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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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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the buck stops where?

Illustration stolen from Alison at Creekside, an excellent place to start learning about Robocon or Suppressiongate or whatever we are calling the latest bit of epic malfeasance on the part of the Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada

The conduct of Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada is now being described as Nixonian in some quarters and I would find it hard to disagree. They have certainly copied from the Nixon playbook in that they like to claim to represent the 'Silent Majority' and accuse their opponents of being elitists and radicals. They are profoundly anti-intellectual, to the extent that they mistrust science. They are hawkish on foreign policy and love to tout their support for the military.

But most of all, Harper will deny, deny, deny and throw on advisor after another under the bus. Nothing will ever be his fault and he will never acknowledge any error, any awareness of wrongdoing and will never admit to anything, no matter what the evidence.

It kind of reminds me of this song from the Watergate era.




I am willing to take Stephen Harper at his word that he knew nothing about the fraudulent phone campaign that helped him win a majority. But if he didn't know about that one, what else didn't he know?

No one voted for his advisors or campaign staff. He picked them himself, or picked the people who appointed them. He chose the people who decided that it was okay to for the CPC to lie, cheat and steal their way into power and he is the one who must take responsibility.
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At least a thousand words

This is the best Canadian political photo since Robert Stanfield dropped the football.

h/t to Dammit Janet and photographer Matthew Rossi

Stealing back your vote

It should be simple. You're a citizen, you should get to vote, right?

Wrong.

In Canada, its fairly simple to get on the voters' list if you are eligible. You can even get on the list of electors at the polling station on election day. You accept your ballot, mark it with an X and put it in the ballot box, and then go home and wait for the returns to roll in.

In the U.S. it isn't quite as easy as that. Rules, proceedures and the physical mechanics of voting and counting vary from state to state, even from polling station to polling station. And some people are doing their best to make it as difficult as possible for the "wrong sort" of voter.

The New York Time reports voters being illegally purged from electoral rolls in six battleground states -- not much of a surprise if you've been reading Greg Palast ( and if you haven't, what's wrong with you, you louche slacker bastards? His "Armed Madhouse" and "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" should be required reading for anyone who votes.)

Let me make this very simple -- I'll type this very slowly for some of you who have trouble following things more complex than an episode of Dancing With The Stars-- The Republicans took office in 2000 because they were successful in keeping people, mostly blacks, from voting in Florida. The Republicans took office in 2004 because they used similar tricks to surpress the vote in Ohio. If you don't think they will do their best to surpress the vote in 2008 you are either too stupid to be allowed to vote or a Republican. Fortunately, Palast and Kennedy have whipped up this little number to show how to steal back your vote.