Which side are you on, MacKay?

Conservative legacy hire Peter MacKay, Minister of Defence and CPC capo for Atlantic Canada, gives a speech at the French Embassy on Bastille Day (video not an exact match, but you get the idea)





This illustrates a few things: First, that MacKay knows as much about history as he does geography. Second, that he must write his own speeches and may think he is American. Third, the millions of dollars the CPC has decided to spend celebrating the War of 1812 hasn't been spent on briefing cabinet members on what the War of 1812 actually was.
I bet as part of the cutbacks, they brought in a highly-paid consultant who just made them watch this movie trailer and told them it was a documentary made up of contemporary newsreel footage. It would have to be newsreel film, everybody knows they didn't have videotape back in the early 19th century, right Minister MacKay?







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Calling you

A little required reading for your Monday and the resumption of Parliament:

• More and more reports coming out about fraudulent telephone campaigns by the Conservative Party of Canada to undermine democracy and steal the election
• This campaign voter suppression robocall kerfuffel isn't a scandal that is just popping up now, some people have been on it for quite a while 
• And it is definitely part of a pattern of underhanded sabotage and infiltration that has been going on for some time and is well documented
• When the CPC has lost Post Media, it is clear that they have stepped over a line
• And it isn't just robo calls either, it is the use of phone banks to systematically mislead voters and suppress democracy
• CPC hack Dean DelMastro does his best to keep the vital "both sides do it" narrative alive, but given this admission his complaint is a bit rich
• I understand campaign cheats do their best to provide leaders and candidates with plausible deniability, but apparently the CPC and Canada are now being led by Sgt. Shultz

As an editorial aside to my learned colleagues in the media: Can we please stop referring to these incidents as crank calls? If you pick up the phone and someone asks to speak to Amanda Hugginkiss or wants to know if your refrigerator is running or you have Prince Albert in a can, that's a crank call. If someone claims to be calling on behalf of Elections Canada or a political party and lies to you about how or where to vote, that's a crime.
And let's not just write it off as political pranksterism or dirty tricks either. Putting a bag of flaming dogshit on somebody's porch, ringing the bell and running away is a dirty trick, a whoopee cushion is a prank - an orchestrated effort to suppress the vote by lying to people about how and where to vote is a crime.




Keep that soothing music going as you read these links, you're going to need it.


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If thinking that knowing things is good makes me a snob, then fine, I'm a snob

Evan McMorris-Santoro clearly has a strong stomach and the ability to keep a straight face no matter what. Watch as he wades through the river of willful ignorance that is a Rick Santorum - Americans For Prosperity - Tea Party rally. (warning - link contains weapons-grade stupid)
Apparently knowing stuff other than how to chew tobacco, scratch and vote for Rick Santorum is snobbish elitism of the worst sort. The amazing shit-ton of wrong chronicled in this short piece is so astounding its hard to know where to begin. According to the people quoted people who do manual labour are inferior, money is the only measure of success, colleges are totalitarian liberal fascist brainwashing factories, diversity is communism, and schooling is only for job training so no one should be encouraged to learn anything that doesn't directly apply to their job.
I'm honestly shocked that none of the people quoted in the story used the phrase "fancy-pants book learnin'"

“President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college,” Santorum said. “What a snob!” Santorum started by saying some people don’t need to go to college: “Not all folks are gifted the same way. Some people have incredible gifts with their hands.” 

Yes and god forbid that someone who  has "incredible gifts with their hands" should get a chance to learn to appreciate literature, learn to think clearly and logically, find out the earth revolves around the sun, learn a language other than 'American' or gain an appreciation for anything other than beer, wrasslin' and "reality" TV (thought to be fair, I did learn a lot about beer in university). Extrapolating from what they are quoted as saying, I'm guessing most of them regret having learned to read and write, assuming they can read anything more complex than TV guide or a stop sign. These folks are not just wallowing in willful ignorance, they are insisting others be forced to as well. 

I know some of this is simply right-wing contrarianism and that the Tea Party people are against higher education simply because Obama advocates it, but still it is amazing to me that a political candidate, let alone an entire movement, would come out in favour of curtailing opportunities for people. I await the day when Obama goes on national television and tells the American people that it is a bad idea to hit themselves in the head with a ball peen hammer and that under no circumstances should any American stick their tongue in an electrical outlet. Because just know that a bunch of the same yahoos who attend CPAC and think Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are wise and wonderful are going to end up in the emergency ward.

I am not saying that higher education is necessary to be a happy and successful person, or that smart is the same as educated, but learning for its own sake is to be encouraged. It is always better to know more than to know less. For most of us, knowledge is power, but I guess for the Teabaggers, ignorance is bliss.

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Let me get this straight...

So, because a tiny, whiny, paranoid minority of Canadian fans of Michelle Bachman found the anonymous mandatory long-form census intrusive and coercive, the Conservatives' Industry Minister Tony "Gazebos R Us" Clement decided to scrap the whole thing against the advice of just about everyone.
And because a small, but very vocal bunch of paranoid gun nuts backed by the NRA ("keeping deadly weapons cheap and readily available for Americans for over a century") thought the long gun registry was intrusive and coercive, the Tories will scrap the whole thing and destroy the database against the wishes  of the majority of Canadians and police across the country.
But, according to Conservative Public Safety Minister Vic "Lock'em up and throw away the keys" Toews, anyone who objects to the government and police being able to access all your internet records and find out every website your computer has ever accessed, whether by annoying pop-up, virus, unauthorized third-party use or what have you, is clearly  siding with the child pornographers.

Our country is being run by a bunch of jackasses.



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Canada's little ray of SUNshine

Canada's ethical snake-oil salesman and Glenn Beck wannabe Ezra Levant continues to keep it classy.  As far as I can tell, Ezra's objection isn't that Chiquita Banana keep paying right-wing death squads to murder labour activists in South America, but that they are denying that they are boycotting tarsand products as a PR dodge. How dare they obey free market principles, eh Ezra? I don't know how the mother of the Chiquita Banana exec feels about you suggesting her son should have carnal knowledge of her, but your mother must be so very proud of you.

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The height of political sophistimacation

 "Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
-John Stuart Mill

This epigram from Mill has been bouncing around my brain for a few days now, sparked in part by an evening of sparring on Twitter with a bunch of dedicated gun nuts who were crowing about the end of the gun registry, and in part by this post over at the Galloping Beaver condemning some of Margaret Wente's recent columns in the Mop&Pail.

 Both bring me to the same conclusion: that conservatives have abandoned any pretense of trying to put together sound, practical public policy based science, professional expertise and common sense and have instead decided to just do whatever they think will piss off "liberals" or "socialists" or "hippies" or whatever nonsensical catch-all label they've adopted this week for their imaginary enemies from Rush Limbaugh, Charles Adler or FOX TV's evil ventriloquist dummies .
We see it every year when they hold Earth Hour. You know the environmental awareness event where everybody shuts off all the unnecessary gadgets and goes without electric lights and stuff for part of an evening as a sort of feel-good event with little actual practical impact on environmental problems that is intended to raise awareness. You might take part, you might ignore it, but to the hard-core conservative base, it is taken as a challenge to turn on every light in the house and idle the truck in the driveway for an hour, just to be contrary and hopefully bait a 'liberal.'

My evening on Twitter with the gun nuts was like trying to push shit up hill. Every time you demonstrated that their argument was nonsensical, they would change tack. You showed via statistics that most gun murders were committed by people without previous serious criminal records, they argued that the government was afraid of an uprising by armed patriotic law-abiding citizens. You explained that no matter many times they had seen Red Dawn and how many guns they cached, the police and military would still have them outgunned, they suddenly wanted to talk about the right to hunt to put food on the table. You point out that they admitted they didn't hunt and they wanted to claim that cars are more dangerous than guns and on and on.
I'd go back and list some of the Twitter conversations if I had an infinite amount of time and patience but the tone of most of the posts from the pro-gun tweeters was "nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah stupid liberals!" They were mostly delighted to have won a victory over the forces of law, order and common sense mainly because they figured they had shown us evil, prejudiced, corrupt, intolerant authoritarian liberals at thing or two.
When I tried to pin down one guy on why the hell he needed a collection of semi-automatic (which sometimes means convertible to full auto) military style weapons, he admitted that he didn't hunt and he wasn't a sports shooter - he more or less said that he wanted to have them because people like me didn't think he should have them. In other words, he wanted them because he thought of it as some kind of trangressive behaviour that would annoy "liberals" and "socialists," which sounds to me like a very dangerous and expensive way to annoy your neighbours just for laughs. If that's all he wants them for, why not just get a yappy dog that barks all night instead of something that, if handled carelessly or used with malicious intent, could leave people dead? 
But no, this gun nut and many others would rather spite "the enemy" than let the police keep a valuable tool.
Speaking of valuable tools, let us move from the aptly named base to the elites: Margaret Wente's column, while it points out that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, then goes on to tell us that poor aren't really poor because they all have colour TVs and none of them are dying of smallpox anymore.

The story is the same in Canada. In Ontario, for example, 65 per cent of the bottom fifth of families by income have air conditioning. Seventy per cent have DVD players, 65 per cent have cable TV, 56 per cent have home computers and 98.9 per cent have colour TVs. (Thirty years ago, even the most affluent families had few, if any, of these things.)

Wow, it sounds like the poor in Ontario really have it easy! Until you think about just how much stupid and wrong is packed into this one paragraph. Many public housing developments or rental apartments come with air conditioning whether you can afford it or not. Getting your TV via cable has been the norm in Canada for about 40 years, especially in cities - have you tried using the old rabbit ears to pick up the new digital signals? Good luck with that.
Wente is correct that not even the most affluent families had DVD players or home computers in 1981, because DVD players hadn't been invented yet and home computers were still in their infancy (The original Apple Mac didn't come out for another few years, though a few of  us already had big 16K or even 32K desktop BASIC machines from Radio Shack. I don't think even the Commodore 64 was on the market at that point.)
As for her claim about colour television being a rarity in 1981, let me say two thing. First, Ha! and second, I'm not sure you can even buy a B&W set anymore, hell it's tough to find a TV that uses a tube anymore. 
What this column, and so many, many more of Wente's have in common is that they are built around her efforts to be contrarian, to challenge what she sees as "conventional wisdom" and "political correctness" - to be a rugged individualist and an independent thinker. Which is all well and good if one is:

•  a) someone who is an outsider, not a member of The Establishment and former managing editors of the Globe and Mail and the Report on Business are pretty much the definition of The Establishment; and 
• b) not completely full of shit. Independent thinking still requires thinking, not merely contradicting what a lot of other people are saying and then trying to justify your contrarian position by making shit up. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.

This column, like much of Wente writing is little more than a defence of privilege and justification for being a selfish prick, which is pretty much the entire raison-d'etre for most people self-identifying as conservatives these days. They are selfish pricks who needed to come up with a justification for being selfish pricks, so they constructed a rickety morally-bankrupt psuedo-philosophy to try to defend their awful behaviour.
It was much the same when the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. Lots and lots of comfortable white people came up with all kinds of bullshit reasons that segregation was necessary and even beneficial rather than simply admit that they were racist shitheads. Over time, these bullshit reasons were seen for the bullshit that they were and the racist shitheads recognized as what they were.
So when someone claims they are a Randite libertarian conservative or a lassiez-faire market capitalist -- which loosely translated mean "I'm all right, Jack" -- what it usually means is they are a selfish prick who just doesn't want to admit they are a selfish prick.





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Contempt

That's what I feel for Dimitri Soudas and apparently what he feels for the Canadian Parliament and the centuries-old rules of the Westminster Parliamentary system in which it has long been established that the supreme authority rests with Parliament and not with the Prime Minister. Since he has now dodged a formal summons to appear before a Parliamentary committee and insulted Parliament, I cannot see a single good reason for the House of Commons not to proceed with a charge of Contempt of Parliament against this arrogant little shit and have him tossed in jail. And perhaps his boss and a few of his henchmen while they are at it. This is a bluff that the opposition must call -- for the sake of the future of the parliamentary democracy in Canada, they cannot afford to do otherwise.

Getting our money's worth

I mentioned in an earlier post that for the amount of money being spent on the G8/G20 meetings just for security, the government could build a money wall around the main venue for the G8 summit. I ran a few more numbers.
$1.1 billion dollars would allow the government to pay 150,000 security officers $100 per hour for the entire 72 hours and still have $20 million left to buy crullers and large double-doubles from Tim Horton's for the massive security detail.
It would take a better mathematician than I am to figure out the all the numbers, but I'm also confident that for $1.1 billion they could hold both conferences in a giant hollow sphere made of 18 carat gold floating off shore in Lake Ontario. $1.1 billion dollars would buy you nearly 36,000 kilograms of 18k gold. Maybe we could just have Stephen Harper and his Cabinet covered in gold leaf -- that would be sure to impress the visiting dignitaries!

This money is getting spent somewhere, and I suspect that a lot of it is going for fat "consulting fees" and no-bid contracts to Conservative Party of Canada backers. I expect the eventual auditor's report will have more pages discussing pork than the annual report of the Canadian Hog Farmers Association.

Leave your suggestions on how the money could be spent in the comments.

Jason Kenney: Liar or just absentminded?

I'm all for giving people the benefit of the doubt. We all forget things we've said or done once in a while, and hey, maybe Jason Kenney has suffered some sort of head injury that has left him unable to remember anything that happened more than a few minutes ago, like that guy in that movie. Or maybe he's been brainwashed into remembering things differently from the way they really happened, like that guy in that other movie. Or maybe, just maybe, he's a dishonest hack who suffers from incendiary trouser syndrome.  Given the frequency with which the Conservative Party of Canada likes to quote chapter and verse from the Adscam scandal, I'm guessing Kenney needs a fireproof chair. From now on we ought to call him "Lilac" Kenney, because he can lie like nobody else.
"But Rev. P," you say, "You can't just go around accusing members of Parliament of being liars! That's terrible! It's libelous!"
Yes, it is true that calling someone a liar, especially a politician, especially one as notoriously thin-skinned as Jason Kenney, is a risky business. One could very well be sued for libel. But you know what buckaroos? This ain't my first rodeo.
The best, indeed just about the only defence to a charge of libel is that the allegedly libelous comment is the truth and can be proved to be so. The truth really will set you free.



Jason "Lilac" Kenny, while being--as this clip shows--a lying douche bag, is correct about one thing: It is the Cabinet member who is ultimately responsible to Parliament for what happens in his ministry and therefore it is essential that his underlings never ever get a chance to tell Parliament just how badly the ministry and by extension the minister, has screwed up a particular issue. Twentysomething senior aides just can't be counted on to lie as effectively as a Cabinet minister and therefore must be kept away from testifying before Parliamentary committees where the Conservative Party can't control the questions they could be asked.
Imagine the disaster that could ensue if one of these young "inexperienced" aides who are paid about 100 grand a year to essentially run the ministries for their elected bosses were ever put in a position by a Parliamentary committee where they would have to tell the truth about the shit their boss was trying to pull in order to salvage whatever future career they might have. Cabinet ministers on the other hand, in addition to generally being accomplished bullshit artists, have already peaked careerwise and have the added option of blaming their staff for doing things the minister -- who is far too busy to deal with the day to day details dotcha know -- could not possibly have known about!
Just what is it that the Stephen Harper Conservatives are so desperate to hide?

(hat tip to Stageleft for the video)

Censorship or the Free Market speaking?

As much as I dislike Ann Coulter, I do respect her right to say just about any stupid thing that comes into the space between her ears. I don't think the University of Ottawa should have invited her in the first place, but I'm not sure how I feel about her speech having to be cancelled due to "security concerns."
I'd rather have seen her be allowed to speak, and then roundly booed and mocked by those in attendance.
One thing is for certain though, and that is that she, and Ezra Levant and the rest of the para-fascist shriekosphere will be milking this for all it is worth.

Run over by the Mack truck of history

I'm puzzled as to how Canadian Immigration Authorities can justify allowing a hatemonger like Ann Coulter into the country while barring British MP George Galloway, scholar and former radical  William Ayers and trying to keep out journalists who might say mean things about the big burning stick festival in Vancouver.

But then, I suppose such people are not going to bring teh laffs like Brownshirt Annie:

During the Q & A a 17 year old female Muslim student quoted Ann Coulter's statement encouraging 1) the US to invade the Islamic nations, kill their leaders and convert their citizens to Christianity; and 2) for Muslims to be banned from airplanes, and that if they need to fly they should take their magic carpets. The girl asked if 1) she should be forced to convert, and 2) given that she doesn't have a magic carpet, what should she do if she needs to fly somewhere. Coulter didn't much address the first question, but addressed the second one by telling her to take a camel! (not that camels fly but, you get the drift).

Laugh? Ha, I almost started!

Stay KKKlassy conservatives!

Ann was introduced in London by fellow wingnut trougher and longtime media whore Ezra Levant. And apparently Kathy "12 feet of nasty packed in a five foot box" Shaidle was also there to try to claw her way onto the gravy train and spreading her usual sunshine.


What these half-bright hate peddlars and their "moran" fans fail to realize is that history has completely passed them by. They and their morally and intellectually bankrupt ideology are flavor-of-the-moment relics from the last decade and anyone with any sense at all has long since moved on. All their outrageous statements and publicity stunts aimed at getting them back in the limelight will fail, because after 20 years of their screaming "wolf" and predicting doom if they weren't given the keys to the kingdom even conservatives are now realizing they've been had.

And speaking of cheap and obvious publicity stunts, apparently Coulter is planning to launch a complaint with the Human Rights Commission over a letter she received prior to speaking at the Univeristy of Ottawa.

"...a senior University of Ottawa administrator has warned her to use "restraint, respect and consideration" when speaking at the school.
Francois Houle, vice-president academic and provost, advised Coulter, who holds a law degree, to review Canada's hate speech and defamation laws before giving her talk at the university.
In an e-mail sent to Coulter on Friday, a copy of which has been obtained by the National Post, Houle wrote: "Our domestic laws, both provincial and federal, delineate freedom of expression (or "free speech") in a manner that is somewhat different than the approach taken in the United States. I therefore encourage you to educate yourself, if need be, as to what is acceptable in Canada and to do so before your planned visit here."

He continued: "Promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges."

After also mentioning defamation law, the provost wrote: "I therefore ask you, while you are a guest on our campus, to weigh your words with respect and civility in mind."

Shorter: "We both know you like to shoot your mouth off and we have laws against hate speech up here, and every liberal in the country will be waiting to pounce, so please don't drag the univerisity into a lawsuit by saying something actionable, mmmkay?"

And Coulter's response?

"Now that the provost has instructed me on the criminal speech laws he apparently believes I have a proclivity (to break), despite knowing nothing about my speech, I see that he is guilty of promoting hatred against an identifiable group: conservatives," Coulter wrote in an e-mail to the Ottawa Citizen Monday...

Shorter: "You Canuckistani socialists aren't the boss of me! I'll say whatever hateful thing I want!"

Obviously, Ezra has had a word with Ann about the publicity value to be had in getting to speak in front of the Human Rights Commission, no matter how obviously stupid your case, something he has considerable experience with.

Seriously, there ought to some kind of fine levied for wasting the commission's time with this kind of bullshit.

Inevitable

Taken from the Houston Chronicle's coverage of a Rick Perry-Sarah Palin rally on Superbowl Sunday

What war does

This story is beyond the mere garden variety child abuse nightmare tale. This is something that would not have happened the way it did if George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and their gang of bloodthirsty ideologues had not decided to invade Iraq. This soldier pretty obviously has PTSD and will probably never be the same. And neither will the four-year-old daughter he waterboarded because she wouldn't say her ABCs.
And sorry to Gerard Alexander if I'm being condescending by pointing this out.
P.S. Gerard, when Obama says to a Republican congressman "That's factually just not true, and you know it's not true." That isn't condescending, it's what Driftglass so accurately described as "unsheathing three feet of Verdad" and using it to carve up the disingenuous, dissembling, mendacious, prevaricating opposition - you know, the lying douchebag Republicans.

I got your class war right here

Give a man a fish and he'll eat it, teach a man to fish....and he may starve to death waiting to get a bite.

There has been a lot of asinine talk lately about the evils of creating dependence among the poor by...well, y'know, making sure that they don't starve to death. My previous favorite were entitlement-crazed assholes like these on the right who felt that sending money to Haiti would just encourage people there to remain poor. It's funny that no one thought of how the Haitians were encouraging the French to be poor while they were paying reparations for freeing themselves from slavery between 1804 and 1947.

But my new favorite in the "I hope one day your car breaks down in the slums you helped create" sweepstakes is South Carolina Lt. Gov. and gubernatorial hopeful Andre Bauer who thinks the poor are a bunch of ungrateful layabouts breeding like the vermin he thinks they are because of school lunch programs.

GREENVILLE - Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer has compared giving people government assistanc to "feeding stray animals."

Bauer, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor, made his remark during a town hall meeting in Fountain Inn that included state lawmakers and about 115 residents.

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better," Bauer said.

In South Carolina, 58 percent of students participate in the free and reduced-price lunch program.

Yes, Mr. Bauer, by all means deny aid to the children of irresponsible poor parents, that will teach them a lesson! And if little Johnny and Janey can't attend school because they are out dumpster diving to get enough to eat or can't concentrate at school because they didn't have breakfast and can't afford lunch, well then I guess they will learn not to be poor -- certainly it won't reinforce the cyclical nature of poverty and make more poor people. That would be unthinkable in a state as prosperous and egalitarian as yours

• According to statistics collected by the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center, (cribbed from the comments but tracked down to the linked source above)

  
  

  South Carolina ranks 45th in overall child wellbeing today.

  26% of children under the age of 6 years old lives in poverty.

  1 in 10 children live in extreme poverty.

  In 2006, 38% of babies were born to mothers who lacked adequate prenatal care.

  Infant mortality: 47th

  High school grad: 48th

  Obesity: 45th

  Infectious diseases: 42nd

  Violent crime: 50th (highest)

  Lack of health insurance: 37th

  Premature deaths: 46th

  Mental health: 41st

  Per capita income: 45th

  Underemployment: 46th

And what is this little tidbit of info?

Per dollar of federal tax collected in 2005, South Carolina citizens received approximately $1.35 in the way of federal spending. This ranks the state 16th highest nationally and represents a slight rise from 1995, when South Carolina received $1.20 per dollar of taxes in federal spending, ranking it 18th highest nationally.

hmmm, maybe the U.S. federal government should stop feeding South Carolina?

Dear Joe Lieberman

Senator, I've been talking to a lot of liberals lately, especially liberal bloggers and we all agree. We are convinced that we must at cost stop senators from Connecticut from walking blindfolded across expressways, sleeping on railroad tracks and drinking bleach. All of us liberals agree that you must not do these things and that by not doing these things you will make us all very happy. Also, we firmly oppose senators playing Russian roulette. We feel it is an abomination and something that should never, ever be allowed, especially for members of the Senate. Please Joe, stay away from Russian roulette, don't ever put a round in the revolver, spin the cylinder, put the muzzle to your temple and pull the trigger. Never do that, it will make all us Liberals so very, very sad. And please Joe, stop smoking in bed, especially after sloshing kerosene around the room. We liberals further demand that you never, ever shower with a toaster or go swimming with your anvil collection. Don't do it Joe! It will really piss off the liberals if you do, especially the bloggers.

sincerely,
Your pal
Rev. Paperboy

P.S. If you really wanted to drive us liberal crazy Joe, you could give all your money to the homeless and then go from bed to bed in hospitals across the United States apologizing to people for making sure they won't ever be able to afford decent health care. Boy, that would sure teach us liberal bloggers a lesson. We'd just hate that.

We don't need another hero

The Skipper has already chastized John Baird, who should never ever wear a turtleneck, for his objectionable conduct and general stupidity related to the Afghan prisoner denial-fest, but this part caught my eye too:

From Macleans:
"Mr. Baird was ready with a response. “Mr. Speaker, let us be very clear. Let us talk about the facts,” he boldly declared. “The then-Vice Chief of the Defence Staff, General Walter Natynczyk, a decorated war hero, someone who has served our country in uniform for decades..."

(Baird then went on for a while in this vein before excusing himself )

Decorated war hero? In what war? Was Natynczyk at Vimy Ridge? Did he storm Juno Beach? Did he fight in Korea? Did he lead some heroic commando mission in Somalia or withstand the seige of Sarajevo or lead F-18 sorties over Kuwait in the first Iraq war? Has he been out battling the wily Pathan in the Afghan hills? Where was he decorated and for what?

A little checking revealed Gen. Walter Natynczyk does have some medals, some of them are even for serving in a war. In addition to being a Commander of the Order of Military Merit, which is awarded for "Outstanding meritorious service and demonstrated leadership in duties of great responsibility" (in other words longstanding excellence in military service in the same way the Order of Canada is doled out to politicians who manage to stay in office long enough to be considered "statesmen" without getting embroiled in a scandal), in 2006 Natynczyk was awarded the Meritorious Service Cross.

Governor General of Canada; Media release. Jan 24, 2006. "MGen Natynczyk is recognized for his outstanding leadership and professionalism while deployed as Deputy Commanding General of the Multi-National Corps during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. From January 2004 to January 2005, MGen Natynczyk led the Corps' 10 separate brigades, consisting of more than 35,000 soldiers stationed throughout the Iraq Theatre of Operations. He also oversaw planning and execution of all Corps level combat support and combat service support operations. His pivotal role in the development of numerous plans and operations resulted in a tremendous contribution by the Multi-National Corps to Operation Iraqi Freedom, and has brought great credit to the Canadian Forces and to Canada."

So Natynczyk was decorated for his wartime command of forces in a war that Canada was rather pointedly not taking part in. And the award was for his leadership and professionalism, not battlefield valour.

I don't wish to denigrate Gen. Natynczyk's service to this country or to discount the honor done to him and other recipients of these impressive decorations. Nor do I doubt his personal bravery--his record shows that he has served honorably on peacekeeping missions and elsewhere. But none of that makes him a "decorated war hero" to anyone except the kind of mindless uniform fetishists that seem to populate the Conservative benches and form the core of support for the ongoing military adventure in Afghanistan.

Wearing a uniform doesn't make you any more honorable or any smarter or any braver than anyone else and outranking an eyewitness doesn't make you more credible than they are. I think Natynczyk, like most sensible people, realizes this, even if Baird does not.

Baird is an braying brass-kissing ass who loves to wrap himself in the flag and use the Canadian Forces for his own political ends. But this is the Stephen Harper party of Canada and as much as Harper, Baird and Peter McKay love to be photographed playing soldier or sailor, and love to the military as a wedge issue--decrying any opposition to their policy or attempts to hold them responsible as hatred for the sacred troops--as soon as the political bullets start to get too close, somebody is going to be sent to draw fire and that somebody isn't going to one of their own.

Natynczyk seems to understand this and is now making it clear that he isn't going to be falling on his sword for them.

Why won't John Baird and the rest of the Conservative Party of Canada take the word of both our heroic troops in the field and our top soldier? Why won't they hold a full public inquiry?

Crisis,What Crisis

Sorry, not much logic in this song. Remember when she admitted that she didn't know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was? Obviously a perfect choice for Obama to name to the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

Not as sorry as he's going to be

Keddy says he's sorry for referring to unemployed as 'no-good
bastards'
By Alison Auld (CP)
HALIFAX, N.S. — A Nova Scotia Conservative MP who stunned the opposition and advocates for the homeless after referring to the unemployed in Halifax as "no-good bastards" apologized Tuesday for the comments.
In a statement, Gerald Keddy said he did not mean to offend Nova Scotians who are out of work.

I guess it takes one to know one, Mr. Keddy, but people who are soon to live in glass houses might want to watch it with the stone throwing. I'm sure we will hear about this one again come election time and I bet I know who those "no-good bastards" will be voting against.

Everything old is new again

It seems my former arch nemesis from my tenure at the Port Dover Maple Leaf back in last century is still doing what he does best - annoying the hell out of anyone even marginally more progressive than King George III, especially women. I'm sure he will take Antonia's critique to heart - not.
I'm pretty sure this is the same Ian Robinson who was the editor of Maple Leaf's main weekly competitor, the Simcoe Times-- back then he was a right-wing reactionary who delighted in the faux populism of people like Preston Manning and pissing off anyone who's knuckles didn't drag the floor. I seem to recall that when my predessor at the Maple Leaf was more or less run out of town on a rail for suggesting in print that one of the local service clubs' annual blackface minstrel show was an appalling disgrace (this was in the late 80's--the 1980's not the 1880's), Ian was either silent or said something about it being a harmless local tradition.
As long as politics didn't come up, Ian was generally a personable guy when the press gang were out for beers and a lot of us suspected his rabid conservatism was just a contrarian pose. I guess not.
Nice to see that in our ever-changing world, we can still count on some things to stay exactly the same.

More cover-ups for the higher-ups

My guess would be that, as in most government scandals, the big problem here is not going to be the initial misconduct by some underling, but the subsequent bullshittery by the government in trying to hush the whole thing up.

Obviously, at some stage someone in the chain of command figured out a mistake had been made in handing over prisoners to the Afghans, and obviously they reported it to someone higher up who was eventually told it was not a problem, when it very much was a problem. The question is: Who was the amoral idiot who decided it wasn't a problem to hand prisoners over to be tortured, and how high up in the government ranks are they? Given the steps being taken to squelch this investigation, I think we can assume it was someone fairly senior, possibly Cabinet level.

The government is doing its best to delay things until they can appoint a new commissioner to the Military Police Complaints Tribunal when the current chairman, Peter Tinsley, reaches the end of his term in December. And they will probably manage to succeed and appoint some useful idiot to shut down the inquiry once and for all.

Which will probably lead the whistleblowers to take the case to the public in bigger and better ways. Eventually, even if it has to wait for a change of government, the truth will out, but it isn't going to set anybody free in this case, except in the sense that they will be free from being tied down to a government job anymore.