress the vote, it is becoming clear that it this could only have been put together by someone with access to significant amounts of both money and data. It is also pretty clear that the vast majority of the illegal calls across the country were made to try to suppress the votes of identified Liberal supporters, with NDP supporters being a secondary target. The fact that a handful of identified CPC supporters now claim to have received such calls is irrelevant. Why are they only coming forward now? Why are there so few of them and so many complaints from Liberal and NDP supporters?

In investigating a crime, one looks at who had means and motive. The Conservative Party of Canada has a massive database of voter information going back several elections. Their people regularly brag about it. They have shown, at the highest levels of the party, their willingness to break election law in the past. They had the means and the motive. It is simply a matter of finding the fingerprints on the knife sticking out of the back of democracy at this point.

Do not be misled or confused by the ink the CPC is spraying like a frightened octopus. Do not let them sidetrack you with arguments about whether Elections Canada has received 31,000 complaints or 31,000 contacts or 30,999. Do not be misled or confused by the endless speculating on who 'Pierre Poutine' is or might be. He will be found eventually. There is a going to be a paper trail of some kind. The people directly involved in the illegal calls in Guelph and other Kitchener area ridings will eventually be identified.
In looking at the local players in CPC politics and the history of ratfucking among a few of these Segeretti wannabes, I have my suspicions about who might have been involved. And no, I'm not going to name any names so the aforementioned ratfuckers can stop dialling their lawyers for now.
Do not be misled when the culprits are finally identified and the Prime Minister and his inner circle of advisors and cabinet colleagues all disavow any knowledge. That is how espionage works  -- when you or members of your team are captured - the secretary will deny any knowledge etc etc. This was not done by a few rogue operatives, working on their own without supervision of any kind. There will be an apparent organizational firewall of plausible deniability. Some of the people at the sharp end of things may even be prosecuted.
But do not for one instant think that the final responsibility for this does not lie with Stephen Harper. He is the King Ratfucker.
This is his crime in the same way that Watergate was Nixon's crime.
At worst, he personally ordered it done and chose the people who executed the plan. At the very least, he fostered an attitude within the party that winning - by any means necessary - was all that mattered, chose the managers of the people who committed these crimes and completely and utterly failed to exercise any oversight, supervision or leadership.
In the end, it doesn't really matter where Harper's actions or lack of them fall on that scale. He is the leader and a leader is responsible for the actions of the people he leads.
If he had a right or honourable bone in his body, he'd admit that and resign immediately.
But what do we get?
Stephen Harper first claiming the Liberals did it and finally, if not in so many words, saying "Prove it, copper!"




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